When Mr. Recorder Barnard sat in Solomonic judgment on Stephen H. Branch, he evidently forgot for the moment the dignity of a judge, and assumed the questionable attributes of a politician. That Mr. Recorder Barnard is nominally a lawyer we will admit, for he comes under all provisions of the New Code, which creates lawyers with the celerity of machinery; but that he understands the law, we emphatically deny. Before Mr. Barnard mounted the Bench, was his name ever known to the community as a successful barrister? Was he ever intrusted with any important civil or criminal case? Did he ever make a speech the most common-place reporter thought worthy of being reproduced in type? Not one of those tests of popularity, which appertain to the career of the most common of attorneys, seem to apply to the case of our learned Recorder, upon whose brow honor and glory have stumbled as it were by accident. Mr. Barnard, in sentencing Mr. Branch, evidently desired to impress the public mind with an idea of his individual authority; forgetting that he was armed with the sword of mercy, he wielded only that of justice, and with a vindictiveness, as reckless as it was violent, loaned himself to the wishes of partizan leaders, who daily stand in dread of exposure from an unbridled press. As vermin cannot dwell in certain atmospheres, these men stifle coming in contact with the air of a free press; and it is to them we owe the bitter persecution of free opinion, as is glowingly instanced in the judgment passed upon Branch. A self-same punishment would have been meted out to any offending editor, who may touch the dignity of the confederated band, who thus attempt to throttle speech, whose freedom should be indigenous to the soil.