A Spectator's Notebook
CUNNING PORNOGRAPHERS can keep well within the law. Less careful ones, judging by the ease with which dirty books and booklets can be obtained by those who want them, have no great difficulty in keeping out of jail. So the purveyors of salacity for the most part can go free, while reputable publishers of works which might en- large human understanding, tremble in their shoes. This is the nonsensical situation we are inching out of painfully. During the debate last week, Mr. Butler turned down the idea that the defence should be allowed to call expert evidence, though at last the Government is willing to have single 'offending' passages considered in their context. But the lesser reform without the greater will be worth hardly anything. How on earth.can the average juryman, who probably never reads a worthwhile book from one year's end to the other, decide, without benefit of expert evidence, whether or not the,. work of literature is to be condemned? Mr. Butler is afraid that admission of such evidence would encourage the production of 'well-written' pornography. Is 'well-written' pornography worse than all the 'badly-written' pornography that now goes scot-free?
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