yet I have never published in my life an article, a play, or a book, as to which, if I had taken legal advice, an expert could have assured me that I was proof against prosecution or against an action for damages by the persons criticized.  No doubt a sensible solicitor might have advised me that the risk was no greater than all men have to take in dangerous trades; but such an opinion, though it may encourage a client, does not protect him.  For example, if a publisher asks his solicitor whether he may venture on an edition of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, or a manager whether he may produce King Lear without risk of prosecution, the solicitor will advise him to go ahead.  But if the solicitor or counsel consulted by him were asked for a guarantee that neither of these works was a libel, he would have to reply that he could give no such guarantee; that, on the contrary, it was his duty to warn his client that both of them are obscene libels; that King Lear, containing as it does perhaps the most appalling blasphemy that despair ever uttered, is a blasphemous libel, and that it is doubtful whether it could not be construed as a seditious libel as well.  As to Ibsen’s Brand (the play which made him popular with the most earnestly religious people) no sane solicitor would advise his client even to chance it except in a broadly cultivated and tolerant (or indifferent) modern city.  The lighter plays would be no better off.  What lawyer could accept any responsibility for the production of Sardou’s Divorcons or Clyde Fitch’s The Woman in the Case?  Put the proposed King’s Proctor in operation to-morrow; and what will be the result?  The managers will find that instead of insuring them as the Lord Chamberlain does, he will warn them that every play they submit to him is vulnerable to the law, and that they must produce it not only on the ordinary risk of acting on their own responsibility, but at the very grave additional risk of doing so in the teeth of an official warning.  Under such circumstances, what manager would resort a second time to the Proctor; and how would the Proctor live without fees, unless indeed the Government gave him a salary for doing nothing?  The institution would not last a year, except as a job for somebody.

COUNSEL’S OPINION

The proposal is still less plausible when it is considered that at present, without any new legislation at all, any manager who is doubtful about a play can obtain the advice of his solicitor, or Counsel’s opinion, if he thinks it will be of any service to him.  The verdict of the proposed King’s Proctor would be nothing but Counsel’s opinion without the liberty of choice of counsel, possibly cheapened, but sure to be adverse; for an official cannot give practical advice as a friend and a man of the world:  he must stick to the letter of the law and take no chances.  And as far as the law is concerned, journalism, literature, and the drama exist only by custom or sufferance.