The New York herald., 1875-10-19
General Butler In seIf-Defsnoe.

N"heEAi butAer In SeAf-Defence.
We are quite willing to print the letter in
which General Butler attempts to parry our
criticisms on his recent speech in this city.
He supplies fresh proof Of the justice Of our
structures and makes further exposure Of
the financial ignorance which courtesy COM
PEELED US to charge him with as the only
way of extricating him from the graver
charge Of a wilful Justification of facts. He
asserted in his speech that the Bank of
England had three times suspended
specie payments" since the act of
1914 namely, in 1847 in 1857 and
in 1866 That assertion was so false in
fact that, in our considerate wish to shield
General Butler from the guilt of intentional
Misrepresentation, we charitably supposed
that he is new in such studies and had con-
founded the suspension of a particular pro-
vision of the Bank act, which he did not un-
derstand, with suspension of specie pay
ments. He has pride enough to be mortified
at our exposure but his indiscreet attempt
to Justify it reminds us Of Webster's figure of
strong man struggling in a morass and
sinking deeper and deeper in his attempts at
extrication. If General Butler sunk to his
chin in his speech he has gone down over
head and ears in the bog in his letter of de-
fence which we print in another column.
His original blunder was a misinterpreta-
ton ofthe word suspension" which, in his
thorough ignorance of the subject he was dis
cussing he understood as meaning a suspen-
sion of specie payments, when it meant in
fact, partial suspension of the Bank act OF
1874 He now falls into an equally ridicu-
lous blunder founded on his misapprehen-
sion of the word reserve" He contends
that the Bank Of England did really suspend
specie payments in 1866 Gt suffices for the
purposes of refutation to explode one of his
examples) because it's reserve" was on that
occasion reduced to nothing, and he quotes
Bagehots interesting book, Lombard
Street." as an authority. Bagehot himself,
if General Butler had read his book with in
telligence, should have saved him from 80
ridiculous q mistake. General Butler thinks
that the reserve referred to was q specie
reserve for the redemption Of the bank notes,
and that it's exhaustion was an exhaustion of
all the specie in the Bank. In reply to this
astonishing exhibition Of ignorance we will
inform General Butler that the word ''re-
serve" which so constantly recurs in the
luminous pages of Mr.. Bagehot, has no such
sense. To quote Mr.. Bagehot's own Ian
guage eve speak not of the currency
reserve, but of the banking reserye-the
reserve held against deposits, and not the
reserve held against notes" The banking
reserve held against deposits consists chiefly
of bank notes the currency reserve held
against the notes consists of coin and bull
ion, and it is a grotesque exhibition of
ignorance to confound the two. In the
suspension of 1866, on which General
Butler lays so much stress, the Bank of
England had nearly eighty million dollars,
reckoned in our money, in its vaults, of gold
or bullion, which the law compelled it to
pay out for notes whenever notes were pre-
sented. But General Butler is ignorant
enough to suppose, and to try to convince
the readers Of the HERALD, that the Bank
could not possibly have paid specie on that
occasion because its stock of bullion was
exhausted Because Mr.. Bagehot had said
in his book that the ''bank reserve" was
exhausted General Butler jumps, in the
profundity of his ignorance, to the conclu-
sion that the bullion in the Bank was ex-
hausted We will give him the figures and
let him digest them if he can. ''Black
Friday" or ''Overend Friday" the day
on which the Bank act was suspended,
was May II, 1866. On the preceding
day, May 10, the bullion in the issue de-
partment of the Bank was e16, 279, go. One
week later, May II, it was Els, S37, 1926, show
ing a reduction during the darkest week
of that memorable panic Of f442, 345. Will
General Butler write us another letter in
reply to these figures They prove that
specie payments were not suspended, be-
cause they show that the Bank paid out
more than two million dollars of our money
in the redemption of its notes. They show
that there was not the remotest danger Of
specie suspension, for a week after the panic
had set in the Bank had $79, 166, 625 of
our money in gold, held for the redemption
of it's notes These figures, taken from the
official reports of the Bank, are submitted to
General Butler, with assurances of our
most distinguished consideration.
THE COMING OF MOODY AND SANKEY has
made the subject of a religious revival the
absorbing theme among evangelical Chris
tians. At the Methodist Preachers Meet