he National Soldiers'
Home. He mingled the money of that institution with his own,
got the use of it, got interest upon it, for which he never
accounted. An attempt was made to investigate his accounts
and he refused on the ground that he could not do it without
showing his private account books, which he was not compelled
to do.

He had a powerful political influence which made him an object
of terror to timid and ambitious men. So, much to the shame
of our public authorities, the investigation was not pressed.
He was allowed to pay over only such sum as he himself admitted
to be due.

General Butler's chief title to distinction in political life
was a scheme which Massachusetts has pronounced a scheme
of dishonesty and infamy in every method by which her sentiment
can be made known. This scheme was to pay off the national
debt and all other debts public and private, including all
widows' and soldiers' pensions, in irredeemable paper money.
He proposed to issue a series of government bonds bearing
interest, payable like the principal, in greenbacks, and providing
that the greenbacks should never be redeemed, but that the
holder might at any time, on demand, get from the Treasury
the equivalent in bonds. This scheme had been announced by
General Butler for several years before the Presidential election
of 1876. In that year General Butler, who had been defeated
for reelection to Congress from the Essex district in 1874,
was a candidate for the Republican nomination in the Middlesex
district, which included his home in Lowell. There was much
opposition to him. But the party feeling was very strong
and no other person of large enough reputation or of conspicuous
ability could be found to take the Republican nomination.
General Butler was accordingly nominated with the distinct
promise on his part that he would surrender his plans in regard
to finance out of deference to the known wishes of his constituents,
and would act with the Republican Party upon financial questions.
To this pledge he owed, if not his nomination and election,
certainly his great majority in the convention and at the
polls. This pledge, as in the case of the trust which had
been committed to him by the Douglas Democrats before the
war, he most unblushingly and shamelessly violated. He renewed
and advocated his fiat money scheme. The result was that
at the next convention of the Republican Party in his district
the following resolutio