One point, peculiarly English, he used again and again.
"So long as substantial justice is done," he said, "it is all we care about."
"Substantial justice will never be done," I cried, "so long as that is your ideal. Your arrow can never go quite so high as it is aimed." But I got no further.
If Oscar Wilde had been a general or a so-called empire builder, "The Times" might have affronted public opinion and called attention to his virtues, and argued that they should be taken in extenuation of his offences; but as he was only a writer no one seemed to owe him anything or to care what became of him.
Mr. Walter was fair-minded in comparison with most men of his class. There was staying with him at this very time an Irish gentleman, who listened to my pleading for Wilde with ill-concealed indignation. Excited by Arthur Walter's obstinacy to find fresh arguments, I pointed out that Wilde's offence was pathological and not criminal and would not be punished in a properly constituted state.
"You admit," I said, "that we punish crime to prevent it spreading; wipe this sin off the statute book and you would not increase the sinners by one: then why punish them?"
"Oi'd whip such sinners to death, so I would," cried the Irishman; "hangin's too good for them."
"You only punished lepers," I went on, "in the middle ages, because you believed that leprosy was catching: this malady is not even catching."
"Faith, Oi'd punish it with extermination," cried the Irishman.
Exasperated by the fact that his idiot prejudice was hurting my friend, I said at length with a smile: