Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-09-21


 be regarded as, by some sort of natural inheritance, the exclusive property in fee simple of the Grand Army, and it has been noticed that none but Grand Army men have been mentioned in con- nection with the succession of the de posed commissioner. This in itself would be of little importance were 1t not that it carries with it sort of im- piled sovereignty on the part of the Grand Army and sort of inalienable right to set up such standards of pension distribution as may appeal to the in- terested desires and selfish purposes of its members. Men who have ventured to assert that our pension list is growing too rapidly, that the gratitude of the republic is being too severely tested, have been denounced as hostile to the old soldiers and unworthy of any polit- ical support at their hands. Men who have dared to hint that it would be to the advantage of the veterans themselves to show little regard for the taxpayers in the matter of military pensions have been held up as ingrates and sympa- thizers with the rebels until it has seemed that no man who had any hope of political preferment would dare to question the schemes of the men who find their profit in swelling the pension bladder. Corporal Tanners inflated notions, however, and the sudden in- crease of the national debt that followed their uninterrupted exercise have brought the country to a realizing sense of whither it is drifting in the pension business. Men are beginning to realize that the bladder is blown now almost to bursting, and that if collapse is not to come back tracks must be taken. Think ing men in the Grand Army itself, like the brave General McMahon, see the danger and are hastening to assure their comrades that not to the organization belongs the whole earth and the fullness thereof, but that some of the revenues of the land should be left to the common people. And men who seek to bring the Grand Army to realize this are doing it a better service than the Dalzells and Tanners and Busseys who believe that bounty jumpers and deserters and camp skulk- CTS should be allowed to be quartered on the taxpayers of the country.
 There is no disposition on the part of any man -or body of men in the United States to deprive disabled veterans or their dependent relatives of the care they ought to have from country which owes its preservation to them. There is no wish to deny them fair pen sions and even extra liberal appropria- tions from the public fund. But there is growing impression that the system is wrong which permits the pension fund to show a regular yearly increase | a quarter of a century after the war, to be otherwise. There is a well defined suspicion that the pension attorneys and claim agents, the politica demagogues and scheming officeseekers who are most urgent in increasing the pension disbursements are not wholly disinterested, and that their zeal will well bear closer investigation than it has been accustomed to receive. In word, there is widespread conception that under President Harrison has been set up a new pension creed that has nothing to commend it but its possibilities of DO litical advantage for those who stand sponsors for it. A system that allows rich men like Senator Manderson to feed off the taxes of poor men throughout
 the land may well be altered to the ad l vantage of the country.
 Sooner or later there must be a reel
 taken in on the pension business. Cor ) poral Tanner has done the country 6 service in emphasizing the fact by his unparalleled raid on the national sur plus.