taste of many others; and as the playhouse
might be considered as the general mart of pleasure, it was only from
the variety of entertainment the different desires of the public could
be supplied. He urged that the receipts of the house were sufficient
evidence that without the occasional performance of pantomimes he
could not afford to produce plays of a higher class. With regard to
the advance in prices, he hoped he should be thought justified in that
measure, when the great increase in his expenses was considered.
Further, he conceived he should be no longer the subject of the
displeasure of the public, since he had complied with the demand that
the advanced prices should be returned to those who quitted the
theatre after the first piece, without waiting to see the pantomime.
He denied that he had ever had any intention to insult the audience.
The arrest of the gentleman in the upper boxes was not in consequence
of his orders, nor was he in anyway acquainted with the fact until
after the discharge of the prisoner. There had been a quarrel in the
theatre and much confusion consequent upon some persons flinging the
candles and sconces on the stage. He denied that he had employed
"bruisers" to coerce the audience. The peace-officers, carpenters, and
scenemen (which last, on account of the pantomime, were very
numerous), and other servants of the theatre, had not appeared until
the tumult was at its height. The benches were being torn up, and
there were threats of storming the stage and demolishing the scenes.
If any "bruisers" were in the pit, the manager presumed that they must
have entered the house with the multitude who came in after the
doorkeepers had been driven from their posts. Finally, he appealed to
the public to pronounce whether, after the concession he had made, and
the injury he had sustained, to the extent of several hundred pounds,
they would persist in a course which would only deprive them of their
diversions, the players of subsistence, and compel him to resign his
property.

This appeal had its effect: the disturbance ceased: although there was
some discontent that an arrangement so profitable to the manager had
been agreed to. It was found that in practice, when people were once
comfortably seated, "very few ever went out to demand their advanced
money; and those few very soon grew tired of doing so; until at last
it settled in the quiet payment of the advanced prices." Mr.
Fleetwood, however, did