G.K.C. Yes, that is so. I represent the audience, in fact. I am neither a dramatist nor a dramatic critic. I do not quite know why I am here, but if anybody wants to know my views on the subject they are these: I am for the censorship, but I am against the present Censor. I am very strongly for the censorship, and I am very strongly against the present Censor. The whole question I think turns on the old democratic objection to despotism. I am an old-fashioned person and I retain the old democratic objection to despotism. I would trust 12 ordinary men, but I cannot trust one ordinary man.
6142. You prefer the jury to the judge?—Yes, exactly; that is the very point. It seems to me that if you have one ordinary man judging, it is not his ordinariness that appears, but it is his extraordinariness that appears. Take anybody you like—George III for instance. I suppose that George III was a pretty ordinary man in one sense. People called him Farmer George. He was very like a large number of other people, but when he was alone in his position things appeared in him that were not ordinary—that he was a German, and that he was mad, and various other facts. Therefore, my primary principle——
6143. He gloried in the name of Briton?—I know he did. That is what showed him to be so thoroughly German.
Lord Newton. He spelt it wrongly.
Witness. Therefore, speaking broadly, I would not take George III's opinion, but I would take the opinion of 12 George III's on any question.
The taking of the "evidence" took several hours, but it never yielded anything more than this: The local jury is a better judge of what is right and proper than a single Censor. Juries may differ in their judgments; but why not? Is it not desirable that Hampstead and Highgate should each have an opportunity of finding out independently what they like? May they not compete in taste one against the other?
This introduction of the question of dramatic censorship invites a slight digression. Chesterton has a decided regard for a dramatic censorship. A book need not be censored, because it need not be finished by its reader, but it may be difficult to get out of a theatre in the course of a performance. And there are performances of plays, written by "irresponsible modern philosophers," which, to Chesterton, seem to deserve suppression. A suggestive French farce may be a dirty joke, but it is at least a joke; but a play which raises the question Is marriage a failure? and answers it in the affirmative, is a pernicious philosophy. The answer to this last contention is that, in point of strict fact, modern philosophers do not regard happy marriages as failures, and opinion is divided on the others, which are generally the subjects of their plays. But there is no doubt that a jury is better qualified than a single Censor. A French jury decided that Madame Bovary was not immoral. An English jury decided that a certain book by Zola was immoral and sent the publisher to prison. Another English jury, for all practical purposes, decided that Dorian Gray was not immoral, and so on. The verdicts may be accepted. Twelve men, picked from an alphabetical list, may not be judges of art, but they will not debase morality.
Chesterton's personal contribution to the political thought of his day lies in his criticism of the humaneness of legislative proposals. A thing that is human is commonly a very different matter from a thing that is merely humanitarian. G.K.C. is hotly human and almost bitterly anti-humanitarian.
The difference between the two is illustrated by the institution of the gallows, which is human, but not humanitarian. In its essentials it consists of a rope and a branch, which is precisely the apparatus that an angry man might employ in order to rid himself of his captured enemy. Herbert Spencer, seeking in his old age for means whereby to increase the happiness of mankind, invented a humanitarian apparatus for the infliction of capital punishment. It consisted of a glorified roundabout, on which the victim was laid for his last journey. As it revolved, the blood-pressure on his head gradually increased (or decreased, I forget which) until he fell asleep and died painlessly. This is humanitarianism. The process is safe and sure (so long as the machine did not stop suddenly), highly efficient, bloodless and painless. But just because it is so humanitarian it offends one a great deal more than the old-fashioned gallows. The only circumstance which can justify violence is anger. The only circumstance which can justify the taking of human life is anger. And anger may be expressed by a rope or a knife-edge, but not by a roundabout or any other morbid invention of a cold-blooded philosopher such as the electric chair, or the lethal chamber. In the same way, if flogging is to continue as a punishment, it must be inflicted by a man and not by a machine.
Now this distinction (made without prejudice as to Chesterton's views on capital or corporal punishment) holds good through his whole criticism of modern legislation. He believes that it is better that a man and his family should starve in their own slum, than that they should be moulded, by a cumbersome apparatus of laws and officials and inspectors, into a tame, mildly prosperous and mildly healthy group of individuals, whose opinions, occupations and homes should be provided for them. On these lines he attacks whatever in his opinion will tend to put men into a position where their souls will be less their own. He believes that the man who has been costered by the Government into a mediocre state of life will be less of a man than one who has been left unbothered by officials, and has had to shift for himself.