ady been decided
by the consent of the prosecutors to a verdict of "not guilty." Such a
verdict meant of course that the plea of justification was proved. The
jury having consulted for a few moments, the Clerk of Arraigns asked:

"Do you find the plea of justification has been proved or not?"

Foreman: "Yes."

"You say that the defendant is 'not guilty,' and that is the verdict
of you all?"

Foreman: "Yes, and we also find that it is for the public benefit."

The last kick to the dead lion. As the verdict was read out the
spectators in the court burst into cheers.

Mr. Carson: "Of course the costs of the defence will follow?"

Mr. Justice Collins: "Yes."

Mr. C.F. Gill: "And Lord Queensberry may be discharged?"

Mr. Justice Collins: "Certainly."

The Marquis of Queensberry left the dock amid renewed cheering, which
was taken up again and again in the street.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] The words which Mr. Carson could not read were: "I would sooner
be rented than, etc." Rent is a slang term for blackmail.

[14] A famous Italian restaurant in Soho: it had several "private
rooms."

[15] This early poem of Lord Alfred Douglas is reproduced in the
Appendix at the end of this book together with another poem by the
same author, which was also mentioned in the course of the trial.

[16] Mr. Carson here made a mistake; there is no such incident in the
story: the error merely shows how prejudiced his mind was.

CHAPTER XIV

The English are very proud of their sense of justice, proud too of
their Roman law and the practice of the Courts in which they have
incorporated it. They boast of their fair play in all things as the
French boast of their lightness, and if you question it, you lose
caste with them, as one prejudiced or ignorant or both. English
justice cannot be bought, they say, and if it is dear, excessively
dear even, they rather like to feel they have paid a long price for a
good article. Yet it may be that here, as in other things, they take
outward propriety and decorum for the inward and ineffable grace. That
a judge should be incorruptible is not so important as that he should
be wise and humane.

English journalists and barristers were very much amused at the
conduct of the Dreyfus case; yet, when Dreyfus was being tried for the
second time in France, two or three instances of similar injustice in
England were set forth with circumstance in one of the London
newspapers, but no one paid any ef