COMPULSORY VIRTUE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 11111, 8 May 1911, Page 6

COMPULSORY VIRTUE.

A PURITAN'S PROTEST. MILTON ON A MODERN THEME. (By J.Q.X.) It was ordained by tho British Parliament on June 14, Hi 13, "That no book, pamphlet, or paper shall bo henceforth printed unless the same bo first approved and licensed by such, or at least one of such, as iihall bo thereto appointed." It is now—2Gß years later —proposed by certain would-be reformers that the Parliament of New Zealand should legislate that no moving picture, or kinematograph film, shall be displayed unless the same be first approved and licen-ed by an officer thereto appointed.

The Ordinance, of 1G43 was disobeyed in the very next year by the publication, without license, of certain tracts on Divorce. The Stationers' Company thereupon complained to Parliament of this infringement of the law, but the only material consequence of their action was the appearance of another unlicensed pamphlet by the same author. That pamphlet is a classic. Tho Ordinance to Regulate Printing, the petition of the Stationers' Company and all the rest of tho fuss that was made at the time, are only saved from oblivion by their historical connection with thu little book entitled "Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing."

It is not to be expected that the demand for a censorship of picture films will evoke a new "Areopagitica," but it is vexatious, to me at least, that tho old one should be, hero and now, so completely forgotten. Much of what Milton wrote against the censorship of books is equally true of the censorship of anything else. It is as true in 1911 as it was in 1611; and-1 have never heard-it suggested that John Milton was careless of ■the public morals. Further, it ought to bo realised that an attack upon, any particular freedom is an attack on all freedom. If wo fetter , tho kinematograph show, we take a step towards gagging tho press and the pulpit. If we prevent tho •people-from ehoosmg their own pleasures, we shall undervalue trial by jury and Magua Charta. If we are not to look at a picture without the permission of an officer, we may some day be required to apply to a Cabinet Minister for a license to think. We aro already so hemmed .about by political paternalism that any voice for ireedom, like that which still echoes through the glorious pages of tho .Areopagitica," is at once singular and topical. ■

1 shall therefore not trouble to attach a modern application to every sentence of Milton's tnat I intend to quote. Some of them are true (with the change of a word or two) of the picture theatro as wo know it, and of the picture theatre as it will bo when it has reached that higher artistic and social development which will entitle it to rank witli the press, tho stage, the pulpit, the library, nnd the art gallery. Of even wider application is Milton's insistence that "as the state of man now is" the survey of vice is necessary to tho constituting of virtue. "What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is tho true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtues unexorclscd and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of tho race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."

A littlo later ho uses an argument which, coming (as it often does) from less venerated lips, has been scouted as impious. He points out that tho Biblo itself "oft-times relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense, of wicked men not unelcgantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus."

Passing on (o speak of the futility of book-licensing (resembling "the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up tho cows by shutting his park gate." Milton admits that children and childish men may well :be exhorted to forbear wnat to wiser minds are useful drugs for the compoundingof moral and intellectual medicines; "but hindered forcibly they cannot be, by all that licensing that sainted inquisition could.ever yet contrive." l*or if we have this one kind of strictness, "we must regulate all recreations aud pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must bo heard, no song bo sot or sung, but what is grave and doric. There must bo licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by the ; r allowance shall be thought honest. . . . It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, tho violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must bo licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and the balconies, must be thought on; these are shrewd books with dangerous frontispieces set to sale: who shall prohibit them, shall twenty licensers? . . . Our garments also should be referred to tho licensing of some more sober workmasters, to see them cut into a less wanton, garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and female together? . . . Who shall forbid and separate all idle resort, all evil company? These things will be, and must be; but how they shall be least hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a state."

To Milton the solution of that problem lay in "virtuous education, religious and civil nurture," which hold a , commonwealth together- and sustain its laws. If every action were either forbidden or compelled (lie asks), what were virtue but a name, what praise would be due to well-doing, what thanks to sobriety, justice, or continence?

Of the practical difficulties of censorship, as indicated in the "Areopagitica," I will mention but one. It is realised by the most prominent of our local agitators for the licensing of pictures that the holder of tho office must be a person of special gifts and graces—"a wholesome, happy man," I think, is the phrase. Similarly,- Milton found it undeniable that the "judge to sit upon the birth or death of books" must be "a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious." He also saw that the duties were unpleasant and that the then licensers would be glad to be well rid of their employment. He thence inferred that no man of worth was likely to succeed them, and that future licensers would be "either ignorant, imperious and remiss, or basely pecuniarv."

The "last and finest portion of the "Arcopagitica" is that which treats of the harm done by censorship. Much of it is'an expansion of this weighty aphorism:. "If it coniq to prohibiting, there is not aught more lUtely to bo prohibited than truth itself." Incidentally, Milton hotly resents the licensing ordinance as an insult to the common people. Moreover, "it reflects to the disrepute of our ministers also, of whose labours we should hope- better, and of their proficiency which their flock reaps by them, than that after all this light of the gospel which is, and is to be, and all this continual preaching, they should be still frequented with such an unprincipled, unedified, and laic rabble, as that the whiff of every new pamphlet should stagger them out of their catechism and Christian walking."

Milton hold that books which were, found after publication to the mischievous or libellous .sliould- be burned. Here, I think, his argument is weak. Onco a book is in circulation, it is not of much use to destroy such copies as can bo collected. To prosecute tho publisher is the only effective measure. Oliver Cromwell's rulo fits tho case: "It will bo found an unwiso and unjust government to deprive a man of his natural liberty on the pretence that he may abuse it. When ho doth abuse it, judge him." That appears to bo pretty much what Councillor Fuller meant when ho told tho Dominion interviewer that "the police have ample power to prosecute, if anyone were to show the wrong sort of stuff."-