THE "LEIGHTON" CASE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13303, 9 October 1906, Page 4

THE "LEIGHTON" CASE.

While all good citizens will cordially approve of the action of the police in suppressing the sale of indecent postcards ■> and other pictorial devices which are intended by their manufacturers to pander to a vicious and depraved taste, it is to be regretted on many grounds that the authorities should have been so illadvised as to institute proceedings against respectable shopkeepers for the sale of a Leighton picture. Whatever the motive of the police may have been the fact remains that the proceedings tended to bring the regulation of " prints" exposed for sale into contempt. For there could never have been any doubt in the ordinarily sane and well-balanced mind- as to the absolute, purity and decency of the work of a great English artist whom the noblest, of his country men and women have delighted to honour. To have it. seriously alleged by the authorities that modern pictures which are not merely hung, as originals, in famous British galleries, but are to be seen, as reproductions, upon the family walls of citizens whose character is above reproach, ought not to be sold because unfit to be commonly known and seen, can only confuse the public judgment and arouse public antagonism to all police interference. Nor can we congratulate Mr. Kettle upon the magnitude which this ridiculous prosecution attained. That the indecent, the immoral and the obscene should be stamped out wherever it is found admits of only one opinion. But to try—of all things in the world—a Leighton picture and to solemnly listen to personal opinions as to its effect upon the public morals and to sententiously deliver a lengthy decision as a preliminary to its acquittal, is not calculated to impress the public with respect for the taste of the police or for the ability of the Bench. The case has been dismissed, but more than the prosecution has been lost. Public morality has lost, not by the magisterial acceptance of •sound public opinion, but by the battle between good citizens and the authorities over a most delicate question, Thanks to this proseoution, which was against public taste, and could only be justified by the most warped minds, an undue amount of attention has been drawn to the impurities which prurient minds may imagine into pictures in themselves beautiful and pure. This is greatly to be regretted, just as would be a prosecution for the public exhibition of a Venus of Milo or of a Laocoon. If the authorities have public morality sincerely at heart they will confine themselves, henceforth, to their legitimate work of suppressing prints which violate good taste and common decency, and which no respectable citizens would wish to defend. By doing so they may gradually obliterate the bad results of a most unwise and uncalledfor prosecution.