Litchfield enquirer., 1877-02-15
The Burial of a Bourbon.

The Napoleonic definition of Bourbon as a man that remembers nothing and for gets nothing is very trite. but it will bear repetition when it illustrates so aptly az it does the public life and acts of MT. George s. Boutwell,, late candidate for United. States Senator from Massachu- setts. For, in truth, the man and the times which gave him his prominence had so much in common that when new era came 1t left him far behind. He was defeated not because he was chang. ed, but because he had remained stationary while the times had gone on. Indeed, unless we could believe that the period and the circumstances which could make such a man prominent were excep- tional, we should begin to falter in our faith in Americans judnment, American character and American destiny
 MT. Boutwell, belonged to the militant era of our politics. During the great civil war and in the supreme stress of the na- tion we instinctively and wisely insisted upon loyalty as the fundamental quality of our public men. We asked of candi- dates not were they Walpoles in political strategy, ,Chrysostoms in oratory or Wash ingtons in placid and self-contained wis., dom, but were they true, were they loyal, WVAO 0uCy BCuuluCly pfOIOuuOly pdU- riotic The war issue for the time cast it's shadow over all our politics and threw it's penumbra good way beyond Appo- matox. We afterwafd came, just as any nation of Anglo-Saxons in our situation would have come, to another and milder form of war tests. We allowed a good war record to cover, in the case of candi- dates, a multitude of bad qualities which in other peflods we would have scruti- nized and weighed. These were the times that were prolific of the statesmen of the Boutwell, type, ranging all the way from the brnsque "war horse" Logan to the sardohic and elusive Chandler and the fippant Butler-m men of loyal and often fiiustrious records, but of narrow views, impulsive tempers and partisan in their instincts, habits and ambitions. But it is not the habit of a nation that is in state of reaction after a great war to be censo- rious or critical, and history will probably decide that it was more our misfortune than our blame that we left the solution of the grave problems that succeeded the strife to the men who had conQuered rather than to the men who had delib. erated
 It was MT. BoutwelI's bad luck that. of the militant school of statesmen, he alone was given the position which called for purely scientific training. He took hls most responsible public office at tune when our Treasury notes were moving rapidly toward par, when the ssmeney question" as it exists to-day with its party divisions was not even foreseen, when by amoderate exercise of scientific acumen we might have moved steadily and smooth. ly tospecie payments. Such an opportu. NaVkNe $sNN ~A,1k@l IL.
 opened. and had Mir. Boutwell, accepted It. or rather had he been endowed with the capacity to accept it he might have been almost anything in public life. We would not, however, have 1t supposed that Mir. Boutwell, under-estimated his own capacity or that his faults were those of diffdence. Any on. who will examine his reports will be convinced that his financial notions were original as we'll as many, and that his conceptions of the $44, 900. 900 "reserve" were at least unioue If we measure them by scientific stand ards. It was probably fortunate even for Mr. BoutwelIs financial reputation, that the ground-swell of the great Republican triumph of 1872 swept him into the sen- atorship and left the national Treasury curing the succeeding year of panic in charge of his incompetent successor.
 Of Mir. Boutwell's career in the Senate. of his crude, narrow and partisan views of public questions, of his servile yet ac. tive support of the methods of Grantism. of his alliance with Butler and his recent bad eminence in Massachusetts politics we will not speak, for perhaps we cannot speak with fairness. We prefer rather to record. and are glad to do so, that among his sfailings corruption has never beea charged. But we delight much more to believe that hrs defeat is a mark of better times; that it is sign that we are drift
 ing away from the old political status which thought into office him and lns school; and that the choice of Judge Hoar, like the discontinue of Carpenter and Chandler two years ago. and like the patriotic agreement on Electoral bills at-