Belfast News-Letter - Wednesday, June 5, 1895

OUR LONDON LETTER.
BY OUR PRIVATE WIRE.
BELFAST NEWS-LETTER OFFICE, 169, FLEET STREET, E.C., TUESDAY NIGHT.

Mr Oscar Wilde, in the plenitude of his imagination, has never written a play so startling and pathetic in its incidents as the melancholy drama in which he is at the present moment enacting, perforce, the leading part. Misfortune seems to have followed and tripped up men of genius in all ages. Very recently we learnt that the authorities of Pentonville Prison had placed Oscar on the treadmill, while his fellow-prisoner Taylor, in consequence of possessing a weak heart, was required to pick of a pound of oakum a day. It is no exaggeration to say that Oscar's worst enemies must have felt some pity for him, while the cynical could not avoid drawing an oblique moral from the distinctive punishments of the two criminals. To-day it is stated that Wilde has become insane, and that it has been necessary to confine him in a padded room. Something more is said about a point of law which Sir Edward Clarke intends to raise in his favour in the High Courts, but it looks as if it will be too late, even if there be anything in the "point of law," which I very much doubt. We have no court of criminal appeal, and some of our judges think that we are much better without one. That is a proposition which I do not think will stand intelligent debate. Take this case of Oscar Wilde. Supposing he is innocent of the charges of which he has been convicted—some people go so far as to say that he is—the absence of a court of criminal appeal deprives him of the opportunity of finally establishing the fact. There can only be an appeal on a question of law, and should it happen to be decided in his favour that would not settle the question of his guilt or innocence. A blunder in an indictment, if fully established, will set a criminal free, but there is no court of criminal appeal except the Home Office, often presided over by an overworked Minister, who, perchance, knows very little, if anything, about the laws of evidence. Oscar Wilde, who was always a remarkably proud and eccentric individual, would feel his present position most acutely. The punishment of two years' "hard labour," to which he was sentenced, is, I am informed, much more terrible to bear than a sentence of penal servitude for seven years. It is only in the case of "distinguished" prisoners that we hear of the body and soul destroying effect of a sentence of two years' "hard" under the silent system in Pentonville. It may be that Oscar Wilde's present state of mind is exaggerated, but at all events the story abroad to-day may prove useful if it brings about an investigation calculated to ease the fetters of the captive, and humanise the prison treatment of even the worst criminals. I think the public have a right to know what is the exact punishment to which a person sentenced to two years' hard labour is liable, and the manner in which it is enforced.