The Evening Journal - Monday, May 27, 1895

SCANDALS VS. DIVORCES.

Oscar Wilde’s conviction and sentence to jail for two years should give some of our American cousins a chance to apologise to British justice. When the jury disagreed in Wilde's first trial, and the accused was allowed to go on bail, several leading United States newspapers said there was no desire in England to push Wilde—that if he were pushed, he would implicate other people socially prominent, which would never do. It is a favorite theory of a class of American journalists that the British aristocracy is a rotten society morally; and the occasional scandals which find the light among the tens of thousands of British upper class families are eagerly seized on by the United States press to support their theory. If British society had the same escape valve for any licentiousness that may prevail there as American society has in its filthy divorce system, there would be precious few transatlantic scandals. As tar as the innuendoes against English justice in the Wilde case were concerned, the termination of the case answers them effectually, as in most cases the event answers effectually jealous American sneers at the empire upon which the sun never sets.