It is impossible not to feel the deepest sympathy with
Captain Osborne, who behaved perfectly through the whole business, and no doubt the sentence of social death which the world will pass on Mrs. Osborne is of itself a heavy one ; but some of our contemporaries are unwisely lenient to a woman who, on the evidence and her counsel's admissions, committed a, series of audacious offences against every kind of law. The sug- gestion of kleptomania is kindly nonsense. Kleptomaniacs exist, though they are rare; but they do not steal the shining things they covet in order to sell, but to possess. Nor is kleptomania a justification for bringing false actions for slander, or giving permission to counsel to attack the inno- cent, or committing perjury in the witness-box. The right of exacting penalties for theft rests with those robbed ; but this case, as well as the Russell ease, raises the gravest doubts whether our laws against perjury are sharp enough ; whether, in fact, the State should not, in the interests not only of jus- tice but of respect for the tribunals, prosecute every serious case of perjury. There is too much of it by half, especially in the Divorce Court, and it is by no means all committed by offenders who are shielding themselves. For ourselves, we further doubt whether a statute ought not to be passed making simple "lying in Court," when deliberate, an offence punishable by a Magistrate with imprisonment for three months.
