The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-10-12
Butler and Atkinson.

The controversy between those two shining
lights of Ra6icalism, Mr.. Edward Atkinson
and DR.. Benjamin Franklin Butler, is of that
"dog. .eat-dog" character which, under ordi-
nary circumstances, need not necessarily in
terest the public, since they call each other
thieves and swindlers, and each produces
evidence to show that his estimate of the
other is just. To be specific, Atkinson charges
that Buffers looseness on the financial ques-
tion should prevent his reelection to Con-
gress: Butler retorts that Atkinson has swim
died widows and orphans out of$l6 900 of their
little earnings; Atkinson replies in substance
that Butler has possessed himself, by bribery or
theft, of a private telegram Butler responds by
cody accepting Atkinson's explanation,
''that he defrauded the Essex Savings Bank
out of SIG, 900 in gold, in his official capacity
as treasurer of corporation, and not for his
indi ividual benefit" This is the case as it
stands till Atkinson comes up again, or throws
up the sponge. Why the public should have
been bothered with this matter is past COM
prehension, because, if Buffers only grievance
were the mere fact that Atkinson had de-
frauded some one out of 6,000 in gold, his
own experiance in the Smith Brothers, New
Orleans, case should have convinced him that
affairs of this kind can be quietly and sum-
marily settled in court of justice without
recourse to the daily papers.
But for general purposes there is something
more in this Butler-Atkinson affair than ap-
pears on the surface. Both men are probably
not only what they are represented to be by
each other, but both are representative radi-
calls who have been used in turn for the advan-
tage of their party. To take the last and
least first, Atkinson, whose private financial
operations are the subject of Buffers virtuous
comment, has lately been put forward as
Wells catspaw to advance a false statement
with regard to the public debt, to cover the
corruption and extravaganza of the radical
party. Buffers public exhibition OF the
private character of this Atkinson will go far
TO weaken Atkinson as radical electiOneer-
ing instrument. On the other hand, Atkinson
is endeavoring to defeat Butler in the Fifth
Massachusetts, Congressional District, and
those journals which pretend to believe in
Atkinson, and which have used Atkinson,
and Wells figures run through Atkinson,
to show that the public debt is not so large as
the Treasury exhibits say it is, now turn In
and rOundly abuse Butler, and are doing
their best to beat him in his effort to secure
a reelection. These papers are assisted by
the Butler boiling Republicans of Essex, and
by Messrs. Dana, Abbott and Nudge, whose
speeches, by-the-by, with the proceedings
of the Congressional Convention which nomi-
mated Mr.. Dana, were specially reported in
the World and in no other city journal,
and have since been conveyed" into the
columns of our radical contemporaries. Yet
these very people and these papers found it
difficult, not long ago, to find sufficiently
smooth words wherewith to butter this same
Butler. When Butler was in New Orleans he
was the foremost man in the radical party
the EXTREMIST exponent of radical principles.
And naturally. Utterly devoid of conscience
or character, this Butler had been for years
the accepted advocate of thieves aud prosti-
tutes, the sought-far counsellor of scoundrels,
SO that by very association he had oeme to
look upon all men and all women as creatures
who were as vile, socially and morally, as his
own chosen customers and companions. He
was the first great brute of the war, and in that
capacity he pandered to the passion OF hate
which radicalism made religion, especially in