Truth - Sunday, June 2, 1895

THE CRITIC.
By "Sir Fretful Plagiary."

Oscar Wilde, passed out of public ken and lost to sight, will in future be to memory but a shame. Let me here compliment that London jury on the strong common-sense they showed in pointing out to the Bench that as Oscar was guilty, his partner in shame, Lord Alfred Douglas, must be guilty too, and should be arrested. No Sydney jury would have had that nous, no Sydney jury would have dared intimate to a judge that Lord Alfred's titled relations might frighten the police from the performance of their duty. In very many respects the English middle classes are far more Radical than the Australian middle-classes.

That was a very humorous cable anent the concluding scene in the Wilde case. Just imagine the Judge declaring that if the Jury thought Lord Alfred Douglass' social surroundings would screen him, they were in error, as that was impossible! Bunkum! It was not impossible in the Cleveland Club scandal where even sprigs of semi-royalty were involved in the unsavoriness of boon companionship with the unmentionable principals! And it is safe to say that his dirty Lordship's social environment will preserve him from prosecution, or connive at his slipping through the net in spite of the Judge's indignant disclaimer! I notice also that 200 other suspects have been named, and are clearing out of the old country. If they migrate hither, they will probably be unwittingly patronised by a community that literally lays all its State plums at the feet of the new-chum of unknown antecedents, such as swarm all over the land already.