In addition to his discharge of the duties of his office in court, its other labors were of unexampled amount during the period that it was held by Mr. Butler; and the number of written opinions given by him, on questions constantly submitted to him from all the other departments and offices of the Government, was probably not less than three or four times the number given by any of his predecessors.

For a period of about five months from October, 1836, to March, 1837, Mr. Butler added to his other multifarious and almost gigantic labors those of the charge of the Department of War, at that time, too, a peculiarly onerous burthen. This appointment, as Secretary of War ad interim, was almost forced upon him by General Jackson; who, on the office becoming vacant within so short a period from the close of his Presidential term, was unwilling to interfere, by a new appointment, with the freedom of choice of his successor, in filling his Cabinet according to his own liking. It was the universal testimony of all brought into official relations with Mr. Butler in this capacity, that it had never been filled more efficiently, and in all respects satisfactorily, by any of the predecessors whose undivided attention had been bestowed upon its duties. It may be here mentioned, that to him is due the authorship of the plan for the increase of the army, which was carried into effect at the last session of Congress.

At an early day after accepting the office of Attorney General, Mr. Butler announced his intention of retiring from it at the close of General Jackson's term. It had long been a favorite project with him to establish a Law School in the city of New York; in relation to which he published a pamphlet in 1835, and about at the same period accepted from the University, then recently organized in that city, the appointment of Principal Professor of its Law Faculty, to take effect on his contemplated retirement from Washington. It was not without great reluctance that he yielded to considerations of personal friendship, in consenting to retain his office for one year of Mr. Van Buren's Presidential term; refusing at the same time every inducement held out to him to retain a seat in Mr. Van Buren's Cabinet as Head of one of the Departments of his Administration. He finally resigned it in April of last year, though his resignation could not go into effect until the arrival of his successor at the seat of government, in the month of September.

Mr. Butler is now again in that retirement of private life to which it is well known that his inclinations have always, throughout his official career, so earnestly turned. In addition to a practice in the higher courts which may perhaps, without disparagement to the powerful competitors by whom he may be surrounded, be said to place him at the head of the Bar of his native State, a large por.

tion of his time, and of the faculties of a mind which may be said to be almost indefatigable and inexhaustible, is devoted to his favorite object of establishing a Law School in that city, commensurate with its greatness, and with his own views of the important benefits to flow from it to the profession and to the public. It is yet in the state of infant experiment, Mr. Butler's opening Inaugural having been delivered only in the month of April last. Its success can as yet be only a matter of prediction and conjecture; though we may safely say, that its failure would falsify all the calculations that it is possible to make, from the importance of an end proposed and the urgency of public demand, together with the signal competency and adaptation of the means employed.

In addition to the incessant labors in which his professional and other avocations have kept him engaged, Mr. Butler has likewise devoted no inconsiderable portion of his most earnest attention to many of the great causes of moral and religious philanthropy of his time; the different institutions for the promotion of which have had a free command of his influence, time, and eloquence, both of the tongue and the pen, on numberless public occasions. Of these we need only specify that of the Temperance Reform, of which he was from the commencement one of the most zealous advocates. It should not, however, be omitted here-as illustrative of the general calm and well-balanced character of his mind-that he never allowed himself to participate in that fanaticism into which so many of those with whom he had from the first acted, afterwards ran. And towards the close he found himself so far separated from the communion of his associates, who directed the organization and public action of the societies-by his refusal to go beyond the restriction of ardent spirits, and to carry out the system of social inquisition and persecution adopted, to an extreme which could not but defeat its own objects-that his own immediate connexion with them ceased as soon as their cause, from a philanthropy, degenerated into a fanaticism.

In this connexion it ought perhaps to be mentioned, that Mr. Butler has been, since the year 1817, a professing and zealous member of the Presbyterian church, though his sentiments have always inclined to the moderate Calvinism of the present day, harmonizing entirely with those of Wilberforce, Hannah More, and others of that school in the Anglo-Episcopal church. At the same time we ought not to omit, that, while earnest in his own views, and strict in the practice appropriate to them, no one could entertain a more expanded liberality of mind, and freedom from every kind of religious intolerance or sectarianism, than characterize the subject of our present sketch.

Mr. Butler has labored with great assiduity to repair the deficiencies of his early education,-with what success is sufficiently

attested by the elegance, and familiarity with the highest range of "ancient and modern literature, which mark many of his public productions. He has never remitted the classical studies" so generally neglected by many similarly engrossed in the active pursuits of professional and public life; and besides some proficiency in the Italian and German languages, has cultivated considerably the French and Spanish,-the last named since he has held the office of Attorney General. And although, as has been seen above, he never graduated at any college, the degree of A. M. has been twice conferred upon him (by Union College, New York, and Williams College, Massachusetts,) as also that of LL. D. by Rutger's College, and by the Regents of the University, in 1834.

Entirely plain and unostentatious in all his habits, few men have been more highly favored in the possession of all the elements of domestic and social happiness, within that circle of private life unseen to the general eye which watches so vigilantly the public career of the politician. His wife, whom he married in 1818, is a sister of that gallant and universally lamented Lieutenant Allen of the Navy, who was killed in a boat attack upon a piratical schooner, in November, 1822, and who has been immortalized in the lines of Halleck doubtless familiar to many of our readers.

As a politician, Mr. Butler has always been a consistent, unwavering and zealous democrat; and, while never false to his principles or his party, he has never failed, on any division of the Republican party, to side with the more democratic of the two portions; as he has also, on several occasions, exhibited an independence, in obeying the convictions of his own judgment, or the generous impulses of his own heart, attesting equally the firmness of his moral courage and the sincerity of his convictions. During his single term as a member of the Assembly of New York, notwithstanding his general desire to avoid taking part in any other business than the special purpose for which alone he had sought a seat there, several opportunities occurred to testify this quality of his political character. It is sufficient for us to allude to twohis support of the Chenango canal (the principal measure of the session,) which his voice and influence carried against the general opposition of his friends;-and his generous advocacy of the claims of the family of Dewitt Clinton on the liberality of the State, which

*It may not be uninteresting to mention that this practice, in Mr. Butler's case, was early derived from the example and advice of Chancellor Kent; who on being found on one occasion by Mr. Butler, engaged in his office in some reading of ancient classic literature having apparently but little connection with the appropriate business of the place, mentioned that it was his daily habit and rule for at least an hour, and earnestly enjoined its adoption on his young friend,-adding an interesting anecdote descriptive of the occasion on which he himself had had the similar benefit of the same example and advice from the late Edward Livingston.

on one occasion burst forth in an eloquent impromptu appeal in their behalf, which is described as having thrilled its audience with a power and effect rarely surpassed. On both these occasions his course was such, that nothing less than the profound confidence of his friends and his party in his purity of motives, the general soundness of his views, and the value of his political support, could have preserved unimpaired the elevated position in his party which gave to his course its peculiar importance. In 1817 he opposed the election of Dewitt Clinton, which opposition continued till the death of that distinguished citizen in 1828, though never characterized by any feature of bitterness or unfairness. In 1820-'21, he was an earnest advocate of the Convention for amending the Constitution of the State, and was the author of a series of very influential articles, published in the Argus, entitled "Plain Thoughts, &c.," in which the extension of the right of suffrage was urged with all the arguments appropriate to the school of elevated and sincere democracy to which he belonged. When in the Legislature, in 1828, he took the lead in procuring the nomination of General Jackson by the Republican members of that body, advocating his claims strongly and ably in the caucus held for the purpose. In 1824 he had with similar ardor supported Mr. Crawford, in common with most of the Republican party of the State; and his very able vindication of that eminent statesman from the aspersions of anti-republicanism thrown upon him, in a series of papers over the signature of "Americanus," was highly influential in his favor, not only in the State but over the Union at large. He at the same time expressed a high admiration of the character of General Jackson, for whom it has been seen he had always entertained à peculiar enthusiasm; and awarded a very liberal measure of justice to the other competitors for the honor; while at the same time, on a survey of the whole ground, with the lights then open to the public eye, he gave the preference over all to Mr. Crawford. The zealous and efficient support that he gave to General Jackson's administration, before as well as after he became a member of his Cabinet, is well known. At the time of the Nullification excitement, Mr. Butler took the leading part in Albany, in a stormy and violent public meeting, in procuring the passage of resolutions of a decided antitariff character, and marked by a very conciliatory spirit towards the State of South Carolina, at the same time that they yielded to the Executive that support so necessary at so difficult a crisis.

In his general views of the Constitution, and of the true public policy of the country, Mr. Butler has always supported to the fullest extent the democratic doctrines of the Jeffersonian school. Adopted in early youth with all the generous ardor which those great and noble principles are so well calculated to excite, the only effect of time and the more mature judgment of manhood, has been to con

firm his conviction of their soundness, and deepen that sober enthusiasm in their behalf which is the true fruit of such conviction. He has on various occasions advocated them in public, in orations and addresses, which it is needless to specify, with marked ability and earnestness. In relation to the currency his opinions have exhibited a consistency which many of those would now be glad to boast, whose views, enlightened by the progress of events and the profound discussions that the subject has elicited, are now most sound and wise. We have seen that one of his earliest public efforts was in opposition to the Restraining Law, and with it to that whole system of special, monopoly legislation of which that law was the corner-stone. And if, at the delicate, and we may say fearful, crisis of affairs, on the accession of the present Executive, while the question of the repeal of the Specie Circular was under debate, Mr. Butler's counsels, eloquence and influence were perhaps more effective than those of any other individual, in deciding the firm and boldly sagacious stand taken by the Democratic party, not even the most violent of the opponents whose implacable hostility such a course could not fail to excite, could refuse him at least the credit of consistency with his early and well known opinions on the subject. The bias insensibly exerted upon public men by the connexion that may exist between their public course and private interests. is but too well known, as an influence of the most subtle kind, whose effect we have of late years had to lament in so many signal and fatal instances. In this connexion we are proud to be able to bear a testimony which the unfortunate contrast of so many others makes peculiarly honorable to Mr. Butler,—namely, that, though in no way himself engaged in speculation of any character, few men were under a stronger pressure of private interest and private feeling, to pursue a different course from that which he adopted. And if the voluntarily facing the imminent probability of ruin and beggary, with the sacrifice of all the moderate fruits of a life of such incessant labor and activity as has been above sketched-which a different course of temporizing expediency seemed alone likely to avert-constitute any evidence of sincerity of conviction, and elevated purity of motive, we are proud to claim its benefit, from our own private knowledge, as, in a signal manner, the incontestable due of the subject of the present sketch.

But while Mr. Butler has been thus zealous and active as a politician, he has most amply proved that his acts have had their source in far nobler motives than any of personal ambition. Though there can be no doubt that he could readily have commanded, notwithstanding his youth, the highest honors that the great Republican party of New York could bestow, yet he not only always scrupulously abstained from seeking office, but declined it when offered to him-even to the extent of almost seriously displeasing many