LESSOR OP THE WILDE CASE.

North Otago Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8238, 20 July 1895, Page 4

LESSOR OP THE WILDE CASE.

la a brief commenb on the close of the trial of Oscar Wilde, bhe Daily Chronicle said : Sad, indeed, has been the degradation of the feeliug for art, for beauty, for refinement, the picbure of senseless idleness which a man of great balent, but of perverted, hardly one would say of sane, character has paraded before v*. The trial forma indeed, a fresh chapter in Or Nordau'a indictment of ' degeneration," an appalling picture of the abate of mind and heart in which all intellecbnal and moral perspective becomes blurred and distorted. Nobhing, however, arises in life wiihout a cause, and we have bo consider whether there is not in our educational system some black spot that produces these defacements. If some of our schoolmasters had been a little more courageous, and a great deal more couscienbioua, we might | have escaped the sick'y contamination of these and many preceding scmdal s One of the failings of middle class and upper class English life has been the unnabi ral divorce of parents for bheir eh ldren. The case is obherwise in Fiance, where the influence of mothers on their sons is much stronger and more continuous than with us. We are f*r from agreeing with all the claims t f the New Woman, but we are strongly of opinion that in bhe strengthening of the mother's influence over her child lies a cure for many of bhe evils of " civilised " life The herding of boys in great schools, their to early separation from their homes, and from association wibh bheir mobber ard s'stera and bhe facb bhab after a certain tge parents bpcome almosb tobal st'augeis to their children — all these things, coupUd with bhe t*ste ess luxury thab rich parents hold oub as a poisonous lure to idle young men and w. men, afford a terrible wide margin f< r the gradual perversion of heart and intellect !b is clear bhab if we are bo bread safely the slippery path of civilisation, if we are nob to fall bnck into decadenb paganism, we musb harden and simplify our lives. Plain bving and high thinking is nob only bhe poet's wabchword ; it is the watchword of the democrab, the good citizen, and the man of sense. In an earlier section of the Article the editor wrote : " His sentence, enforced aa ib will be by the severest ngors known to ou^ abhorrenb penal sysbem, ib is virtually a sentence of d'ath or of madness, a fate to which we confess we hesitate to condemn any human creature whatever." A correspondent nexh day asked what this meant, and he was enlish'ened as follows: 'Two years' labor is the severest sentence, while it lasts, known to the English criminal law. It is a form ot punishment wh;ch is never inflicted on convicts sentenced bo penal servitude, inasmuch as it is calculated to produce madness amoog^b them. Nine months' •eparate confinement is as much as a convicb gets and is considered ac much as his mind can stand. The Prisons Committee reporb bhab even nine months' separation often injuriouly affect the nervous system, and recommend a reduction of the tiaae A prisoner under two years' h rd ltbor may be kept during the whole time in the solitude of his cell, wibh the exception of ooe hour a day. During a portion of bis detention he is al'owed no ordinary reading books, has a wooden plank as a bed, and has to enst-ige in occupation which the late chairman of the Prison Board declares to be ' irritating, depressing, and debasing to the mental faculties, and decidedly bi utilising in its effects.' So severe is this form of sentence considered to be that many judges will nob inflict ib at all, and last year in a total of 160,000 short sentences otJy thirty-four persons were committed for two years by the ordinary criminal courbs "