Beach and John Vance of the _Sun_ for their deep and unexpected gashes in my heart. Let all my friends be cheerful, when I inform them that neither sighs nor tears have passed from my lips or eyes, and that I only grieve at the official stabs at the liberty of speech and of the press, which the people will be sure to avenge, and soon consign the Grand Jury Inquisitions to the Spanish despots, and all their advocates to an ignominious destiny. STEPHEN H. BRANCH. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. [_From the N. Y. Express._] THE BRANCH LIBEL CASE.—Stephen H. Branch has been convicted of a gross and malicious libel upon Mayor Tiemann, Simeon Draper, and Isaac Bell, and has been sentenced to be imprisoned in the penitentiary for one year, to pay a fine of $250, and stand committed until that sum shall be paid. The scene at the closing of the Court on Wednesday was a very melo-dramatic one, and fully in keeping with all the previous steps in this extraordinary case. Mr. Branch being asked what he had to say why sentence should not be pronounced against him, made a long speech, in which he reviewed the various events of his somewhat eccentric life; but just as he commenced to allude to the libels, and to speak thereon and the persons aggrieved, the court stopped him. The prisoner bore himself with the air of a martyr to the cause of public virtue, and said it was the happiest and proudest day of his life; but his excitement at the close of his address was very great, and his delivery vehement and earnest almost to weeping. The court was full of his sympathizers, who did not scruple to say that they believed the convict to be more sinned against than sinning. This extraordinary case will long be remembered. The libels published and circulated by Mr. Branch were the most outrageous ever perpetrated in this city, and the prosecution has been in keeping with the provocation, amounting in its virulence almost to a persecution. Circumstances on the trial favored the presumption that the whole of the proceedings had been decided upon in advance, even to the wording of the recorder’s charge and sentence. His honor himself informed the counsel for the prisoner that he had considered his possible application for a suspension of judgment, had examined the point, and had made up his mind that such a motion could not be allowed. Every precaution had been taken. The whole power of the corporation—executive, legal, judicial—was invoked to annihilate Mr. Branch, and the end was attained. The offence was outrageous, and will admit of no palliation; but it was hardly good taste in the powerful complainants to take every advantage of a criminal whom many believe to be a monomaniac, and by the extreme vindicativeness of the prosecution, give to the administration of public justice the appearance of private revenge.