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Show Ben licrr.Eii's Father. We aro compelled to draw upon our reserve stock of sympathy in behalf of Gen. Benjamin F, Butler, the gentle and amiable aspirant for gubernatorial honors in Massachusetts. The childlike child-like Bon. claims tho governorship bocauso he hanged a rebel; and now come some of his former friends and rako up unpleasant things of the past, alleging that tho immortal B. F's paternal pareut also gave a performance perform-ance on tho tight-rope, having been hanged for piracy on the high seas, after a lively career as a robber aud murderer. This touches the soul of the hero of New Orleans, who can laugh at spoons but winces under a charge of hanging in the family, and in a speech the other day, at Worcester, Worces-ter, he produced a Masonic certiticato to his father's good eharactor, his commission as captain in the war of 1812, aud a document to prove that he was supercargo of a merchant ship at the time the hanging is said to have taken place; which proves that Ben. thinks the matter serious enough to be answered by documentary evidence. But numbers of Massachusetts people hold to the tight-rope story, and the Springfield Republican even Sam Bowies' paper ventilates it with vim; while the Missouri Republican says, that "there aro comparatively lew honest persons, in or out of Massachusetts, Massa-chusetts, who will not cheerfully agree that whether Captain Butler was or was not hung, he has left behind him a representative in Gen. Butler who richly merits a similar experience, and in any well-regulated community would be likely to get it." Which is decidedly decided-ly rough on both Benjamin and the community he represents in Congress. |