The reports of this case have roused once more the
old question as to the propriety of hearing them in private. Great objections are made to such reports as corrupting, but they seem, in this case at least, to indicate a good deal of prurient prudery. A case less likely to encourage vice was never presented to the public, nor one in which publicity forms so completely the real punishment. Without it adultery among the rich would not be punished at all, the tone of all concerned, even of women of good rank and unim- peachable character, being that adultery was a " folly," a " weak- ness," an "indiscretion," not an act of the foulest treachery and vice. The further objection raised by Lord Penzance, that secrecy is cruelty to the innocent, is also true, but the true defence is that publicity is punishment. • We may purchase the external decorum which the bourgeoisie is so apt to prize above virtue a little too dear.
