Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/14

viii leave to suggest that Wilde was too severely because far too publicly chastised for what he may have done for what at the worst was no more than a private misdemeanour. We consider that far more harm than needful was wrought by the publicity given to these unwholesome pranks with grown-up wastrels in private rooms these naughty fellows of a baser sort as St. Paul would have called them. Would it not have been better first mercifully to warn aye and if needs were to have hurried them off willy-nilly—struggling and kicking it might be—to some private asylum to be treated hydropathically as was done by the French authorities in the case of a certain well-known Parisian littérateur caught in a Boulevard  The interests of Justice would have been amply served had prevention alone and not vengeance been the object to be attained.

Moreover we are of those who believe that whilst there should be one law for the rich and for the poor alike there should still be a further law for the neurotic the brain-sick the mind-shattered the functionally deranged. To apply the same heavy whip to a sensitive highly-strung Derby runner as to a coarser grained slow-going dray horse were amazing lack of