In England it was manifest that under the circumstances there was no chance of a fair trial, and it seemed to me the duty of _The Times_ to say plainly that this man should not be condemned beforehand, and that if he were condemned his merits should be taken into consideration in his punishment, as well as his demerits.
While willing to listen to me, Mr.Walter did not share my views.

A man who had written a great poem or a great play did not rank in his esteem with a man who had won a skirmish against a handful of unarmed savages, or one who had stolen a piece of land from some barbarians and annexed it to the Empire.

In his heart he held the view of the English landed aristocracy, that the ordinary successful general or admiral or statesman was infinitely more important than a Shakespeare or a Browning.

He could not be persuaded to believe that the names of Gladstone, Disraeli, Wolseley, Roberts, and Wood, would diminish and fade from day to day till in a hundred years they would scarcely be known, even to the educated; whereas the fame of Browning, Swinburne, Meredith, or even Oscar Wilde, would increase and grow brighter with time, till, in one hundred or five hundred years, no one would dream of comparing pushful politicians like Gladstone or Beaconsfield with men of genius like Swinburne or Wilde.

He simply would not see it and when he perceived that the weight of argument was against him he declared that if it were true, it was so much the worse for humanity.
In his opinion anyone living a clean life was worth more than a writer of love songs or the maker of clever comedies--Mr.John Smith worth more than Shakespeare! He was as deaf as only Englishmen can be deaf to the plea for abstract justice.
"You don't even say Wilde's innocent," he threw at me more than once.
"I believe him to be innocent," I declared truthfully, "but it is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one man should not have a fair trial.