Wilde could have cried, with Shylock, "You take my life when you do take away the means whereby I live." But at the time nine Englishmen out of ten applauded what was practically persecution.
A worse thing remains to be told.

The right of free speech which Englishmen pride themselves on had utterly disappeared, as it always does disappear in England when there is most need of it.

It was impossible to say one word in Wilde's defence or even in extenuation of his sin in any London print.

At this time I owned the greater part of the _Saturday Review_ and edited it.

Here at any rate one might have thought I could have set forth in a Christian country a sane and liberal view.