Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1886 — CLEVELAND’S VETOES. [ARTICLE]

CLEVELAND’S VETOES.

The Recklessness with Which Congress Votes Money Out of the Treasury. [From the New York Evening Post.) The President has given another evidenae of the painstaking care which he bestows upon the smaller as well as the weightier matters of his office, by filing with the State Department memoranda of his reasons for not approving nearly a dozen acts and resolutions which reached him during the last days of the session, and had not been acted upon at adjournment. The strongest impression made upon one by the perusal of these memoranda is that of the recklessness with which Congress passes bills. Bor example, one bill provided for the payment of $633.50 to William H. Wheeler for quartermaster’s stores furnished the army in 1862, but data furnished the President by the Quartermaster General seem to leave no doubt that the claim has already once been paid. Not a shadow of doubt is left in regard to the similar bill for the relief of J. A. Henry and others, which appropriates various sums to these persons for rent of quarters occupied during the war to' the Quartermaster Department of the army, including ssl to L. F. Green. This account has been paid once, a special act directing such payment having been approved Feb. 12, 1885; aud the President remarks that “the fact of this payment, and important information bearing upon the validity of some of the other claims mentioned in the bill, could have been ea-iiv obtained by application to the Third Auditor.” In another case an act had been passed, doubtless without attracting any attention, which granted a pension to Margaret D. Merchand, although the President hal already vetoed a similar bill upon the giound that she was not entitled to it, as the death of her husband did not appear to Le in any way related to any incident of his military service. 'The easy-going spirit in which Congressmen vote away other people’s money is also illustrated in the President’s com-, ments. One of the bills proposed to give S2OO to Francis W. Holdeman, an Ohio man, “as qwppensation for services performed and money expended for the benefit of the United States army,” upon the ground that in the fall of 1863, when le was a lad twelve years of age, he purchased a uniform, armed himself, attached himself to various Ohio regiments, and performed various duties connected with army seiw.ee until the end of the year 1864. The boy never enlisted, and never was regularly attached to any regiment, and, as Mr. Cleveland says, it is quite evident that his military services could not have amounted to much more than the indulgence of a boy.sh freak, and his being made a pit of the soldiers with whom he was associated. The President's comment upon the matter is that which would be made by any unprejudiced person: “There is a pleasant sentiment connected with this display of patriotism and childish military ardor, and it is not a matter of surprise that he should, ns stated by the committee, have ‘received honorable mention byname in the history of his regiment;’ but when it is proposed, twenty-two years after his one year’s experience with troops, to pay him a sum nearly, if not quite, equal to the pay of a soldier who fought and suffered all the dangers and privations of a soldier’s life, I am bound to dissent.” Another act allowed two men who were employed by the doorkeeper of the Fortyeighth Congress as laborers, at $720 a year, the difference between that rate of pay and the $1,200 allowed messengers, on the ground that they performed the duties of both laborers and messengers. Mr. Cleveland points out that the men accepted the position of laborers, that they owed their time and services to the Government, that while they were performing the duties of messengers they escaped the harder tasks which might have been required of them as laborers, and that if they actually performed the duties of both places, their ability to do so is evidence that the labor of either place was li ht. He concludes that “claims for extra compensation such as these should be firmly disejuu enanced. A more important measure which met the same fate was the bill providing ;or the erection of a public building at Annapolis, Md. '1 he two Federal offices there are now accommodated at a total rental of but $075 a yea . and the only plausible plea for constructing a Government building was the sac; that most if not all tl e other capitals of States have such buildings. The average taxpayer will agree with the Pr s dent that this is altogether too flimsy an argument to justify the waste of $100,00(1 or more. The Democratic p irty has been in power a year and a half, and it has done more to create a navy than tho Republicans did in nineteen years. The end of the civil war found us in possession of the first navy in the world. The end of Republican mle left us with the worst.— lndianapolis Sentinel.