Year: 1876

Gen. Buffers One Virtue.


Once there was a wicked genie whose ieal-
ousy was so immoderate that he kept his
beautiful coquette of wife shut I'D in
glass case, fastened with four locks
and sunk to the bottom of the sea. Yet the
lady frequently managed to go abroad, and
everybody remembers how desperately she
firted. The much abused gentleman, now
deceased, must have been member of the
Butler family, and it is plain that it is his
relict who now, with pudency so rosy"
asks the people of the Lowell district to send
her to Congress. A singular fxedness of
purpose and marked directness in its avow-
al on the part of both ladies establish their
identity beyond doubt. Besides, both ladies
had certain Asmodean facility in escaping,
however securely bottled up, never possessed
by any other person.


We have no ambition to enter on any gen.
eral discussion of the widow Butler. 1t is
enough that we have satisfactorily discovered
her antecedents. But there is one constant
phase of her relations with mankind that
may well be made the subject of very brief
lay sermon. Let the reader reflect whether
he has.ever heard from himself or another
discourse substantially in these words: 81
consider Gen. Butler in many respects a bad
man. He is unprincipled, reckless and un-
safe. But there is one thing about him
which do like and that is his frankness.
There is no hypocrisy about him. He owns
up to.all his deviltry like man and defends
it. That's the sort of man for me, and 1 be-
lieve that if lived in his district should
vote for him. Give me anything but a hypo.
crite'' We believe that this position is
great error in ethics, though it is one which
almost always passes undetected. A recent
writer points with excusable complacency to
the fact that all the world had been saving for
scores if not hundreds of years that ''the ex-
ception proves the rule'' until he discovered
that this declaration as applied in ninety-
nine cases out of hundred is arrant
of the grossest and most palpable
kind. The phrase had passed so many times
that people no longer troubled
themselves about its meaning. By similar
repetition of sterotyped phrases in regard to
the folly, and wickedness of hypocrisy its
reldtice Importance among crimes has been
entirely lost from sight. And by reason of
this oversight those very qualities which
make man most dangerous and mark him
as irrcclaimable are paraded in extenuation
of his crimes.


Ordinary hypocrisy, relative to genuine
moral purity is undoubtedly vice, but rela
tive to open, undisguised and vainglorious
it is virtue. 1t is the tacit ac
of the supremacy of the
moral law on the part of man whose yery
dissimulation is commonly an evidence that
he recognizes an obligation to obey law, how
ever lamentable his failure to do so. He
his vices because he is ashamed of
them and because his moral nature has not
become so corrupt as to refuse even theo-
retical assent to the rules of right conduct.
There are two steps to be taken by the
avowed and defiant wrongdoer before he can
become an upright man, by the hypocrite
only one. Meanwhile the latter ordinarily
avoids the scandal and injury TO his fellow
men arising from bad example and, if by
chance he be detected, his conduct already
by his own attempt at conceal
ment is revealed to the world in all its unex-
cused and unpalliated hideousness, leaving
the unveiled hypocrite and his crime to the
contempt of his neighbors, while a harder
criminal by his boldness, plausibility and
cheerful disregard of public opinion might
often win from men of like inclination ap-
plause and emulation.


We believe this view of the case is justified
by the different practical results from open
and covert vice. Teetotalism, for instance,
is unquestionably good morals, but if a man
must and will indulge his appetite it seems
clear that he does less harm, if not to his own
nature certainly to his neighbors, by conceal
ing his weakness than by defending,inebriety
profering the glass to others and assisting by
the weight of his character and influence in
making intemperance respectable. Gen.
Buffers open admission and airy defense of
the worst acts of his life, his brazen advocacy
of trickery in politics and extortion in busi-
ness, accompanied by temporary successes
and unmpaired cheerfulness, had for time
a very perceptible influence in lowering
the tone of public morals in the
United States and in educating a
class of young politicians to believe that the
road to success lay through chcanery, impu-
dence, avarice and falsehood. Gen. Butler
founded school in politics. He still has in
all parts of the country many admirers and
disciples. But who is the admirer or imita-
tor of that considerable company of men who
had, previous to the discovery of their con-
nection with the Credit Mobiler frauds, en-
joyed high reputation for probity, and who
after that discovery skunk one by one to the
oblivion of private life and dishonored graves?
Gen. Butler still lives to corrupt the youth of
America by teaching openly that wrcng is
right. Is he better man than they whose
discovered hypocrisy was confession that


wrong is wrong, and whose remorse and pun


ishment will forever remain terrible warn


Ing to all those who are inclined to follow the
same devious paths? Confession IS the re-
suit OF penitencs and with a purpose of
amendment is no doubt always salutary. But


this is very different thing from Butlerism


which is confession as the result of moral in.


sensibility, and with view to persistence and


impunity in reckless ambition and selfishness,


The decent citizens of the Massachusetts, dis


trict which Butler proposes to capture are in


deed in woful plight. On the one hand is


Butler-on the other Tarbox. Wickedness


and strength against wickedness and weak


ness-impudence against imbecity. 1t is a


deplorable alternative but it seems perfectly