If poets and players are to be restrained, let them be restrained as other subjects are, by the known laws of their country; if they offend, let them be tried, as every Englishman ought to be, by God and their country. Do not let us subject them to the arbitrary will and pleasure of any one man. A power lodged in the hands of one single man, to judge and determine, without any limitation, without any control or appeal, is a sort of power unknown to our laws, inconsistent with our constitution. It is a higher, a more absolute power than we trust even to the King himself; and, therefore, I must think, we ought not to vest any such power in his Majesty's lord chamberlain.... ... The Bill now before us cannot so properly be called a Bill for restraining licentiousness, as it may be called a Bill for restraining the liberty of the stage, and for restraining it too in that branch which in all countries has been the most useful; therefore I must look upon the Bill as a most dangerous encroachment upon liberty in general. Nay, farther, my Lords, it is not only an encroachment upon liberty, but it is likewise an encroachment upon property. Wit, my Lords, is a sort of property: it is the property of those that have it, and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is, indeed, but a precarious dependence. Thank God! we, my Lords, have a dependence of another kind; we have a much less precarious support, and therefore cannot feel the inconveniences of the Bill now before us; but it is our duty to encourage and protect wit, whosoever's property it may be. Those gentlemen who have any such property, are all, I hope, our friends: do not let us subject them to any unnecessary and arbitrary restraint. I must own, I cannot easily agree to the laying of any tax upon wit; but by this Bill it is to be heavily taxed, it is to be excised;[15] for if this Bill passes, it cannot be retailed in a proper way without a permit; and the lord chamberlain is to have the honour of being chief gauger, supervisor, commissioner, judge and jury: but what is still more hard, though the poor author, the proprietor I should say, cannot perhaps dine till he has found out and agreed with a purchaser: yet before he can propose to seek for a purchaser, he must patiently submit to have his goods rummaged at this new excise-office, where they may be detained for fourteen days, and even then he may find them returned as prohibited goods, by which his chief and best market will be for ever shut against him; and that without any cause, without the least shadow of reason, either from the laws of his country, or the laws of the stage.... [14] It had been rushed through the House of Commons at the very end of the session. [15] Walpole's Excise Bill had been withdrawn under strong pressure four years earlier (see p. 22). Hence the cogency of this allusion here. DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE (1737): HER CHARACTER DESCRIBED BY GEORGE II.