Edward Butler

Edward Butler, QC (1823 – 9 June 1879), was a barrister and politician in colonial New South Wales, 13th Attorney General of New South Wales.

Butler found that his ambitions to be trained as a lawyer were blocked in Ireland because of his Catholicism and he migrated to Sydney, arriving in May 1853, where he found work writing for Henry Parkes' Empire. He was admitted as a barrister in 1855 and was appointed as a crown prosecutor for the metropolitan and coast district in 1857. In 1858 he married Ellen Mary Connolly and they had four sons and five daughters. and was the 13th Attorney General of New South Wales in the first Parkes ministry from May 1872 to November 1873. He made a major contribution to reducing the level of sectarianism that had been sparked by Henry James O'Farrell's attack on Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh in 1868.

Butler's first wife died in 1871 and, in 1875, he married Marion and they had one daughter. He was appointed for life to the Legislative Council in 1877. He had become a wealthy squatter.

He died in Sydney on .