722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The point of attack is the national treasury. The cry is, " On to 

 Washington ! " The new foray is not the sudden dash of a scout- 

 ing party ; it is literally the charge of an army. The brazen 

 throats of the bugles and the buglers ring out the inspiring slogan, 

 " Pensions for all ! " 



Is there no moral resistance in the people ? Must the guardi- 

 ans of the public money throw up their hands, while the foragers 

 carry off the national cash-box ? Or must they buy off the raid- 

 ers as once upon a time the Romans bribed the Gauls ? 



A comprehensive pension system corrodes the heart of gov- 

 ernment and beguiles a people into servitude. A caste composed 

 of pensioners is always the defender of existing wrongs. It be- 

 lieves that all reforms are assaults upon its own privileges and 

 that public honesty is dangerous. It can always be depended on 

 to support the pensioning power. The history of England shows 

 how worthless ministries have retained office for years by a judi- 

 cious distribution of pensions. National alms-giving weakens 

 public spirit as it conquers private virtue. 



In the United States we have converted civil offices into gifts 

 called patronage, and pensions will share the same fate. Where 

 public offices are legal tender in payment for party services, pen- 

 sions will become so too. To a dangerous extent they are used as 

 political currency now. By a skillful use of pensions the party 

 in power can bribe one portion of the people with the money of 

 the other. 



With the warnings of all history before us, we submit to the 

 corruption of our politics by a pension system heavier than was 

 ever laid upon any other people since governments began. No 

 monarchy, no hierarchy, no oligarchy ever had the daring to put 

 so many idlers under public pay as we have placed there by our 

 pension laws. Some of us think that consequences do not follow 

 causes in republics as in the " effete monarchies/' and that we can 

 dignify our people by an alms-tribute that would debase the peo- 

 ple of those benighted lands across the sea. With much vehe- 

 mence we exclaim : " Pensions are not a king's prerogative here ; 

 they are the free gifts of a free people. Pensions can not corrupt 

 us. The Asiatic cholera is harmless here, because it is not an 

 American disease." 



It has never been suspected that the warriors who subdued the 

 great rebellion, who marched and counter-marched over half a 

 continent and fought a thousand battles, were a puny, sickly race 

 of men. Yet this is the inference we must draw from the official 

 testimony of the Commissioner of Pensions. In his report for 

 1888 he says, "It thus appears that in the aggregate |,166,926 

 pension claims have been filed since 1861, and in the same period 

 737,200 claims have been allowed." 



