The National tribune., 1881-08-20
Exit Bentley.

TRIBUNE always stood strictly on the defensive,
has closed by the utter failure of all his schemes
and by his own loss of official position President
Garfield could not have failed as soldier, to
respond to the overwhelming expressions of his
comrades in condemnation of Bentley's policy
and practices in the Pension Office for the last
four years and more
Practically the voice of all parties interested
either personally or through sympathy in pension
matters was unanimous in its disapproval of the
late Commissioners policy. And the unanimity
was itself spontaneous. There was scarcely
hamlet in the United States from which some
well-grounded complaint did not find utterance
To all these pouring in upon the Executive Bent
ley's answer was that it was the doing of the
claim agents. This was his stock phrase for
five years. If a Senator, in his place in Congress,
and speaking for his people, challenged in any
respect the perfect wisdom Of his administration,
the hired laclleys of the Commissioner flle, the
columns of leading papers with charges that that
Senator was corruptly in league with corrupt
i al
of Congress developed by examination facts dan
gerous to Mr.. Bentley's supremacy, that COM
mittee was charged as being in the hands of the
"claim agents" If starving pensioners and those
who ought to be pensiOners-but were uselessly
and wickedly kept out to sustain his policy-if
they sent petitions to Congress, it was the work
of the "claim agents" If they wrote personal
letters to their Senators and Representatives in
their own rough way, soliciting action and de-
manding the redemption of the national promise
they were said to have been put up to it by the
Department with the simple story of the outrages
perpetrated on them by his action and his non
action and demanded change, that, too was boldly
charged to be mere device and trick of the
"caim agents"
There no trick, no dodge no shift of a
tricky and experienced petty politician that was
rot resorted to by him to hold on to the Pen
sion Office. He had large patronage, and he used
the whole of it remOrselessly to strengthen his
tenure. While the law required in his office, and
in all others, that soldiers of good record and fit
for the duty should be preferred for clerkships
and while without any such provision of law the
thing ought to have been done, he in order to Sc
favor ofSenatOrs filled up his ranks of clerks
not merely with nOn-combatants, but with men
who stood against the Nation in the war for it's
life, and the places denied to Union soldiers were
given to Confederates
He built up pet ring of his own of creatures
that did him homage as the price of position;
he injected into the most peculiarly American
office the principles and practices which in the
Star Chamber, two hundred and more years ago,
were rejected by England at the cost of bloody
revolution. He inaugurated and kept up the spy
and creates dangerous class of secret calum-
niators, whose promotion depends upon false re-
ports and whose safety in their cowardly and
clandestine work is secured by impenetrable
secrecy. He reversed in principle and in practice
the humane rule of the common law which pre-
sumes innocence and adopted as his official rule |
the infamy of Jetfreys-the presumption of guilt
in all cases.
He stultified himself and his Department by
solemn official declarations Of his inability to dis
tinguish between truth and a lie and smirched |
the honor of every American volunteer by broad
ly charging that ALL without distinction, were
parties to a conspiracy to rob the Government by |
fraud, and to seal the fraud by perjury.
He repeated those rascally declarations so often
that many Senators and Representatives believed
him, for they could not imagine any sufficient
reason why an American official should make and |
adhere to such an astounding statement unless he
believed it to be true.
He kept the workings of his office as much out
of ordinary reach as if he held an invention of
his own and was afraid some one would discover
his secret.
By such means he made himself, to many per-
sons, the sole authority on pension laws and pen
sion systems, and thus increased his hold upon
members of Congress who did not and could not
learn the actual working of his Department. Thus
he procured unwise changes Of law, and took
away from the claimant the legal barrier that
existed against extortion and overcharge from
and hardhearted agents; for it was
one of the worst acts of his bad management that