PENSIONS FOB ALL. 723 



This includes, of course, the claims of widows and dependent 

 relatives. Although many have been dropped from the rolls by- 

 reason of death and other causes, the actual number of old sol- 

 diers on the pension-list is 323,020, while there are thousands of 

 claims on file not yet adjusted by the Pension Bureau. 



It is pretended that, although the soldiers were sound and 

 hearty when they went into the army, they were enfeebled by 

 hardship and disease when they came out of it. Some of them 

 were, but not many in proportion to the whole number in the 

 ranks. The great parade at Washington in 1865 is a sufficient 

 refutation of that claim. The athletic and boisterous armies 

 which marched in review before the President of the United States 

 at the close of the war were not composed of sickly and vitiated 

 men. They were fairly rollicking with health, they were full of 

 "lusty life." Yet we are told they carried millions of mortal 

 microbes in their knapsacks and all manner of diseases latent in 

 their blood — diseases which needed only pension laws to develop 

 them into activity. 



Colossal as are the figures presented by the Commissioner of 

 Pensions, they are to be multiplied six times when Congress final- 

 ly capitulates to the Grand Army. Even in their present rudi- 

 mentary form they make the English pension -list cheap and 

 tawdry by comparison. Last year the English pension-roll con- 

 tained the names of 156,492 persons altogether, who drew from 

 the treasury £7,815,575, of which amount the army pensioners 

 (97,004) drew £3,789,282, and the navy pensioners (38,366) drew 

 £2,040,659. The Financial Reform Association of England, com- 

 menting on this exhibit, says : " John Bull will do well to notice 

 that in these last five years of bad trade he has had to pay an 

 army list of over 100,000 pensioners (military, naval, and civil) 

 for doing nothing ; and that their drawings, amounting to nearly 

 eight millions, swallowed up the whole of the income-tax laid on 

 the national profits for last year." 



The complaint is valuable as a caution to " Brother Jonathan/' 

 He has had to pay three or four army corps, each as large as the 

 one criticised by the Financial Reform Association of England, 

 and it is proposed that they shall be recruited to their full ca- 

 pacity by adding to their numbers twice six hundred thousand 

 more. 



The pension-roll of England is very much larger than it was a 

 hundred years ago when John Philpot Curran poured upon it the 

 following sarcasm : " This polyglot of wealth, this museum of cu- 

 riosities, the pension-list, embraces every link in the human chain 

 from the exalted excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney to the de- 

 based situation of the lady who humbleth herself that she may be 

 exalted ; but the lesson it inculcates forms its greatest perfection. 



