I returned to my office in _The Saturday Review_ and got the Royal Commission report on this sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour.

The Commission recommended that it should be wiped off the Statute Book as too severe.

I drafted a little petition as colourless as possible: "In view of the fact that the punishment of two years' imprisonment with hard labour has been condemned by a Royal Commission as too severe, and inasmuch as Mr.Wilde has been distinguished by his work in letters and is now, we hear, suffering in health, we, your petitioners, pray--and so forth and so on." I got this printed, and then sat down to write to Meredith asking when I could see him on the matter.

I wanted his signature first to be printed underneath the petition, and then issue it.

To my astonishment Meredith did not answer at once, and when I pressed him and set forth the facts he wrote to me that he could not do what I wished.