d, then it is beyond
question that it would have to be followed up by a censorship of the
press or withdrawn altogether. It would clearly be impossible to allow
the very words which were not to be spoken on the stage to be set out
in the clearest type on the shelves of every bookseller. But
Chesterfield's own speech showed that he had entirely misconceived the
extent and operation of a censorship of the stage in a country like
England. The censorship of the stage which Chesterfield assumed to be
coming, and which he condemned, could not possibly, as we have shown,
exist in those islands. The censorship of the stage, if it were to
move in such a direction, would not be paving the way for a censorship
of the press, but simply paving the way for its own abolition. The
speech was a capital and a telling piece of argument addressed to an
audience who were glad to hear something decided and animated on the
subject; but it never could have deceived Chesterfield himself. It
took no account of the elementary political fact that all legislation
is compromise, and that the supposed logical and extreme consequences
of no measure are ever allowed to follow its enactment. The censorship
of plays has gone on since that time, and it has not interfered with
the general liberty of acting and of publishing dramatic pieces. It
has not compelled {102} Parliament to choose between introducing a
censorship of the press or abolishing the censorship of plays. We have
never heard of any play worth seeing which was lost to the English
stage through the censorship of the drama, nor was the suggestion ever
made by the most reactionary Ministry that it should be followed up by
a censorship of the press.

[Sidenote: 1737--Educated libellers]

Indeed in Walpole's day it might almost have seemed as if the stage
required censorship less than the ballad. Probably, if it had been
thought humanly possible to prevent the publication and the circulation
of scurrilous poems against eminent men and women, Walpole might have
ventured on the experiment. But he had too much robust common-sense
not to recognize the impossibility of doing anything effective in the
way of repression in that field of art.

Certainly the Muse of Song made herself very often a shrieking sister
in those days. When she turned her attention to politics, and had her
patrons to be sung up and her patrons' enemies to be sung down, she
very often screamed and called names, and