elected out and preserved by the admiration of a
hundred generations of men. The prosecution was in the position all
the time of one who declared that a man who praised a nude picture
must necessarily be immoral. Such a contention would be inconceivable
in any other civilised country. Even the Judge was on much the same
intellectual level. It would not be fair, he admitted, to condemn a
poet or dramatic writer by his works and he went on:

"It is unfortunately true that while some of our greatest writers have
passed long years in writing nothing but the most wholesome
literature--literature of the highest genius, and which anybody can
read, such as the literature of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens;
it is also true that there were other great writers, more especially
in the eighteenth century, perfectly noble-minded men themselves, who
somehow or other have permitted themselves to pen volumes which it is
painful for persons of ordinary modesty and decency to read."

It would have been more honest and more liberal to have brushed away
the nonsensical indictment in a sentence. Would the Treasury have put
Shakespeare on trial for "Hamlet" or "Lear," or would they have
condemned the writer of "The Song of Solomon" for immorality, or sent
St. Paul to prison for his "Epistle to the Corinthians"?

Middle-class prejudice and hypocritic canting twaddle from Judge and
advocate dragged their weary length along for days and days. On
Wednesday Sir Edward Clarke made his speech for the defence. He
pointed out the unfairness of the charges of conspiracy which had
tardily been withdrawn. He went on to say that the most remarkable
characteristic of the case was the fact that it had been the occasion
for conduct on the part of certain sections of the press which was
disgraceful, and which imperilled the administration of justice, and
was in the highest degree injurious to the client for whom he was
pleading. Nothing, he concluded, could be more unfair than the way
Mr. Wilde had been criticised in the press for weeks and weeks. But
no judge interfered on his behalf.

Sir Edward Clarke evidently thought that to prove unfairness would not
even influence the minds of the London jury. He was content to
repudiate the attempt to judge Mr. Wilde by his books or by an article
which he had condemned, or by poems which he had not written. He laid
stress on the fact that Mr. Wilde had himself brought the charge
against Lord Queensberry which