The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1867-09-20
General ID. r. ButIer's Ideal OF a Perfect
Governments.

General ID. r.. ButIer's Ideal OF a Perfect
Governments.
On Wednesday last twenty thousand people
met at the annual festival on Salisbury beach,
about forty miles from Boston. After the
various sports and outdoor concerts Of the
forenoon, speeches were delivered by several
orators, including Major Ben Perley Poore, of
apple and wheelbarrow notoriety, and ex-Major
General Ben F. Butler, Doctor Of Laws. The
ringing Of large plantation slave bell which
General Butler captured in Louisiana, after it
had been sent to the foundry to be cast into
rebel cannon, was the prelude to his speech.
The speech itself was a kind Of general con-
fession Of political faith, and was fully reported
in yesterdays HERALD. Doctor Butler sketched
his ideal of perfect government. The essen
tails of a perfect government he declared to
be universal equality of liberty, universal
equality of right" the right of every man to
be the equal Of every other man if he can"
"a condition adroitly introduced)-
equality ofpower in the government, universal
equality of taxation, and universal equality of
punishment for traitors. In developing the
latter part of his thesis, the Doctor, of course,
WAKES eloquently angry. In advocating an
equal distribution OF the burdens of govern
ment he displays the hard, clear sense with
which we lately credited him in reference to
his financial views. But his general confession
OF political faith is in the main, altogether too
general. Its glitterlDg generalites offer most
unsatisfactory substitute for the practical wis
dom and the statesmanlike tact which are
indispensable in the application Of political
theories to the actual exigencies of our
great and complicated system of republi-
can representative government In short,
Buffers ideal of perfect government
is almost as impracticable, shadowy and
unsubstantlal as the ideal of Plato in his Gre
public" Of Harrington in his "Oceana," and
of Sir Thomas More in his utopia" II must
be catalogued with those political romances.
Montesquieu accused Harrington of dreaming
of an ideal republic when the constitution of
his own country was before him, model of
free government, and says, /" He has sought for
liberty, but has failed to recognize it when
before his eyes," Might not similar charge
be brought against Ben Butler, and Tbad
Stevens, and William Lloyd Garrison, and
Wendell Phillips and all the rest of our Amer
lean political dreamers, who reject and spit
upon the constitution of their own country
the model of free government-openly boast
ing that the violence which they have coun-
selled and abetted has been done and
must be done outside of the constitution,
and in defiance of it? General Butler lauds
even the Ignorance of the negro, and rests the
claim of the freedman to an equality of right
and an equality Of power upon the fact that he is
a man, and his claim to a superiority of right
and power over his former master upon the
assumption that he was loyal during the recent
war. But Butler is shrewd enough to admit
the negro to the right to be the equal, nay, the
superior, of the white man, only Elf he can =
and this cunning proyso takes good deal Of
wind out of the Doctors big, swelling words
about negro equality. "Full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing" they differ but little
from the usual rhodomontades of our radical
orators.