The Newtown bee., 1893-02-24

conducting suits brought by factory girls against corporations for wages withheld on one pretext or another. It is related that in this period of his life he once addressed an assemblage of thousands of operatives, and admitting the justice of their claims, persuaded them to return to work and strive either by remonstrance or appeal to the Legis- lature, or both, to secure shorter hours and better pay. They took his advice, and this aversion of strike made so fav- orable an impression on the mill owners considerable business later on. He en- tered into partnership with his teacher in law, William Smith, and soon became famous for his prompt retorts in court. It is he who made the savage reply to the judge who reminded him that wit ness he was cross-examining was a liar yard professor: ''I know it, your honor, we hanged one of them the other day" This was just after the great
 WEBsTER-PARKMAN MURDER TRIAL,
 which resulted in the hanging of Prof Webster. One of Mir Buffers legal suc- cesses was in the case of the annexation of Charlestown to Boston. The act, had been passed by the Legislature, and both cities had voted to accept it. But there were those in Charlestown who did not like the union, and by advice of Butler majority of the aldermen of the city refused to sign the certificate of the vote. The question went to the supreme court and was decided in accordance with Buffers point, so that the annexation was delayed for between l2 and l5 years In 1916 Butler was counsel for mill own CTS in the matter of the Cohituate lake water. The city of Boston had con- structed at great expense various reser- vors to supply as compensation to the mill owners an amount of water equal to the amount taken from them. Gen But Ter objected before the court that, having taken the water, the city could not com pensate in that way. The position was sustained and the city later sold it's cost ly reservoirs.
 There is scarcely an instance in all Buffers legal triumphs, which were on some technicality.
 HE WAS FEARED BY LAWYERS
 because of his extraordinary ability to detect petty flaws in indictments, and he saved many a man whose guilt was -un- doubted by the superiority of his techni- cal insight. Judge Josiah G. Abbott, who was alternately his political enemy and associate, said of him few years ago: 'In one faculty have never known him to be excelled by any lawyer. This was the keeping out and getting in of ev. idence.'' It is therefore plain that he did not win his success by the virtue of his causes, but by the shiftiness of his intellect anG the perception of his antagonists weak nesses. In fine, he was what the sue cessful criminal lawyer is wont to be. | MT Butler, while fully engaged in tht business of the law, was not oblivious ol the advantage of militia prominence il relation to political preferment. In tht eastern part of the state the militia 4t and 50 years ago was vastly more i'm portant than it was in the rest of tn. commonwealth. The Lowell lawyer en tered the company in his turn and ros' through all the grades of the service being brigadier-general when the re bellion broke out. This had helped hin not little in his political aspirations He was in 1853 n <r
 ELECTED AS FBEE SOIL DEMOCRAT
 to the Legislature and became the leade
 of his party; to him was in some meas ure duethe reduction of the hours of la
 Dor in factories from B to IL. Tn
 coalition chose him delegate to tn
 constitutional convention. When tn know-nothing movement swamped tn
 state in 1855 he opposed it, his stout re
 sistance to Gov Gardner's order disband
 ing the Irish companies of the maliti
 lost him his commission as colonel; bu he was restored to his rank by Gov Bank in 1858 and made brigadier-general That fall he was elected to the Senate The places he had occupied hardly meas ured the prominence which he had attain
 ed in his party, since Massachusetts wa not a democratic state. The free soil ele ment in the Massachusetts democracy. Q
 that day had been as strong as the re
 form element is in the same democrac,
 at present, but the irrepressible conflic
 had been driving it out since the da. : when it shared in the election of Gharie