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and so far were the institutions of theatres from being the fore-runners of slavery, or the badges of despotism, that they were most encouraged, and flourished best, in free states. He was witty on what had fallen from sir William relative to the Roman medals. He said, he had much rather see such medals now struck, than political medals; for that there could be no disgrace in shewing by the words ludi instituti, that our manners were polished; but there might be some in having medals with the inscription De Britunnis Colonis, which would tend to throw a ridicule on our late glorious campaign in America.

Mr. Dempster enforced the hint thrown out by Mr. Fox, that the sense of the town of Birmingham had not yet been taken. He jocosely remarked, that he thought it no improper familiarity in Mr. Yates to send cards to any member, with his compliments, desiring his support of the Bill. Perhaps, it would have been more familiar, and have given less offence if the card had been from Mr. and Mrs. Yates! It was evident there always had, and would continue to be, theatrical representations at Birmingham; therefore, it was certainly better to legalize them, and put them under the inspection and jurisdiction of the proper officer, than to leave it to the discretion of a private magistrate to check their irregularities. The Lord Chamberlain would regulate a licensed theatre, and upon any just complaint of the inhabitants, suspend the licence.

Sir Henry Gough, living near the town of Birmingham, had frequent opportunities of hearing the most melancholy complaints against the oppression of forcing the poor workmen to take tickets for the players' benefits; and since there had been two rival theatres, the evil had been greatly increased, and that it was high time to put a stop to it. The Bill, so far from applying a remedy, would establish, and in some measure authorise, the hardship. There was no necessity Birmingham should have any theatre; a strolling company might now and then come there, but the magistrates would judge if it was proper for them to perform or not; and having no fixed residence or protection, they could have no pretence for the shameful method of distressing the poor by benefit tickets. He was therefore against the Bill.

Mr. T.Townshend bestowed great encomiums on the talents of Mr. Yates as an actor; acknowledged his having frequently received great pleasure from his represen

tations; and thought it was improper to treat him severely for his application to the House for a Bill to enable him to entertain the people of Birmingham according to law; but yet he must, though with reluctance, give his vote against the second reading of the Bill; for it was clear to him, that there should be no theatres allowed by law in any manufacturing towns. He had heard from good authority, that the theatre licensed at Manchester, in consequence of a similar application to parliament, had done a great deal of mischief already: nor could it be wondered at, if we consider what pieces are sometimes represented, which, not being new, are not subject to the controul of the Lord Chamberlain: the Beggar's Opera, for instance, which had brought more unhappy people to the gallows, than any one thing he could name. As to the country gentlemen, surely this was not such an age of domestic retirement, but what they might find sufficient amusement in visiting their neighbours in the summer, without wanting to frequent a theatre. The affair of the tickets, he observed, was become an intolerable oppression; for it was not always the master manufacturer who compelled his workmen to take them; it was the agents from foreign countries, who forced the masters to take them, or threatened to carry their orders elsewhere if they refused. Considering, then, the circumstances of Birmingham as a great manufacturing and trading town, depending on the industry and frugality of the poorer class of people, he was of opinion it would be highly improper to license any theatre there.

Mr. Burke, after exculpating Mr. Yates from the charge of impudence in his application to the House, declared it to be the right of every subject to petition parliament in any case, where the legislature could be of use to him. It rested with parliament to receive or reject his petition; but certainly he ought not to be treated with severity, so that he should go from the House in a worse situation than he came to it. As to the opprobrious epithets used in old acts of parliament against unlicensed players, he was sorry to say they partook of the savage temper of the times in which they were made. The profession was a liberal one, and, under proper limitations, highly useful; and, therefore, he wished to see those whose abilities gave rational entertainment to the public treated with decent respect. If unlicensed

players were deemed vagabonds, surely The application from Mr. Yates is a very Mr. Yates was justifiable in attempting to proper one, that he may be supported in obtain the sanction of the law for his per- his profession by the laws; and notwitnson and for his entertainments, which the standing all that has been said against havpeople of Birmingham seem to have been ing theatres at Birmingham, I still think fond of for so many years. He thought the people will be better employed at the the personal character of Mr. Yates had playhouse than in ale-houses and gin-shops. nothing to do with the question. He then As to the majority, too much stress is laid corrected sir William Bagot in point of upon them; if 50,000 of the inhabitants of chronology, remarking, that theatres were Birmingham are against having any theainstituted at the time when the Roman re- tre at all, is this a good foundation, in a public was in the most flourishing state; land of freedom, for debarring the other that civil liberty encouraged this rational 10,000 from the enjoyment of a rational entertainment; and it was only on the amusement, for which they have a strong principle that no man should be compelled inclination? Surely it cannot, it ought not. even to pleasure, that he should oppose As to the abuse with respect to benefit the Bill, because it was evident to him tickets, it may be provided against in the that very great majority of the inhabit-progress of the Bill; I am therefore for ants were against it. He mentioned sir the second reading. William's wish, that Birmingham might remain in its village state; and took notice of the politics of the times, which he feared would gratify the hon. gentleman's wishes; for instead of improving villages, and converting them into large towns, the wretched measures we had been pursuing for some time past, it was to be feared would soon reduce our great trading towns to obscure villages. Birmingham might very soon have no theatre, no manufacturers, no magistrates.

Mr. James Luttrell to explain, said, that Mr. Yates's character was a very materiał and necessary object of consideration; for that the Bill applied to take powers out of the respectable hands of the magistrates, who must have the peace and prosperity of the town and manufactures at heart, and that to vest those powers in the hands of a man who shewed contempt for the inhabitants, and was odious to them, would be a crime in the House; therefore, as a member of it, he was free to give his opinion of Mr. Yates's conduct. He maintained, that Mr. Yates's attempt to carry such a Bill, in defiance of all the principal gentlemen, and most of the inhabitants of Birmingham, was impudence, and paid no compliment to the integrity of parliament; and that having received favours for twenty years, upon sufferance, shewed the height of ingratitude towards his benefactors.

Mr. Wilkes went into the Roman history, and maintained from thence that the time when theatres were most encouraged, was the very period when Rome enjoyed her civil liberty in its greatest perfection. Lelius and Scipio, the friends and protectors of the liberties of the Romans, were likewise the patrons of Terence. In the free states of Greece, theatres flou rished earlier than at Rome. It was a ra- Mr. Rous spoke against the Bill, and tional entertainment, and the hon. gentle- replied to what Mr. Wilkes had said reman who mentioned the Beggar's Opera, specting a magistrate's suspending an act should have added, that in the same thea- of parliament. He contended, that the tre the Conscious Lovers and Cato are hon. gentleman was mistaken in imputing performed: and I appeal, said Mr. Wilkes, a neglect of duty to the neighbouring mato the gentlemen who have seen the registrates, because they permitted unlipresentation of Macbeth, if they do not think it must have a greater effect to prevent the horrid crime of murder, than all the sermons that have been preached since the beginning of the world. With respect to the magistrates of Birmingham, I must observe, Sir, that they have no power but what they derive from the laws; and in permitting unlicensed players to perform for so many years, they were guilty of a breach of their duty: they suspended the laws; an offence for which one of the Stuarts was obliged to leave this country. §

censed theatrical representations, contrary to law. As a magistrate, the hon. gentleman ought to have known that it is no part of the duty of a magistrate to act in the first instance, but officially, on a complaint made, or information given.

Mr. Harris remarked, that almost every gentleman who had taken a part in the debate, had complained of enormities having been practised for upwards of twenty years in Birmingham, and yet that several gentlemen wished to throw out a Bill calculated to correct and restrain similar

enormities in future. He mentioned several of the ancient writers of an elder day than Terence, and after speaking highly in praise of a well-regulated theatre, ended with urging the propriety of passing the Bill into a law.

The Bill was read a second time. On the motion, that it be committed, the House divided:

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was not partial to any particular mode; but hoped, after due deliberation, the House would adopt that which should reconcile the reasonable, the commendable curiosity of decent persons who wished to be present, with the commodiousness of the members themselves. Some rule might probably be approved of similar to the following: "Any member of the House attending his duty in parliament, to be permitted, during the remainder of 18 this session, to introduce, before four o'clock on each day of public business, one person into the gallery below the bars, on delivering at the Speaker's table, the name in writing of the person so introduced, and thereunto subjoining his own name as responsible for such introduction." The private business of the day was usually ended about four o'clock; supposing 300 members to be in the House by that hour, which was a greater number than he had ever seen during this session, and 200 of those meet with so many friends, whose names they should write down for admittance into the gallery, there would still remain seats enough within the bars for upwards of 100 members more, who might arrive in the course of the evening; that is, in case of an adulatory address to the crown, or an augmentation to the civil list revenue; for those were the only divisions he had seen in parliament when the company was so numerous; and indeed some scores of the majority members thought it sufficient if they repaired towards the close of the debate from the outposts, and upon a forced march to the standard of the minister. Hence it was that when the Ayes and Noes were finally cast up at eight or nine o'clock at night, there was sometimes a respectable attendance of near four-fifths of the whole body. Mr. Luttrell said he had been at the pains of measuring the seats, and if they would assign to strangers the entire gallery below the bar, there would yet be found near 800 feet of cushion for the easy accommodation of the members: he would not wish to limit every senator to the measure complained of the evening before, as prescribed by Mr. and Mrs. Yates for the Birmingham theatre, which was only nine inches each person; he would double that allowance, or even give twenty inches (which was about the size of the Speaker's seat) to each member: a pampered prebend in a metropolitan stall asked no more, and it was within half a foot of the state chair in

Debate on Mr. Temple Luttrell's Motion for the Admission of Strangers into the Gallery of the House.] April 30. Mr. Temple Luttrell said, he thought it for the credit of all parties, that strangers should be admitted under proper restrictions; candour, policy, gratitude, and duty to the people, whose representatives they were, called upon them to open their doors; so far as the confined limits of the House would admit of. There was, he insisted upon it, a constitutional right in their constituents to satisfy themselves how far their delegates did, or did not, discharge the trust reposed in them with firmness and fidelity, and to form some judgment whether their principles and legislative suffrages might merit a renewal of that trust on a future occasion. The persons solicitous to be present during the debates of parliament, are, generally speaking, such as are more immediately interested in the question under debate; and he appealed to some of the ablest, and most diligent members of the House, whether in former times they had not often been put in possession of matters of fact happily decisive of the business in issue, by stepping for a minute into the gallery. To fabricate and enact laws, especially of a penal nature, as most of those were which had lately passed the House of Commons, with a clandestine privacy, like lettres de cachet from the court of Paris, and thus take by surprize a subject whose liberty, and perhaps whose life, is affected thereby, must, it stands to reason, in a free country like ours, be utterly repugnant to the vital principles of its constitution; be therefore should move for a committee of the whole House, to consider the seveFal orders relative to the exclusion of strangers from the galleries. He said he

which his holiness of Rome is carried, by way of anniversary sacrament, to the summit of St. Peter's church, in all the plenitude of his divine vicegerency, to extinguish heresy under the type of a lighted candle. When sir John Cust was Speaker, and during the great length of time that Mr. Onslow presided, strangers were admitted even into the body of the House, while lord Chatham has here delivered his sentiments on public affairs, with god-like persuasion and eloquence. Strangers have been suffered to advance so far as beneath the rose which is in the centre of your roof; that rose which is now become, like the bloody ones of York or Lancaster, a symbol of state secrecy. To make its figurative import more perfect, I would have it painted white; the white rose of the 10th of June should perpetuate the honour and virtue of our present ministers -with the arbitrary principles of their cabinet junto and cabinet parliament. Mr. Luttrell added much more on the ground of the original rights of the people in this free country, to be present at the national debates carried on in their behalf by their delegates in parliament; and wished only to have the advocates for the continuance of this calamitous civil war, and those who took the contrary side of the question, and reprobated the promoters of it, impartially listened to by their constituents without doors. No doubt the minister would not object to opening the doors on the day of the budget. For his part, next to the exclusion of strangers altogether, he thought nothing so unadvisable in this business as to admit strangers partially to hear mutilated debates, or artful, dangerous, and wicked misrepresentations. He then moved, That the orders made upon the first of November last, "That the Serjeant at Arms attending this House do, from time to time, take into his custody any stranger or strangers that he shall see, or be informed of to be, in the House or gallery, while the House, or any committee of the whole House, is sitting; and that no person so taken into custody be discharged out of custody, without the special order of the House." Also, "That no member of this House do presume to bring any stranger or strangers into the House or gallery" might be read. And the same being read accordingly; he next moved, "That the said Orders be taken into consideration in a committee of the whole House."

Mr. Wilkes seconded the motion.

Mr. T. Townshend, not having observed Mr. Wilkes, seconded the proposal. As he had been a member of the House during three parliaments, he was master of the precedents of former times, and the custom of parliament, relative to the admission of strangers. He said, that such indulgence was reasonable, and even necessary, on constitutional principles; and he never had been witness, till the present Speaker was in the chair, of their general orders thereupon being vigorously put in force. He wished them to follow the example of the other House, which had opened their door to strangers; but yet, he added, that he had a kind of plebeian rusticity about him, which could ill brook the ungracious way of doing it with regard to the Commons. He was severe upon administration; he said he could impute their repugnance at going into a committee to nothing but a glaring sense of their iniquity, and a consciousness that their deeds would ill bear the light.

Mr. Wilkes insisted upon what he called the constitutional propriety of going into a committee upon these rigid and unjustifiable orders on the journals against the very creators of their authority; and drew a picture of what he called the dark and bloody politics of the present junto of ministers.

Lord North took a view of all that had been advanced by the three gentlemen. He assured the hon. mover, that he by no means wished to open the doors on the day of the budget, nor at any other time. The day of the budget was to him a day of anxiety and labour, and not of exultation: "sufficient for the day would be the evil thereof." He flattered himself, at all events, he should have hearers enough on that day, without admitting strangers into the gallery: but he wished the hon. member would point out in what instance he had deceived parliament, and misrepresented the state of this country, or of foreign powers, before he advanced so harsh an insinuation. The hon. member had measured the size of the gentlemen belonging to the House, but he had not calculated so exactly the size of constituents who were to be admitted into the gallery: he conceived they could only be the constituents of the hon. gentleman who spoke last (Mr. Wilkes) and the proposal was to restrain the indulgence to about 200 only, and all other constituents were, it seems, still to be kept out. He believed the House would be of his opinion,

not to open the doors on any occasion, not even for the budget; though it was on very fair public ground that they had heretofore been admitted on that day.

Mr. Luttrell should be sorry if the House held him capable of advancing charges of a criminal nature, such as the noble lord had erroneously taken to him. self, without stating the facts on which such charges were framed; much less would he leave the House with an impression, that those charges might have been intended for that noble lord, for whom he had the respect and deference due to his exalted station and pre-eminent talents: but other ministers had so misrepresented the condition of our fleets and armies, and the resources of this country, as well as the policy and strength of their natural enemies, and of our revolted fellow-subjects (now fellow-subjects no longer!) that, he conceived, he was fully authorised in candour, to apprehend, that no very fair and authentic story would, upon the whole, compose the approaching annual budget. He observed, that although only 200 strangers might conveniently be admitted at the time, yet the indulgence would not be always confined to the same individuals; on the contrary many thousands might in the course of a session hear some part of the debates: he should have thought that the noble lord, who was present the preceding evening when a question was agitated locally affecting the county of Warwick, must have observed, that the gallery was nearly filled, not with Middlesex voters, whom the noble lord seemed so averse to, but with persons from that part of England immediately interested, who had the satisfaction to see both their knights of the shire zealously supporting the wishes of all the respectable inhabitants in the most populous and flourishing town of the county they represent, against a few presumptuous dramatic speculatists.

Mr. Fox expressed his hearty approbation of the motion, and was glad the hon. gentleman who introduced it had not urged an absolute discharge of the uniform and necessary orders of the House, established for good government and decorum. He wished that the House would, as heretofore, decline to enforce those orders with such reprehensible rigour; and he was sure, that if a committee were to take it under candid consideration, some method might be devised fully to answer the end proposed. He took a view [VOL. XIX. ]

He dwelt on

of lord North's arguments. the expediency of letting in young men of parts and education, that they might cultivate and improve their understanding, and become early habituated to the conduct of state affairs, and to political argumentation.

Mr. Rigby said, the hon. gentleman who spoke last was himself the strongest proof that a gallery lesson in politics was not necessary to form a perfect statesman and orator; for, if here collected rightly, he was elected into parliament under the age of 21, and before he returned home from his travels; and certain it was, he could not have been much schooled in that gallery. He added, that his fundamental maxim in politics was to be consistent throughout, and act according to the best of his judgment. He thought it improper to let in strangers; they had no business in the House at all; and he had observed, that when they are thus indulged, scarce a day passes without some of the members being put to much inconvenience, and frequently they have been pushed about and insulted. He always had voted against admitting strangers, and would continue so to do. Even when it was a custom to let in strangers under certain restrictions, he had never brought in any body, and never would, even should the like indulgence again take place." Some gentlemen were for letting in the eldest sons of members; he had no eldest son; many other gentlemen, as well as himself, were so unhappy as to have no eldest son; were they therefore with propriety to be deprived of the benefit of such indulgence, if they chose to have their share of it? Besides, the eldest son was not heir by birth to a seat in that House; he might, possibly, never have a seat there, except indeed where there were hereditary burgage tenures in the case. What good could result from strangers being in the gallery? Only to print speeches in newspapers of all sorts. He agreed that the Commons had little reason to be pleased with the stile and terms of their admission into the House of Peers: a line was drawn between commoners who are allied to the peerage, and all others of inferior dignity. Lords' brothers and lords' cousins might be accommodated behind the throne, but the rest of that House must be content to stand below the bar, with an intolerable crowd of other persons, and with a risk of having their pockets picked. He finished by declaring, that although he disapproved [P]

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