The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-30 00:00:00

GENERAL BUTLER'S ETHICS.

(From the New York Nation.)
General Butler has won a good deal of reputation
as a lawyer and administrator, but nobody gave
him credit for much ability as an ethical philosopher.
To this title, however, he has fully vindicated his
claim in a remarkable conversation reported in the
Boston Advertiser of Sept. 4. He there laid it down

hat, as the United States Five-twenty Bonds are

not on their face payable in gold, but only in
" dollars," the Government ought only to pay them
in paper currency, as it pays its other creditors. This,
says the General, "is the exact letter of the bond."
That is, as the bonds are a promise simply to pay so
many " dollars," and do not mention what kind of
dollars, and as the Government can call anything
it pleases "dollars," by means of an act of Con-
gress, it may fairly pay its bond creditors either in
paper or old iron or cast-off army-blankets or
damaged biscuit, or any other commodity that it
• may want to get rid of. To be sure, General Butler
recommends paper with promises to pay printed on
it ; but then, as this paper would, under such cir-
cumstances, be worth absolutely nothing, we take

the liberty of amending this proposition and sug-
gesting that they get condemned stores, of which
there must be large quantities still on hand. " One
Hundred Dollars," for instance, might be painted
in big letters on old uniform coats, and when a bond
of this nominal value was sent in for redemption,

,he blanket could be handed over the counter

to the holder. Of course he would grumble,
but we could tell him that we never said
we would pay him in gold. " But I under-

stood," he would reply, " that you would pay me in
the current money of the world ; if I had thought
that by dollars' you meant anything you chose to
call a dollar, I never would have lent you the
money." Then we would laugh at him and "chaff"
him pleasantly for his simplicity.
But not only, according to General Butler, are
we not bound to pay the bonds in gold, by the
letter of the law, but are not bound in morals to pay
them in gold. This may seem a hard saying to
simple minds; but nothing can be plainer. The
foreign holders of the bonds bought them as a pure
money-making transaction, and not with the view
of aiding us in our great struggle ; so also the
native holders bought them at a tremendous dis-
count, and with a view to profit, or, as General
Butler terms it, "an eye to the proceeds." Now,
to make a debt or other contract binding on the
conscience, it must be based on affection. In old
times it had to be based on a valuable considera-
tion ;" but those hard, wicked old times have passed

away, and nobody is now bound to pay what he

_ .
owes unless his creditors can show that they trust
him out of love, and from a desire to see him get

on in the world. As very few creditors can prove

anything of the kind, the legal recognition of
General Butler's theory would release vast numbers
of worthy men from very disagreeable burdens.
What is most encouraging and delightful about

this whole conversation is the illustration it affords
of the amount of wisdom and high morality the
nation has to draw on whenever it finds itself in
difficulties in the summer season, when its great
men have retired to muse and hoe potatoes on their
paternal acres. If the Democrats get up a repu-
diation cry in the West—and there begins to be
some fear that the pill, as they present it, may
prove attractive to the masses out there—all the
Republicans have to do is to send down a re-
porter to General Butler, or the like of him, and
in five minutes a bolus is produced, made not
simply, like poor Pendleton's, of common low in-
terest or convenience, but of principles of pure
justice, and the Democrats have forthwith to hide
their diminished heads. His scheme is really, as
compared to General Butler's, not fit to be seen.
He recommends repudiation, in a brutal, coarse
way, as a pleasant thing to do ; while the Eastern
statesman shows that it would not only be pleasant,
but right. In fact, Mr. Pendleton proposes gar-
rotting, while General Butler recommends the
scientific and innocent " drop game" as a means of
getting over our financial difficulties. As the " drop
game" may not be familiar to all our readers, we may
explain that it is a mode of raising money occa-
sionally resorted to by gentlemen in New York who
find their credit low in the regular market. They
put a counterfeit fifty-dollar bill in a pocket-book
first, and drop it in front of some innocent-looking
countryman whom they see coming, and just
as he approaches them pretend to discover it
and pick it up in his presence. They open it ;
find a fifty-dollar bill in it, aro too honest to
keep it, have no time to advertise it, as the
cars are just going ; and propose to the coun-
tryman that he should keep it, advertise it, and
restore it to the owner, advancing the finder ten
dollars, or thereabouts, in the meantime, out of the
anticipated reward. This he does, and the finder
goes off content. Now in this case no cheat is
practised on the countryman ; nobody forces him to
take a strange pocket-book with fifty dollars in it.
He advances the ten dollars " with an eye to the
proceeds ;" the finder does not tell him the fif ty-
dollar bill is a good one ; he runs his own risk and
meets with his reward ; nobody is to blame but him-
self. Under the New York law the perpetrator of
the game is, we regret to say, punishable ; but in
these days of grogress let us trust he will not long
remain so. Two or three more " jumps forward,"
and the poor fellows will find their devices acknow-
ledged by society as a fair mode of levying the tri-
bute which simplicity owes to smartness.

The life of Jefferson Davis is to be wri
Richmond gentleman.
Mr. Greeley received from Mr. Bonner 5,000
dollars for his story of a busy life.
The " Giraffe,:flunters," by Captain Mayne Reid,
is now ready at all libraries.
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