son that his party was a small minority
in Massachusetts. He was elected to the House of Representatives
for the Legislature of 1853. During that session there was
a memorable struggle on the part of the Whigs to repeal so
much of the act providing for an election of delegates to
a Constitutional convention as required the election to be
by secret ballot. There was also, as an incident of this
struggle, an angry contest in the joint convention of the
two Houses held for the purpose of electing some officers
required by the Constitution to be chosen by joint ballot.
The dispute related to the extent of the authority of the
President of the Senate, as presiding officer, to control
the joint assembly. Butler was conspicuous in that scene
of turbulence and disorder. On the occasion of some ruling
by the Whig Speaker, Mr. George Bliss, a worthy and respectable
old gentleman, Butler called out in a loud voice: "I should
like to knife that old cuss." That utterance was quoted not
only all over the Union, but in foreign countries, in England,
and on the continent, and in the West Indies, as a proof of
the degradation and licentiousness of popular governments.
It is a singular fact that a like question as to the authority
of the presiding officer of a joint convention of two legislative
bodies came up in Congress when the electoral vote was counted,
at the time of the election of General Grant in 1868. Butler
repeated on a larger stage his disorderly conduct, until
Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House--although Mr. Wade,
President of the Senate, was then presiding over the joint
convention--resumed the chair of the House, in order, as Mr.
Blaine described it afterward, "to chastise the insolence
of the member from Massachusetts."

He was chosen in 1860, when the Democratic Party was divided
between the supporters of Douglas and the supporters of Breckenridge,
a delegate to the National Convention at Charleston, South
Carolina, by the Douglas Democrats of Massachusetts, under
instructions to vote for Douglas. Instead, he voted thirty-
seven times for Jefferson Davis. There has been but one other
instance, I believe, in the history of Massachusetts of such
a betrayal of trust. That other related not to candidates
but to principles.

Under our political arrangements the presidential elector
is but a scribe. He exercises no discretion, but only records
the will of the people who elect him. The real selection of
th