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THE DEPUTY MORALIST. 



IN the debate which arose on Mr. E. L. Bulwer's notion for a select com- 

 mittee to enquire into the state of the laws affecting dramatic literature 

 and the performance of the drama, the character of that equivocal function- 

 ary, the Deputy Licenser, or master of the morals, was touched upon by 

 Mr. Shiel and others, who only spoke the sense of the country, when they 

 declared that appointment not only unnecessary, but unconstitutional. 

 So thought the public on the first creation of the office ; for the first two 

 pieces, brought out at Covent-Garden, branded with the licence of the 

 Lord Chamberlain, were summarily damned. " There was a resolution," 

 says the Abbe Le Blanc who was one of the spectators, and whose re- 

 marks on the event are to be found in his correspondence, "to damn 

 whatever might appear, the word hiss, not being sufficiently expressive for 

 the English. They always say to damn a piece, to damn an author j &c. 

 and, in reality, the word is not too strong to express the manner in which 

 they receive a play which does not please them." In another place the 

 Abbe observes, " this act [i. e. the licensing act] occasioned an universal 

 murmuring in the nation, and was openly com plained of in the public papers : 

 also in the coffee-houses of London, it was treated as an unjust law, and 

 manifestly contrary to the liberties of England." However, the people, 

 as on graver occasions, were tricked out of their honest opposition by a 

 mountebank appeal to their prejudices ; for we learn from the same 

 writer, that the said new piece containing the character of a French cook, 

 a fellow with " black eyebrows, a ribbon of an ell long under his chin, 

 and a bag-peruke immoderately bedaubed with snuff,' ' was heard and ap- 

 plauded throughout. There was a long discussion on the relative merits 

 of French and English cookery ; the sirloin tyrannized it over the ragout, 

 and the audience forgot their liberties in vacant laughter at stewed frogs 

 and complacent admiration of roast beef! How often are great events, 

 conducing to the most diabolical effects, mirrored in the pettiest acts of 

 mankind. Then, however, the French and English were, in the political 

 slang of the day, " natural enemies." They came into the world, marked 

 with some abstruse hieroglyph, to which politicians gave this deep solution. 

 It is even now the cant of our state gypsies, " suckled in a creed 

 outworn !" 



It is said "a king ought now and then to take pleasure in hearing and 

 reading of comedies j because thereby he may perceive and hear many 

 things done in his realm, which otherwise he should not know." Allowing 

 the force of this, the deputy licenser is one of the many worthies, expressly 

 fed and clothed to keep the king in truly monarchical ignorance : he is a 

 bandage to the eyes of his play-going majesty wool to his ears. We all 

 recollect how Sir Martin Shee's Alasco was tattoed with official red ink; 

 how passages, declaiming naughtily about liberty, and such ideal stuff, 

 were mortally stabbed by the deputy's pen -, how the play was literally 

 turned inside out, washed of its gall, and then returned to be further 

 sweetened -, till, being made comely and odoriferous, like old Drugget's 

 pig in the farce, " a sucking pie: in lavender with sage growing in its belly," 

 it might be deemed, by competent authority, " a dainty dish to set before 

 a king." Englishmen vaunt a freedom of the press ; but whilst we have 

 such an exotic as a deputy licenser of plays, can it be said that we have 

 the freedom of speech ? We may print what we please at our own peril, 



