Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-01-22
Aancaster f,ltellige,lcer.
Manufacturing His Case.

EVENING", JAN. ~, Aooo'
Manufacturing His Case.
Judge Patterson read to us this MORN
ing, in open court, rule which he mas
drawn up requiring us to answer Tor
contempt of court, in which he en-
bodied his version of what occurred yes
terday morning in court. Upon that !
version the Judge seemed to base his rnle,
affecting to treat what we then said as a
re-affirmation of what we had said in the |
INTELLIGENCER. We said there moth |
ing but what we believed to be true, but
we neither affirmed nor denied its truth
when called upon yesterday to answer
for it as attorneys, because we did not
propose to give Judge Patterson an op-
portunity to exercise his summary power
over members of the bar for contempt OF
court manifested in its presence. when
we are to he tried for the truth OF what
we say as editors, we want it to be
before a jury, with all the rights
the law gives us to maintain
our innocence, and not before
Judge who is prosecutor, judge, jury and
executioner all in one. We prefer to
have little more chance for life and
liberty than any such tribunal will he
ant to furnish us. And therefore it was
that we carefully avoided giving Judge
Patterson the chance he sought, with
such cunning and malice, to secure an
excuse to lay his hand upon us.
Yet he has had the unblushing effronteiy
to put into our mouths what we did not
say and to seek to found his rule upon
his own invention. He has bungled the
lob. While he was about it he might
better have made more complete lnVen-
ton and have written down that we had
called lin an ignorant and unfit judge,
who secured his place on the bench 10y
low devices, and who has disgraced 1t
ever since he ascended it by manifeSta-
ton of a lack of judicial learning, temper
and bearing, which has been wholly with
out precedent in this county and we be-
lieve has never been matched i'll any
other.
Judge Patterson, while he is clever
and agreeable gentleman, with many
qualities to attract the esteem and afiec
ton of his fellow man in his private life
has none of the talents or qualification:
of q good Judge, and is not esteemed az
one by the bar over which he presldes
He might rule all its members, without
exception. TO answer for contempt o
court, as readily as he might. so rule us
if they would he guilty because of thei
thought. lmuttered in the judicial pres
ence. Judge Patterson has, in his pres
ent fragrant exhibition of himself, full
demonstrated even to his WarlmeS
friends that the public interests and III
own fair name can in no way be SO serVe'
by him as they would be by his resiSna
ton from an office which nature has no
fitted him to fill. Most fortunately TIN
law has made him impotent against tn
lust accusers of his judicial conduct ,wh'
. use the legitimate channels of public dls
cussion outside his court, in which to crit
icise it. We do not fear him, because W
know we are fully panoplied 10y tn
constitution and laws of our stat
in the freest expression OF on
opinion us to the method an
manner of his discharge of hi
public duty. To his rule we answer tina
in his court we give him the deferenc
which the law secures to his dignity
ti,at ont side of if we rive him the con
sideration, as 4 judge, which in our opll
ion he earns by the manner of the dI:
charge of his official duties ;ssandthat as
man we will Judge him as we read hl
private life. In each relation he is enti
tied to a different treatment and he Wi
learn too, ere long we trust, that to II
rs lawyers in, and as editors without n
court, different rules apply.