ARGUMENT OF HON. hIENRY L. STAONE.



published in the Mercury, at Carlisle, in Nicholas county. That letter
was circulated all over the Fourteenth Judicial District. It was pub-
lished in the newspapers throughout that District. These charges
having been first intimated by the plaintiff, without stating the facts, or
supporting the charges by record and oral evidence, as appears in that
letter, the defendant charged that the plaintiff was a venal writer-that
he was a willful and malicious liar, slanderer, and coward.
  But what does the plaintiff do Does he bring a suit for libel
Does he take any personal action in the matter  He contents himself
by shooting paper bullets at the defendant through the columns of
his villainous sheet, the Maysville Eagle. For five years the matter
rests in that shape What more could Judge Hargis do After the
plaintiff had thus submitted to the denunciations contained in that
Open Letter, neither instituting suit for libel against defendant, nor
taking any other steps as a man thus denounced ought to have done,
there was no other course for Judge Hargis to pursue than to treat his
publications with the silent contempt they deserved. Judge Hargis
took no notice of him until i879, and even then in the article on which
this action is brought he does not mention the name of Mr. Green.
Yet, this man who swallowed the words of Judge Hargis in' 1874, when
he called him a malicious liar, slanderer, and coward, comes into this
court-house, having slept on the Open Letter for five years, and says
now that he is greatly slandered because Judge Hargis has, in the
Cowrierjozurmnal article, called him a willful calumniator. With what
consideration, I ask you as honest men, should you treat a man that
acts in that way What consideration does he deserve at your hands 
He is too long in discovering that his reputation can be injured by the
defendant. Why didn't he bring his suit in the county of Nicholas, the
residence of Judge Hargis, where the Open Letter thus denouncing
him was published, when all these matters were fresh in the recollec-
tion of witnesses, when some of the most important witnesses in this
controversy were then alive and could have testified, among whom
were judge Apperson, Stevens Roe, Samuel R. Elliott, C. E. Johnson,
Wm. L. Sudduth, Judge Elliott, and divers others who are now dead
and gone. No, he did not choose to bring his action then and there,
but he chose to bring it out of the county of Judge Hargis' residence,
away from the people of his section, among strangers, but among
plaintiff's own kinsmen, college-mates, and personal friends in the city
of Louisville. Judge Hargis brought his witnesses and attorneys here
at frightful expense in railroad- and hotel fare, hundreds of miles. to
make good the charge against the plaintiff-that he is a willful calumni-
ator. Upon Mr. Green's own chosen ground the defendant has not
been afraid or failed to meet him, and asks no quarter.  Do you
believe, after all these facts, that the plaintiff brought this action in
good faith Do you believe that this action was instituted by the
plaintiff for the purpose of recovering damages from the defendant on
account of an alleged injury to his character
   In April, i874, John R. Taber was the clerk of the Rowan Circuit
Court, and the custodian of its records  Sometime in that month it was
discovered that certain mutilations had been made upon his books.
,First, that a leaf had been taken out of Order Book, No. 2, containing
a portion of the orders of the 28th of August, i866; that a leaf had
been cut from the Minute Book corresponding with those orders; that



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