The Playhouse Bill passed through the House of Commons easily enough. No one of any mark took much account of it, except Pulteney, who opposed it. The opposition offered by Pulteney does not appear to have been very severe or even serious, for no division was taken in the representative Chamber. The feeling of every one was not so much concerned about what we should now call immorality or indecency, but about lampoons on public men. This fear was common to the Opposition as well as to the {100} Government, was shared alike by the Patriots and the Court party; and so the Bill was sent speedily through both Houses. [Sidenote: 1737--The censorship of the stage] The debate was made memorable by the brilliant speech of Lord Chesterfield in the House of Lords. All contemporary accounts agree in describing this speech as one of the most fascinating and impressive ever heard in Parliament. Chesterfield strongly opposed the measure in the interests of public liberty and the freedom of the press. He knew where to hit hard when he called the licensing department which the Bill proposed to create "a new excise." The real object of the measure, he insisted, was not so much to restrain the stage as to shackle the press. "It is an arrow that does but glance at the stage; the mortal wound seems destined against the liberty of the press." His argument to this effect was decidedly clever, keen, plausible, and telling. "You can prevent a play from being acted," he said, "but you do not prevent it from being printed. Therefore a play which by your censorship you refuse to allow to come on the stage, and in the interests of public morals very properly refuse, you allow to come in a printed form on the shelves of the booksellers. The very fact that a play was not allowed to be put on the stage will only make people the more eager to read it in book form; prohibited publications are in all countries diligently and generally sought after. Plays will be written in order to be prohibited by the censor and then to be sold in book form. What will come of this? Unquestionably an extension of the present measure for the purpose of preventing the printing as well as the public representation of plays. It is out of the question that society could allow a play to be read by all the public which it would not allow to be recited on the boards of a theatre. Now then you have got so far as the preventing of plays from being printed, what happens next? That a writer will turn his rejected, prohibited play into a novel or something of the kind; will introduce a little narrative as well as dialogue, and in this slightly {101} altered form offer his piece of scandalous work to the general reader. Then it will be asked, What! will you allow an infamous libel to be printed and dispersed merely because it does not bear the title of a play? Thus, my Lords, from the precedent before us, we may, we shall be induced, nay, we can