WANTED:  A NEW MAGNA CHARTA

This leads us to a very vital question.  Is it not possible to amend the law so as to make it possible for a lawyer to advise his client that he may publish the works of Blake, Zola, and Swinburne, or produce the plays of Ibsen and Mr. Granville Barker, or print an ordinary criticism in his newspaper, without the possibility of finding himself in prison, or mulcted in damages and costs in consequence?  No doubt it is; but only by a declaration of constitutional right to blaspheme, rebel, and deal with tabooed subjects.  Such a declaration is not just now within the scope of practical politics, although we are compelled to act to a great extent as if it was actually part of the constitution.  All that can be done is to take my advice and limit the necessary public control of the theatres in such a manner as to prevent its being abused as a censorship.  We have ready to our hand the machinery of licensing as applied to public-houses.  A licensed victualler can now be assured confidently by his lawyer that a magistrate cannot refuse to renew his licence on the ground that he (the magistrate) is a teetotaller and has seen too much of the evil of drink to sanction its sale.  The magistrate must give a judicial reason for his refusal, meaning really a constitutional reason; and his teetotalism is not such a reason.  In the same way you can protect a theatrical manager by ruling out certain reasons as unconstitutional, as suggested in my statement.  Combine this with the abolition of the common informer’s power to initiate proceedings, and you will have gone as far as seems possible at present.  You will have local control of the theatres for police purposes and sanitary purposes without censorship; and I do not see what more is possible until we get a formal Magna Charta declaring all the Categories of libel and the blasphemy laws contrary to public liberty, and repealing and defining accordingly.

PROPOSED:  A NEW STAR CHAMBER

Yet we cannot mention Magna Charta without recalling how useless such documents are to a nation which has no more political comprehension nor political virtue than King John.  When Henry VII. calmly proceeded to tear up Magna Charta by establishing the Star Chamber (a criminal court consisting of a committee of the Privy Council without a jury) nobody objected until, about a century and a half later, the Star Chamber began cutting off the ears of eminent XVII. century Nonconformists and standing them in the pillory; and then the Nonconformists, and nobody else, abolished the Star Chamber.  And if anyone doubts that we are quite ready to establish the Star Chamber again, let him read the Report of the Joint Select Committee, on which I now venture to offer a few criticisms.