Massachusetts, and who knew him before he had become known to the nation, are better for our purpose than the observations of later friends. They illustrate the main position, that General Butler used all the means known to the law to get his cases, leaving the whole responsibility of maintaining justice to those who made and those who administered the laws.

One example of what a writer styles General Butler's legerdemain. A man in Boston, of respectable connections and some wealth, being afflicted with a mania for stealing, was, at length, brought to trial on four indictments; and a host of lawyers were assembled, engaged in the case, expecting a long and sharp contest. It was hot summer weather; the judge was old and indolent; the officers of the court were weary of the session, and anxious to adjourn. General Butler was counsel for the prisoner. It is a law in Massachusetts, that the repetition of a crime by the same offender, within a certain period, shall entail a severer punishment than the first offense. A third repetition, involves more severity, and a fourth, still more. According to this law, the prisoner, if convicted on all four indictments, would be liable to imprisonment in the penitentiary, for the term of sixty years. As the court was assembling, General Butler remonstrated with the counsel for the prosecution, upon the rigor of their proposed proceedings. Surely, one indictment would answer the ends of justice; why condemn the man to imprisonment for life for what was, evidently, more a disease than a crime? They agreed, at length, to quash three of the indictments, on condition that the prisoner should plead guilty to the one which charged the theft of the greatest amount. The prisoner was arraigned.

"Are you guilty, or not guilty ?"

"Say guilty, sir," said General Butler, from his place in the bar, in his most commanding tone.

The man cast a helpless, bewildered look at his counsel, and said nothing.

"Say guilty, sir," repeated the General, looking into the prisoner's eyes.

The man, without a will, was compelled to obey, by very constitution of his infirm mind.

"Guilty," he faltered, and sunk down into his seat, crushed with a sense of shame.

"Now, gentlemen," said the counsel for the prisoner, "have I, or have I not, performed my part of the compact?"

“You have."

"Then perform yours."

This was done. A Nol. Pros. was duly entered upon the three indictments. The counsel for the prosecution immediately moved for sentence.

General Butler then rose, with the other indictment in his hand, and pointed out a flaw in it, manifest and fatal. The error consisted in designating the place where the crime was committed.

"Your honor perceives," said the general, "that this court has no jurisdiction in the matter. I move that the prisoner be discharged from custody."

Ten minutes from that time, the astounded man was walking out of the court-room free.

The flaw in the indictment, General Butler discovered the moment after the compact was made. If he had gone to the prisoner, and spent five minutes in inducing him to consent to the arrangement, the sharp opposing counsel, long accustomed to his tactics, would have suspected a ruse, and eagerly scanned the indictment. He relied, therefore, solely on the power which a man, with a will, has over a man who has none, and so merely commanded the plea of guilty. The court, it is said, not unwilling to escape a long trial, laughed at the maneuver, and complimented the successful lawyer upon the excellent "discipline" which he maintained among his clients.

This was a case of legal "legerdemain." Many of General Butler's triumphs, however, were won after long and perfectly contested struggles, which fully and legitimately tested his strength as a lawyer. Perhaps, as a set-off to the case just related, I should give one of the other description.

A son of one of the general's most valued friends made a voyage to China as a sailor before the mast, and returned with his constitution ruined through the scurvy, his captain having neglected to supply the ship with the well-known antidotes to that disease, lime juice and fresh vegetables. A suit for damages was instituted on the part of the crew against the captain. General Butler was retained to conduct the cause of the sailors, and Mr. Rufus Choate defended the captain. The trial lasted nineteen working days.

General Butler's leading positions were: 1. That the captain was bound to procure fresh vegetables if he could; and, 2. That he could. In establishing these two points, he displayed an amount of learning, ingenuity and tact, seldom equaled at the bar. The whole of sanitary science and the whole of sanitary law, the narratives of all navigators and the usages of all navies, reports of parliamentary commissions and the diaries of philanthropical investigators, ancient log-books and new treatises of maritime law; the testimony of mariners and the opinions of physicians, all were made tributary to his cause. He exhibited to the jury a large map of the world, and, taking the log of the ship in his hand, he read its daily entries, and as he did so, marked on the map the ship's course, showing plainly to eye of the jury, that on four different occasions, while the crew were rotting with the scurvy, the ship passed within a few hours' sail of islands, renowned in all those seas for the abundance, the excellence, and the cheapness of their vegetables. Mr. Choate contested every point with all his skill and eloquence. The end of the daily session was only the beginning of General Butler's day's work; for there were new points to be investigated, other facts to be discovered, more witnesses to be hunted up. He rummaged libraries, he pored over encyclopedias and gazetteers, he ferreted out old sailors, and went into court every morning with a mass of new material, and followed by a train of old doctors or old salts to support a position shaken the day before. In the course of the trial, he had on the witness-stand nearly every eminent physician in Boston, and nearly every sea-captain and shipowner. Justice and General Butler triumphed. The jury gave damages to the amount of three thousand dollars; an award which to-day protects American sailors on every sea.

Such energy and talent as this, could not fail of liberal reward. After ten years of practice at Lowell, with frequent employment in Boston courts, General Butler opened an office in Boston, and thenceforward, in conjunction with a partner in each city, carried on two distinct establishments. For many years he was punctual at the depot in Lowell at seven in the morning, summer and winter; at Boston soon after eight; in court at Boston from half past nine till near five in the afternoon; back to Lowell, and to dinner at half past six; at his office in Lowell from half past seven till midnight, or later. When the war broke out, he had the most lucrative prac

tice in New England-worth, at a moderate estimate, eighteen thousand dollars a year. At the moment of his leaving for the scene of war, the list of cases in which he was retained numbered five hundred. Happily married at an early age to a lady, in whom are united the accomplishments which please, and the qualities that inspire esteem, blessed with three affectionate children,he enjoyed at his beautiful home, on the lofty banks of the tumbling Merrimac, a most enviable domestic felicity. At the age of forty, though he had lived liberally, he was in a condition to retire from business if he had so chosen.

Such particulars, in an ordinary sketch of a living man, would, perhaps, be out of place. In the present instance they constitute part of the case. I hold this opinion: that no man is fit to be entrusted with public affairs who has not successfully managed his own. And this other opinion: the fact that a man has conducted his own affairs with honorable success is a reason for believing that his management of public affairs has been just and wise.

Mr. Griffin well remarks that a lawyer in great practice as an advocate has peculiar opportunities of acquiring peculiar knowledge. That famous scurvy case, for example, made him acquainted with the entire range of sanitary science. A great bank case opens all the mysteries of finance; a bridge case the whole art of bridge building; a railroad case the law and usages of all railroads. A few years ago when General Butler served as one of the examiners at West Point, he put a world of questions to the graduating class upon subjects connected with the military art, indicating unexpected specialities of knowledge in the questioner. "But how did you know anything about that?" his companions would ask. “Oh, I once had a case which obliged me to look into it." This answer was made so often that it became the jocular custom of the committee, when any knotty point arose in conversation, to ask General Butler whether he had not had a case involving it. The knowingness and direct manner of this Massachusetts lawyer left such an impression upon the mind of one of the class, (the lamented General George G. Strong,) that he sought service under him in the war five years after. This curious speciality of information, particularly his intimate knowledge of ships, banks, railroads, sanitary science, and engineering, was of the utmost value to him and to the country at a later day.

And now a few words upon the political career of General Butler in Massachusetts. Despite his enormous and incessant labors at the bar, he was a busy and eager politician. From his twentieth year he was wont to stump the neighboring towns at election time, and from the year 1844, never failed to attend the national conventions of his party. Upon all the questions, both of state and national politics, which have agitated Massachusetts during the last twenty years, his record is clear and ineffaceable. Right or wrong, there is not the slightest difficulty in knowing where he has stood or stands. He has, in perfection, what the French call "the courage of opinion;" which a man could not fail to have who has passed his whole life in a minority, generally a hopeless minority, but a minority always active, incisive, and inspired with the audacity which comes of having nothing to lose. I need not remind any American reader that during the last twenty-five years the democratic party in Massachusetts has seldom had even a plausible hope of carrying an election. If ever it has enjoyed a partial triumph, it has been through the operation of causes which disturbed the main issue, and enabled the party to combine with factions temporarily severed from a majority otherwise invincible.

The politics of an American citizen, for many years past, have been divided into two parts: 1. His position on the questions affected by slavery. 2. His position on questions not affected by slavery. Let us first glance at General Butler's course on the class of subjects last named.

As a state politician, then, the record of which lies before me in a heap of pamphlets, reports, speeches, and proceedings of deliberative bodies, I find his course to have been soundly democratic, a champion of fair play and equal rights. In that great struggle which resulted in the passage of the eleven-hour law, he was a candidate for the legislature, on the "ten-hour ticket," and fought the battle with all the vigor and tact which belonged to him. A few days before the election, as he was seated in his office at Lowell, a deputation of workingmen came to him, excited and alarmed, with the news, that a notice had been posted in the mills, to the effect, that any man who voted the Butler ten-hour ticket would be discharged.

"Get out a hand-bill," said the general, "announcing that I will address the workingmen to-morrow evening."