Evening Herald - Saturday, November 30, 1895

PROMINENT PEOPLE.

[...] The international petition for the release of Oscar Wilde, which is being talked of in France, and which MM Zola, Daudet, Goncourt, Heredia, Coppee, and Mirbeau and others are to be asked to sign, will receive very little support from the English Press. The London "Figaro" is afraid one can hardly expect the law to take such things into consideration perhaps, but it is certainly pitiable to reflect that we are slowly murdering one of the most brilliant authors of the time by keeping him in prison. All men, of course, are — or are supposed to be—equal before the law, and duke and dustman must suffer alike for the misdeeds of which they have, rightly or wrongly, been adjudged guilty, but —— Well,surely even the most righteous of the unco' guid must have been stirred to pity by the account of the frightful change which a few months' imprisonment has wrought in Oscar Wilde. It has turned a young and brilliant man of letters into an old and broken and spiritless wreck. Is it really necessary to enforce his punishment to the bitter end?