Mr. Justice Wills evidently suffered from the peculiar “exaltation” of mind which he had recognised in Shelley.  This peculiarity is shared in a lesser degree by several other Judges on the English bench in all matters of sexual morality.  What distinguished Mr. Justice Wills was that he was proud of his prejudice and eager to act on it.  He evidently did not know, or did not care, that the sentence which he had given, declaring it was “totally inadequate,” had been condemned by a Royal Commission as “inhuman.”  He would willingly have pushed “inhumanity” to savagery, out of sheer bewigged stupidity, and that he was probably well-meaning only intensified the revolt one felt at such brainless malevolence.

The bitterest words in Dante are not bitter enough to render my feeling: 

    “Non ragioniam di lor ma guarda e passa.”

The whole scene had sickened me.  Hatred masquerading as justice, striking vindictively and adding insult to injury.  The vile picture had its fit setting outside.  We had not left the court when the cheering broke out in the streets, and when we came outside there were troops of the lowest women of the town dancing together and kicking up their legs in hideous abandonment, while the surrounding crowd of policemen and spectators guffawed with delight.  As I turned away from the exhibition, as obscene and soul-defiling as anything witnessed in the madness of the French revolution, I caught a glimpse of Wood and the Parkers getting into a cab, laughing and leering.

These were the venal creatures Oscar Wilde was punished for having corrupted!