THE CRIMINAL BUTLER.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1028, 31 May 1880, Page 2

THE CRIMINAL BUTLER.

Thb writer of " Passing Notes" Says, whilst listening to Butler's Bpeech, and watohing the final stages of the trial, one of the cherished excitements of a dead and vanished civilization was permitted to me. I assisted, in the capacity of spectator, at a gladiatorial combat. I can better understand now the Roman interest in that form of amusement, and the tense, high-strnng condition of nerve with which pleasure- jaded nobles and new sensation-seeking emperors must have heard the morituri te salutant of* the combatants. To hear a man make a speeoh upon which his life de-

pends come very near to the sports of the amphitheatre, and is a kind of experience which in these humanitarian times must be exceedingly rare. Murder trials are doubtless common enough, and juries are addressed at such trials with more or less thrilling effect. But then the addresses are by professional advocates. Butler was defending his own life. He was required to show cause why the noose dangling above him should not be adjusted to his neck, and spoke with the certainty that if his speech proved a failure he was a dead man. Listening to a speaker who has these cogent motives to earnestness is as keen a nerve- tonic as I care to experience. You catch your breath in unconscious sympathy with the movements of his sentences, and almost feel the globus hystericus rising in your own throats. My notion is that Butler profited immensely by the emstion he excited, emotion of a kind which no vicarious advocacy could have excited for him. He called no witness, employed no counsel, but seemed to find in his very isolation a source of strength. He was one against {many, fighting for his life like a rat in a pit, and, however intense your horror at the crime imputed to him, you were constrained to a kind of pity for the friendless wretch. It is said that more than one lawyer was ambitious of defending him, but that Butler declared he would " yield to no man " the right of addressing the jury. His confidence was not misplaced.