surprise was great, when I found that it contained sentiments, which the Official Guardian of these great interests, as far as the stage is concerned, had thought it necessary to suppress. This is an imputation, my Lord, to which it is impossible I can silently submit.-I owe it to my own character, as a subject of the government under which I live, as a member of the respectable Institution to which I have the honor to belong,-and to my station, in which I have had the honor to be raised, by diploma from its royal and venerable founder; I owe it to the interests of my family, and the preservation of my good name, not to acquiesce in a decision, which would attempt to stamp me as the factious propagator of principles calculated to produce such dangerous consequences to the political institutions of this free country, as required so harsh and unusual an interposition of your Grace's authority, to prevent. As I have reason to believe that your Grace has not seen the production in question, I am bound, in the first instance, to appeal to your wisdom and justice, against the judgment of your Deputy. Your Grace's liberality will not deem the time mis-employed, which may enable you to judge of the policy and propriety of his agency, on this occasion-which may enable you to correct it, if it should be considered erroneous, or to sauc tion it, if it should be deemed just.-I ask no favour at your Grace's hands; obscure an individual as I am, I am neither so unknown nor so unfriended, but that I might hope to gain admission to your Grace, through the interference of those whose influence might favorably present my claims to your attention; but I should be sorry to seek by solicitation, that redress, to which the integrity of my intentions, and the justice of my cause give me a more honorable claim.—I appeal to your Grace, as to a great public officer, anxious to discharge with liberality and sound discretion, the duties which his exalted station prescribes-duties, in which are involved the interests of literature, and the very existence of the Drama, as an object of national pleasure or pride, If your Grace should honor me by perusing my play, you will find it a production, which, however feeble as to its literary pretensions, I boldly assert, contains not one sentiment, moral, religious, or political, of which an honest subject of this empire can justly disapprove, or which any honorable man of any party should be ashamed to avow.-You will find it a production, in which there is not one sentiment, one line, or one word, disrespectful to kings, or unfavorable to monarchy or legitimate government of any description. You will find it a production, in which, neither in intention nor ex pression, neither by allusion nor implication, is there the slightest attempt to call in question, censure, or satirize the government, constitution, or laws of this country;→ to throw any discredit on its institutions, or cast the least aspersion on those who are concerned in their administration. On the contrary, your Grace will find, in that production, an humble, but honest endeavour, in every page, to inculcate the practice of public and private virtue. You will find many passages which advocate a high-minded reverence for royal authority-you will find the virtue of loyalty in particular, and the fidelity of a soldier to his sovereign, exemplified and illustrated, in the noblest character of an officer and an Englishman, which it was in the power of the author's imagination to conceive, and expressed in language, which may, indeed, be easily excelled in poetical power, but which, I will venture to say, for integrity of intention, and dramatic good faith, has never been surpassed. These are claims, my Lord, which might justly entitle an author to expect for his production, a more indulgent reception than that which mine has experienced, even were it found to contain some passages of a character similar to those expressions of immoral, sanguinary, and insurrectionary sentiments, which nevertheless have not been thought to require the interference of a Lord Chamber lain, and which are, every season, listened to without disapprobation, or any discernible ill-consequence, in the tragedy of "Venice Preserved,"* and other dramatic productions. But very different has been my fate. In * The following are some of the passages in "Venice Preserved," here alluded to. ACT II. JAFFIER. Could I kill with curses, By Heaven, I know not thirty heads in Venice, ACT II.-line 227. JAFFIER. Command this steel, if you would have it quiet ACT III.-line 63. JAFFIE. Nay, the throats of the whole senate Shall bleed, my Belvidera. He, amongst us, d deed, the unsparing mutilation, the minute political purification which my tragedy has undergone, from the mi croscopic scrutiny, the lacerating alacrity, and alarmed moral zeal of the new dramatic censor, would seem to indicate that a new era had opened for the stage-that new principles of censure were to signalize the new ap ACT III.-line 227. RENAULT. But above all, I charge you, Shed blood enough; spare neither sex nor age, ACT III. line 251. RENAULT. Without the least remorse then, lets resolve ACT IV. Scene in the Senate. PIERRE. Cursed be your senate, cursed your constitution! |