The Port Townsend Sewer of Defamation

For more than a year past, a newspaper has been published at Port Townsend, ostensibly as an organ of the Democratic party, but really nothing but a sewer of personal defamation. It was open to anybody, of any party, who chose to use it to vent personal spleen and vituperative abuse upon others, regardless of public or private decency, age, sex, party association, or social condition. The whole purpose was manifestly to imitate the low, sensational journals which gain notoriety and circulation by pandering to a groveling popular appetite for that class of literature which is tabooed in circles where morality and social decency are respected. One H. L. Blanchard, a small attorney with no knowledge of the business either as a printer or editor, undertook the management of this infamous enterprise. Under the impression that as the statutes of the Territory failed to provide any punishment for the crime of libel, he could ply the vocation of a common libeller with impunity, he did not take into account that the law gave the offended citizen the remedy of a suit for personal damages. Governor Ferry, who had been grossly charged through this medium with high crimes in office, commenced a suit against the editor as the only means of vindicating his character. The suit has resulted in a humming confession of guilt and prayer for Executive clemency. While this vindicates the Governor, it leaves the criminal at liberty to repeat his practices upon others, and without demanding a surrender of his associates to public odium.