How long has Mr. Barnard learned that a convicted editor is a mere felon? That he should be maltreated, disgraced, and placed even below the level of thieves and malefactors? The case of Mr. Branch is probably the first on record, wherein a man condemned for libel was compelled to submit to prison discipline, intended only for a minor class of felons. But as this case has occurred, it has afforded to our people a fair opportunity of judging upon the irresponsibility, we will not say imbecility, of an elective judiciary. Catch the most insignificant errand-boy in the nearest lawyer’s den, and he will give you a better legal, if not more humane, exposition of the true genius of the laws than was publicly enunciated by Mr. Recorder Barnard, who indirectly repudiated pure maxims of jurisprudence, and substituted vagaries of vengeance. Let us, therefore, profit by this casual display of sentiment; for say we to all quarters of the city, with a voice as of that of a watchman in the hour of alarm, that none, not even the pure and guileless, are safe while fantasies such as these are suffered to be fulminated from a criminal bench. And likewise mind, we draw a grave distinction between our civil and criminal judiciary. Unfortunately, the highest and most respected of our judges are occupied solely with the rights of property, and we have committed the rights of the person to the most obscure of obscure attorneys, accidentally thrust from pure partizan influence upon the Bench. While the truly learned Justice Clerke, a lawyer such as the way of Christian life would make him, is simply occupied in matters of dollars and cents, our lives, our persons, our future, immaculate, are intrusted to the supervision of such learned pundits as Mr. Recorder Barnard and City Judge Russell. Liberty of speech is a right, paramount to that of every other consideration; it has been treasured as the key-stone to the great, unwritten Constitution of Britain and of our own land; it is the vital essence of our political existence, and its abuse has been judicially tolerated that the spirit shall be perpetuated. But as Mr. Recorder Barnard has not probably indulged in the intellectual luxury of perusing Hallam’s Constitutional History—such a work being unknown to the New Code—we will excuse him from any implied admiration of that respect, yea, adoration, for personal rights, which animated the manly soul of Algernon Sidney and fired the patriotism of John Hampden.