_Mr. Falkland._--"Yes, Sir, I readily concede that the vices of the clergy have a more pernicious effect on the morals of society than the vices of players, because the clerical character is held in higher estimation, and because the clergy have free access to families who would feel themselves degraded if a player was to be introduced into their company. The clergy who support the dignity of their profession, as the great majority of them do, are esteemed and respected--their friendship is highly valued and assiduously cultivated; but players are doomed to neglect when off the boards--they are shunned in the ordinary intercourse of social life, and kept in a state of exclusion, which is something like an instinctive evidence, pervading all classes, with a few exceptions, that they must be kept aloof from the sacred precincts of the family circle. And it is to this sensitive abhorrence, which the virtuous part of society feels, against any familiar intercourse with players, that we are to attribute the comparatively trifling injury which the profligacy of their private character does to the morals of the public; but if ever this safeguard should be broken down--if ever the line of demarcation which estranges us from them should be removed, and they should have free access to our homes--allowed to associate with our sons and daughters, they would introduce amongst us a degree of moral corruption which no authority could check or influence subdue." _Mr. Talbot._--"But, Sir, I have known some players introduced into the highest intellectual circles of London and Edinburgh. Why, it is a well-known fact, that the Kembles and Siddons, Bannister, Young, and many others, were often guests at the mansions of some of the most virtuous and accomplished of our nobility." _Mr. Falkland._--"I admit, Sir, that the intellectual eminence of a few of the profession has procured for them an admission into the society of literary men; but a virtuous public, and even that part of the public which admires the drama, with few exceptions, will not receive them into its private or social friendship. And in the case of the few exceptions into whose circles they have been received, shall we find no husband or father who has not had occasion to rue the day when he consented to call an actor his friend? It would be invidious to give names, or I could, from my personal knowledge, mention some instances of the lamentable results of intimacies with players. Enough was brought before the public to justify the remarks of the _Times_:--'The conduct of persons who appear on the stage has never been the most irreproachable; and it may be doubted whether such a mass of living vice, as the actors and actresses but too generally present in their private lives, is not more injurious to public morals than the splendid examples of virtue which they exhibit in their theatrical characters are useful.'"