The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-04-08
THE WILDE CASE.

It is to be regretted we cannot have a
wall of protection around the United
States that would not only guard American
industry from the competition of the I'M
derpaid labor of Europe, but American
homes from the contamination of Europe g
aristocratic scandals. Certainly the i'll eff
fects that flow from the competition of the
starving workingmen of Manchester are
hardly to be accounted worse than the vile
denominations that emanate from every
new disclosure of the debasing sensuality
of the so-called upper classes.
The telegraphic dispatches sent to this
country in regard to the Oscar Wilde libel
suit are among the worst offenses of the
time. They reek with vileness and it is
only by the most careful editing that even
the substance of them can be reproduced
in newspaper that makes any pretenses
to decency. That some American jour
nails have been so eager for sensations as
to make these kilograms the chief news of
the day and emphasize them with con-
spicuous headlines is an evidence of their
corrupting influence, and if the tone of
American society were not healthy, whole
some and moral to the core the evil might
have been much greater than it has been.
To the American mind nothing conceiv-
able can be more abhorrent and disgusting
than the revelations made in this case.
Had the foul story been raked up from the
slums of London, where the offscourings
of humanity are dumped to tester in their
own filth, it would have been bad enough,
but coming, as it does, from the aristo-
cratic quarter of Mayfair, and involving a
peer of the realm, millionaire, and an
author who for years has posed as the
oracle of literary cult and a fastidious
society, the abomination of it passes be-
yond the measure of ordinary words, and
one can only borrow the language of Par
son Brownlow and declare that if a thou
sand tons of tartar emetic were poured
down the throat of hell it could not vomit
forth a fouler crowd than this.
Few people will care to moralize on a
subject of such foulness, and yet the re-
fecting mind can hardly fail to discern in
it an evidence that great historic society
is rotting to decay. While the British en-
pire still stands in outward majesty SEEM
ingly strong the Wilde case and the Cleve-
land-street scandal give evidence of an in
ternal corruption that is destroying the
fabric from within. Never since the deca-
dence of the Roman empire has manhood
sunk so low as in modern London. In
that great capital among men and women
of rank and station there has been dis
closed depravity as low as that of China
town, and in that lowest depth, deeper
depth penetrated by Wilde, to which even
Chinatown affords no parallel.
To rightly picture the debasement of hui
mainly in decaying London, Dean Swift
would have to be born again to write his
story of the Yahoos and write it worse.
Perhaps some attempt at picturing it
might be useful in England as warming
to the luxurious, the voluptuous and the
sensual, of the depths to which they are
swiftly descending. In this country, how
ever, we do not need it. The very sugges-
ton of it is abhorrent to every American
instinct, and the only sentiment felt here
in regard to it is one of Indignation tina, its
indecencies should have been telegraphed
here at all.