_Mr. Falkland._--"I regret, Sir, that you should overstep the bounds of the question under discussion, to attack the clerical profession; but lest you should imagine that you are occupying a position from which no fair argument can displace you, I will for once attempt to follow you. I admit, then, for the sake of the argument, that there are some who make higher pretensions to private virtue than the actors and actresses of our theatres, who, after delivering their public lectures on morality, retire and sin in secret; but will the vices of one class of men justify the vices of another? If some of the clergy are corrupt, will the fact of their corruption diminish the magnitude of the players' vices? Why you have introduced this charge against the clergy into the discussion I cannot say, as it has nothing to do with the question at issue, which is the necessary connection between a player's profligacy of manners and the duties of his profession. That is, that the very performance of his duties, when he is engaged in promoting the morality of the public, has a tendency to produce a corruption of his own morals. But you can bring no such charge against the moral tendency of the clerical duties. A clergyman is not compelled, in the discharge of his functions, to give utterance to any expressions, or to perform any actions, which have even a remote tendency to vitiate his taste or corrupt his morals; so that if he should turn out a bad man, you must look for the cause of it, not, as in the case of the stage-player, in any impure and contaminating influence of his profession, but in the depravity of his nature. If he become immoral, he acts an inconsistent part, offers an insult to the sentiments of the virtuous part of mankind, and loses his place in society--as a man who is a disgrace to his profession, whose example is in direct opposition to the acknowledged tendency of his ministerial functions. But as a pure moral character is not necessary to qualify a man to appear on the stage, no one feels at liberty to charge a theatrical performer with inconsistency, even if he should become notorious for swearing, gaming, drunkenness, or debauchery. He may revel in these vices, and yet appear before an audience with as much confidence of affording them gratification by his performances as he would feel if he were a man of the purest moral excellence. It is true, that if publicly convicted of some flagrant offence, and held up, through the medium of the press, as the base wretch who violates the sanctity of friendship, the admirers of the drama will express a virtuous indignation, and wish him to perform a sort of quarantine before he again makes his appearance before them; yet they will never regard it as a lasting disqualification for his professional duties."