THE LETTER TO M. D'ALEMBERT ON THE THEATRE
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he is ,working for his own pleasures. What man will dare to oppose this torrent if it is not perhaps some rigid old pastor who will not be listened to and whose sense and gravity will pass for pedantry with a thoughtless youth? Finally, if they join a bit of art and intrigue to their success, I do not give the state thirty years before they are its arbiters.· The candidates for office will be seen intriguing for their favor in order to obtain suffrages; the elections will take place in the actresses' dressing rooms, and the leaders of a free people will be the creatures of a band of histrions. The pen falls from my hand at the thought. Let the risk be dismissed as much as one pleases. Let me be accused of exaggerating the danger I foresee; I have only one word more to say. Whatever may happen, these people must reform their morals [manners] during their stay with us, or they must corrupt ours. When this alternative has ceased to alarm us, the actors can come; they can do us no more harm.
XI THESE, Sir, are the considerations which I had to propose to the public and to you on the question which you were pleased to debate in an article to which it was, in my opinion, entirely alien. If my reasons, less strong than they seem to me, should not have sufficient weight to counterbalance yours, you will at least grant that, in a state as small as the republic of Geneva, all innovations are dangerous and that they ought never to be made without urgent and grave motives. Let the pressing necessity of this one then be shown. Where are the disorders which force us to fall back on so suspect an expedient? Is everything lost without this? Is our city so big, have vice and idleness already made such progress that it can henceforth no longer subsist without the theatre? You tell • It must always be remembered that, in order for the drama to support itself at Geneva, this taste must become a rage; if it were only moderate, the drama would have to fail. Reason insists then that, in examining the effects of the theatre, they be measured in relation to a cause capable of supporting it.
