Mr. Talbot.—"Have I not admitted it, Sir?"
Mr. Falkland.—"Yes, and proved it, at the extreme hazard of endangering your own proposition, that the stage is favourable to the interests of private virtue."
Mr. Talbot.—"But, Sir, are there not many who wear the gown, and who make much higher pretensions to virtue than players do, who, after they have given their public lectures on morality, will retire and sin in secret. Now, permit me to ask, if the sanctimonious hypocrite is not a more odious character than the profligate player?"
Mr. Falkland.—"I regret, Sir, that you should overstep the bounds of the question under discussion, to attack the clerical profession; but lest you should imagine that you are occupying a position from which no fair argument can displace you, I will for once attempt to follow you. I admit, then, for the sake of the argument, that there are some who make higher pretensions to private virtue than the actors and actresses of our theatres, who, after delivering their public lectures on morality, retire and sin in secret; but will the vices of one class of men justify the vices of another? If some of the clergy are corrupt, will the fact of their corruption diminish the magnitude of the players' vices? Why you have introduced this charge against the clergy into the discussion I cannot say, as it has nothing to do with the question at issue, which is the necessary connection between a player's profligacy of manners and the duties of his profession. That is, that the very performance of his duties, when he is engaged in promoting the morality of the public, has a tendency to produce a corruption of his own morals. But you can bring no such charge against the moral tendency of the clerical duties. A clergyman is not compelled, in the discharge of his functions, to give utterance to any expressions, or to perform any actions, which have even a remote tendency to vitiate his taste or corrupt his morals; so that if he should turn out a bad man, you must look for the cause of it, not, as in the case of the stage-player, in any impure and contaminating influence of his profession, but in the depravity of his nature. If he become immoral, he acts an inconsistent part, offers an insult to the sentiments of the virtuous part of mankind, and loses his place in society—as a man who is a disgrace to his profession, whose example is in direct opposition to the acknowledged tendency of his ministerial functions. But as a pure moral character is not necessary to qualify a man to appear on the stage, no one feels at liberty to charge a theatrical performer with inconsistency, even if he should become notorious for swearing, gaming, drunkenness, or debauchery. He may revel in these vices, and yet appear before an audience with as much confidence of affording them gratification by his performances as he would feel if he were a man of the purest moral excellence. It is true, that if publicly convicted of some flagrant offence, and held up, through the medium of the press, as the base wretch who violates the sanctity of friendship, the admirers of the drama will express a virtuous indignation, and wish him to perform a sort of quarantine before he again makes his appearance before them; yet they will never regard it as a lasting disqualification for his professional duties."
Mr. Talbot.—"Well, Sir, after all the attacks which you have made on the character of theatrical performers, and the defence which you have set up in favour of the clergy, I maintain that the sanctimonious hypocrite who retires from the pulpit, where he has delivered his grave moral lectures, to sin in secret, is a more pernicious character than the most profligate player that ever disgraced his profession. For do not the vices of the clergy shake our confidence in the truth of religion, which you know is never done by the vices of the stage; and is not their example, in consequence of their more powerful influence over the public mind, more destructive to the morals of society?"
Mr. Falkland.—"If, Sir, your belief in the Divine origin of Christianity is ever shaken by the vices of its professors, you give a decisive proof that it does not rest on the legitimate evidence which is offered in confirmation of it. Christianity claims a Divine origin, and she adduces irrefragable arguments in confirmation of it; but the consistent conduct of all her professors is not one of them. Judas was a traitor, but his treachery did not weaken the force of evidence which the miracles of Jesus Christ supplied in favour of his Divine mission; and though it is very common for us to look for an exact correspondence between the life of a Christian and the purity of his professed faith, yet if all who profess to believe in the Christian religion should become as licentious in their manners as the most notorious libertines, their profligacy would not weaken the evidences on which Christianity founds her claims to our belief. They would be convicted of the crimes of which they are guilty; but by what process of fair argumentation could you bring the verdict recorded against them to disprove the divinity of a system of religion which is supported by the evidence of prophecy, of miracle, of testimony, its own internal purity, and its more than magic power in the renovation and transformation of the most impure and debased of men?"
Mr. Talbot.—"Well, perhaps I made a slight mistake by saying that the vices of the clergy tend to shake our confidence in the divinity of our faith. It would have been more correct to say, they have a tendency to make us mistrustful of the integrity of the clerical character. But will you not admit that they have a most pernicious influence over the popular mind—more especially on young men who are just entering into active life?"
Mr. Falkland.—"Yes, Sir, I readily concede that the vices of the clergy have a more pernicious effect on the morals of society than the vices of players, because the clerical character is held in higher estimation, and because the clergy have free access to families who would feel themselves degraded if a player was to be introduced into their company. The clergy who support the dignity of their profession, as the great majority of them do, are esteemed and respected—their friendship is highly valued and assiduously cultivated; but players are doomed to neglect when off the boards—they are shunned in the ordinary intercourse of social life, and kept in a state of exclusion, which is something like an instinctive evidence, pervading all classes, with a few exceptions, that they must be kept aloof from the sacred precincts of the family circle. And it is to this sensitive abhorrence, which the virtuous part of society feels, against any familiar intercourse with players, that we are to attribute the comparatively trifling injury which the profligacy of their private character does to the morals of the public; but if ever this safeguard should be broken down—if ever the line of demarcation which estranges us from them should be removed, and they should have free access to our homes—allowed to associate with our sons and daughters, they would introduce amongst us a degree of moral corruption which no authority could check or influence subdue."
Mr. Talbot.—"But, Sir, I have known some players introduced into the highest intellectual circles of London and Edinburgh. Why, it is a well-known fact, that the Kembles and Siddons, Bannister, Young, and many others, were often guests at the mansions of some of the most virtuous and accomplished of our nobility."