Compare Paragraphs
This page compares two reports at the paragraph level. The column on the left shows the first report in its entirety, and the column in the middle identifies paragraphs from the second report with significant matching content. The column on the right highlights any differences between the two matching paragraphs: pink shows differences in the first report and purple in the second report. The Match percentage underneath each comparison row in this column shows the percentage of similarity between the two paragraphs.
Original paragraph in
North Otago Times - Saturday, July 20, 1895
North Otago Times - Saturday, July 20, 1895
Most similar paragraph from
Inangahua Times - Monday, July 29, 1895
Inangahua Times - Monday, July 29, 1895
Difference
In a brief comment on the close of the trial of Oscar Wilde, the Daily Chronicle said: Sad, indeed, has been the degradation of the
feeling for art, for beauty, for refinement, the picture of senseless idleness which a man of great talent, but of perverted, hardly one would say of
sane, character has paraded before us. The trial forms, indeed, a fresh chapter in Dr Nordau's indictment of 'degeneration," and appalling picture of the
state of mind and heart in which all intellectual and moral perspective becomes blurred and distorted. Nothing, however, arises in life without a cause,
and we have to consider whether there is not in our educational system some black spot that produces these defacements. If some of our schoolmasters had
been a little more courageous, and a great deal more conscientious, we might have escaped the sickly contamination of these and many preceding scandals.
One of the failings of middle class and upper class English life has been the unnatural divorce of parents for their children. The case is otherwise in
France, where the influence of mothers on their sons is much stronger and more continuous than with us. We are far from agreeing with all the claims of
the New Woman, but we are strongly of opinion that in the strengthening of the mother's influence over her child lies a cure for many of the evils of
"civilised" life. The herding of boys in great schools, their to early separation from their homes, and from association with their mother and sisters and
the fact that after a certain age parents become almost total strangers to their children—all these things, coupled with the tasteless luxury that rich
parents hold out as a poisonous lure to idle young men and women, afford a terrible wide margin for the gradual perversion of heart and intellect. It is
clear that if we are to tread safely the slippery path of civilisation, if we are not to fall back into decadent paganism, we must harden and simplify our
lives. Plain living and high thinking is not only the poet's watchword; it is the watchword of the democrat, the good citizen, and the man of sense.
In an earlier section of the article the editor wrote: "His sentence, enforced as it will be by the severest rigors known to our
abhorrent penal system, it is virtually a sentence of death or of madness, a fate to which we confess we hesitate to condemn any human creatures
whatever."
A correspondent next day asked what this meant, and he was enlightened as follows: "Two years' labor is the severest sentence, while it
lasts, known to the English criminal law. It is a form of punishment which is never inflicted on convicts sentenced to penal servitude, inasmuch as it is
calculated to produce madness amongst them. Nine months' separate confinement is as much as a convict gets and is considered as much as his mind can
stand. The Prisons Committee report that even nine months' separation often injuriously affects the nervous system, and recommend a reduction of the time.
A prisoner under two years' hard labor may be kept during the whole time in the solitude of his cell, with the exception of one hour a day. During a
portion of his detention he is allowed no ordinary reading books, has a wooden plank as a bed, and has to engage in occupation which the late chairman of
the Prison Board declares to be 'irritating, depressing, and debasing to the mental faculties, and decidedly brutalising in its effects.' So severe is
this form of sentence considered to be that many judges will not inflict it at all, and last year in a total of 160,000 short sentences only thirty-four
persons were committed for two years by the ordinary criminal courts."
In a brief comment on the close of the trial of Oscar Wilde, the Daily Chronicle said:—"His sentence, enforced as it will be by the
severest rigors known to our abhorrent penal system, is virtually a sentence of death or madness, a fate to which we confess we hesitate to condemn any
human creature whatever." A correspondent next day asked what this meant, and he was enlightened as follows:—Two years' hard labor is the severest
sentence, while it lasts, known to the English criminal law. It is a form of punishment never inflicted on criminals sentenced to penal servitude,
inasmuch as it is calculated to produce madness amongst them. Nine months' separate confinement is as much as a convict gets, and is considered as much as
his mind can stand. The Prisons Committee report that even nine months' separation often injuriously affect the nervous system, and recommend a reduction
of the time. A prisoner under two years' hard labor may be kept during the whole time in the solitude of his cell, with the exception of one hour a day.
During a portion of his detention he is allowed no ordinary readiny books, has a wooden plank as a bed, and has to engage in occupation which the late
Chairman of the Prison Board declares to be "irritating, depressing, and debasing to the mental faculties, and decidedly brutalising in its effects." So
severe is this form of sentence considered to be, that many judges will not inflict it at all, and last year in a total of 160,000 short sentences, only
34 persons were committed for two years by the ordinary criminal courts.