Year: 1878

A Critical Week for Butler.


At present and for the next two days
every political telescope in the United
States will be directed toward General
Butler and his transit across the Demo-
cratic State Convention of Massachusetts,
with the same eager alertness with which
astronomers watch a transit of Venus. The
great Butler transit tomorrow will enable
politicians to solve as many interesting
problems as astronomers ever solved IN
their own science by means Of we'll OBJ
served transit But instead OF transit it
may prove to be total eclipse, as in
structive in its way as the remarkable one
which happened this summer, and which,
among other interesting results, led to the
discovery of new planet. The affair at
Worcester tomorrow is more likely to be
total eclipse than u transit. The broad
disk of Butler, as it passes over the orb of
the Massachusetts democracy. may be of
sufficient magnitude to cause total OBJ
scuration. All the political astronomers
are preparing to watch it and compute 1T
and to found calculations on it respecting
the orbits of parties. 1t will serve as
basis for many inferences respecting what
is likely to take place between the present
time and the great national contest OF 1880.


General Butler does not intend to leave
his democratic friends to act without his
counsel and assistance. He has engaged
parlors in the principal hotel at Worcester,
which will be the political headquarters Of
that large proportion OF the democratic dele
gates who have been instructed to vote for
his nomination as the democratic candidate
for Governor Whatever else may be said
of Butler it cannot be denied that he
has capacity to inspire personal de-
votion and enthusiasm, nor that he
is gifted in all the arts of manipulating
political assemblage. The chances
are that he will outwit and overmatch
his old-line democratic opponents. The
Executive Committee in the ukase it pro-
mulgated from Boston forbidding the ad-
mission of Butler delegates to seats in the
Convention committed palpable blunder,
which Butler is shrewd enough to turn to
his own advantage. Every representative
body is the proper judge OF the election
and qualifications of its members princi-
pie so obvious that Butler will have no
difficulty in convincing the delegates who
have been instructed to vote for him that
the Executive Committee has made an un-
warranted assault on their rights. From
the towns sending Butler men there will be
no contesting delegations, aud more than
half the democratic constituencies will be
distranchised if the Butler delegates are
excluded, making q rump convention
whose authority will be disputed and
derided throughout the State. '


As a matter Of practical management the
State Committee can shut the doors against
the Butler delegates if it chooses to go to
that extreme. The State Committee hires
the hall and can control its use. It will
have the same power over it for the one day
on days when it is not leased It is the
usual practice for the State Committee to
issue tickets Of admission to the delegates,
and if the committee refuses tickets to the
Butler delegates the latter cannot force
their way in any more than they could into
another building which they had no legal
claim to occupy. But if tickets are refused
to the Butler delegates they will assemble
in some other place, and may form
a larger convention than the body
which claims to be regular. The conse-
quence would be a unanimous nomination
of Butler by a convention of regularly ap-
pointed democratic delegates outnumber-
ing those admitted to the hall of the State
Committee. The orthodox nominee would
be laughed to scorn as rump candidate,
and no democrat would be restrained from
voting for Butler by the terrors of party
discipline. Ia such circumstances party
discipline would be defied and scorned and
the democratic organization be shiversd
into fragments--one portion voting for
Butler with enthusiastic zeal and the other
portion going straight over into the camp
of the republicans. In that event the
Butlor movement will be a total eclipse Of
the democratic party Of Massachusetts,.


Rising of the Mile.


Apparently the meteorological disturb