The Yorkshire Evening Post - Tuesday, April 30, 1895

LATEST BUFF EDITION.
IN DEFENCE OF WILDE.
SIR EDWARD CLARKE TO THE JURY.
(Continued from Page Three.)
(BY OUR PRIVATE WIRE.)

On the Court resuming Sir E. Clarke, on behalf of Wilde, addressed the jury on the evidence "as distinct from topics prejudicially imported into the case." He did not remember the remarkable course adopted early in the day by Mr. Gill to have been followed in any previous case. In a case so important as this the counsel for the Crown ought to have made up their minds as to whether they would proceed for conspiracy or not, and he complained that by the action of the Treasury, the defence had for three days been embarrassed. There was a cruel hardship in Mr. Oscar Wilde being tried in conjunction with Taylor upon separate and distinct charges, upon which he should ask the jury to give a separate and independent judgment. He pointed this out without desiring in any way to prejudice Mr. Grain's client. It was monstrous to assume that because Lord Alfred Douglas might have (he did not say that he had) published certain poems which irritated, annoyed, and outraged the moral view which the jury might apply to literary subjects, therefore Mr. Oscar Wilde was to be held responsible. It was with amazement that he (Sir Edward) was forced to discuss the poems of Lord Alfred Douglas. He might as well be asked to defend a poem on Rizzio, murdered at the feet of Mary, Queen of Scots. Denouncing witnesses for the prosecution as a band of blackmailers, Sir Edward urged that had Wilde been guilty of the charges he would have recoiled from the ordeal of the witness-box. It was upon tainted evidence that a conviction was asked for. Blackmailers flourished in their frightful trade, because any man drawn into any sort of guilt would rather exile himself than suffer his name to be mentioned in relationship with them. There was an instinctive shrinking of the guilty man. Not so with Mr. Wilde. He had courageously gone into the witness-box to dispose of and defeat the accusations against him. The jury would have to consider how they would test the evidence from the Savoy Hotel. How could Mr. Wilde answer it after a period of two years except by a denial? There was not the smallest corroboration of the Savoy case. The jury were asked to accept the view that Mr. Wilde had made the wildest and most wanton exhibition of himself. Charles Parker, Wood, and Atkins were three young men who had appeared in this case under circumstances which should disentitle their evidence to the regard of any jury that ever sat.

Mr. Grain afterwards addressed the jury on behalf of Taylor.

The case had not concluded when we went to press.