and became the fundamental provision upon which the pension claims of such invalids were thereafter based. It did not, of course, affect pensions already granted. Within its scope were included all the classes of claimants previously provided for, and, in addition, all volunteers, militia and state troops, who had served against the common enemy during the war. Disability must have been the result of known wounds received in the line of duty, and must have been such as to render the applicant wholly or partially unable to procure a subsistence by manual labor. Desertion was a bar to a claim. The method of taking evidence and examining claims was similar to that under the laws of 1793 and 1803. Congress, however, once more reserved to itself that power of final action in placing names on the pension list which had been delegated to the Secretary of War under the act of 1803. Rates were the same as under previous laws, and each pension commenced from the date of the completion of the testimony. For the first time regulations were established in accordance with which an increase of pension might be granted by Congress in cases where justice required, but, with the increase added, no more than a total disability rate might be paid. The operation of this law was limited to six years from the date of its passage.

1

In carrying out the act of 1806, Congress passed a series of laws, pensioning long lists of claimants at varying rates per month. On April 25, 1808, a measure of this character was passed, containing a section which completed the assumption by the United States of the payments to all the Revolutionary invalid-pensioners remaining on the rolls of the states. This included all such persons whether their disability was incurred on land or sea, in the service of the United States or of any particular state, in the regular army, militia or volunteers. When the act of 1806 expired by limitation in 1812, it was renewed and continued in force for six years by the act of April 25, 1812. It was afterwards revived for one year by the act of May 15,

1 U. S. Statutes at Large, ii, 491.

1820, and for periods of six years each by the acts of February 4, 1822, and May 24, 1828.1 The later renewals were subject to amendments which had been made, and which will be mentioned in due time.

Beginning with 1816 the condition of the federal Treasury was unusually favorable to the expansion of public expenditures. During the War of 1812 the United States had borrowed more money than was really needed. New internal revenue taxes had been levied in 1814, and the beginning of 1816 found the Treasury with the largest credit balance since the organization of the government. A proposition was soon put forward to use some of the surplus funds to increase the rates paid to invalidpensioners. In support of the measure, it was said that the cost of living had increased and that invalids should have enough to support themselves "plentifully and comfortably." An increase law was speedily passed on April 24, 1816, raising the rate of full pension for a private from five dollars to eight dollars per month. Pensions of first lieutenants and commissioned offcers below that grade were also increased to the extent of two or three dollars a month. The act applied both to those already on the rolls and to persons who should thereafter be granted pensions. About the time of the passage of this law, the United States was expending annually $120,000 for pensions. There were 185 officers and 1,572 noncommissioned officers and soldiers of the Revolutionary army on the roll of invalids, and 52 officers and 391 soldiers who had become disabled since the Revolution, making an aggregate of 2,200 pensioners. It was estimated that the act of 1816 would increase the annual expenditure for pensions to about two hundred thousand dollars, including the claims allowed on account of the War of 1812.

1 U. S. Statutes at Large, ii, 718; iii, 596, 650; iv, 307.

2 Dewey, Financial History of the United States (1903), 142 and following. 3 Report of House of Representatives Committee on Pensions and Revolutionary Claims, American State Papers, Claims, 473–474.

4 U. S. Statutes at Large, iii, 296.

American State Papers, Claims, 473–474.

The increase granted by the act of 1816 proved but a light burden upon the swelling revenues. The flood of imports from England following the War of 1812 enormously increased the customs revenue in 1816, during which year a distinctively protective tariff was enacted. Estimates had been made that the customs revenue for the year would be thirteen million dollars, but the actual returns from this source amounted to thirty-six million dollars. Though the revenues Though the revenues were somewhat less swollen in 1817, that year was also unusual in its yield. Such conditions of Treasury surplus paved the way for the introducton in our federal pension system of service-pensions.

In his message of December, 1817, President Monroe "in contemplating the happy situation of the United States" drew the attention of Congress to the services of the Revolutionary soldiers, of whom he thought the survivors were few. Some were reduced to indigence and real distress, and he asked that provision be made for them.2 General Bloomfield of New Jersey promptly reported to the House of Representatives a bill designed to comply with the President's recommendation. In the extended debates on this measure, there was shown to be a wide diversity of opinion in Congress regarding the proper nature and scope of pension legislation. The law as finally enacted was quite different from the original bill. In both houses there were decided majorities in favor of the passage of a service-pension law, but, as to detailed provisions, there was lack of agreement. Some wished a measure based solely on a service requirement; others advocated a provision based upon "service and poverty." There was no definite knowledge as to the probable number of applications which would follow the passage of the proposed law, nor had its advocates any conception of its probable cost. Such estimates as they attempted proved ridiculously small in the light of later experience. The supporters of the measure

1 Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 161.

2 Annals of Congress, 1st Sess., 15th Cong., 1817–1818, i, 19.

3 In the Senate, Goldsborough of Maryland estimated the number of applicants under the law as, at the largest, less than 1900.

pointed complacently to the surplus in the Treasury. The burden of their argument was eulogy of the Revolutionary soldiers, praise of their services, descriptions of the privations they had undergone, and an appeal to the gratitude of the country. "Let us show the world that Republics are not ungrateful," said one of the speakers. Another appealed to Congress thus: "Permit not him, who, in the pride of vigor and youth, wasted his health and shed his blood in freedom's cause, with desponding heart and palsied limbs to totter from door to door, bowing his yet untamed soul to meet the frozen bosom of reluctant charity."

In the Senate the proposed service-pension act met with strong opposition on the part of the minority. Senator William Smith of South Carolina asserted that the bill was a way to get rid of a little money in the Treasury not immediately wanted. He opposed a service-pension provision on principle and questioned its constitutionality. To those who supported the measure from sentiment, he said that good feelings were a miserable guide to a legislator. The following extract from his speech is prophetic in the light of later experience:

As an argument, it would appear, to avoid an inquiry into the propriety of this measure, we are told such a case can never happen again-that you can never have another Revolutionary War. Will not those brave men who fought your battles and triumphed so gallantly over the enemy at Chippewa, Plattsburg, Erie, Champlain, Orleans and on the seas, have the same claims upon their country some thirtyfive years hence, when time shall have thrown a veil over all the minute circumstances, and it shall be forgotten that they retired from the army with reluctance, after being abundantly paid and abundantly honored?

Their claim will be as great, and the precedent you are about to make will be followed. One army you say gained your independence, and the other has given it a new character, and made it worth maintaining. They have released your country from its degraded state of impressments, paper blockades, royal orders in council, and imperial decrees, and given it as high a grade in the scale of nations

as your independence. This will be the beginning of a military pension system which posterity may regret.'

1

The force of Senator Smith's words is felt when we remember that service-pension laws, more or less limited, have been passed on account of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Indian Wars, and the Civil War. During the Confederation the granting of service-pensions to Revolutionary officers for life had been so bitterly opposed that the payment of a lump sum as commutation was agreed upon in compromise. But the precedent for service-pensions was finally established in the case of the Revolutionary soldiers in 1818 and has cost the national Treasury many hundreds of millions of dollars in its application to our other wars.

While the law of 1818 passed the House of Representatives without division, its scope was considerably limited by amendments in the Senate. It provided that every person who had served in the Revolutionary War until its close, or for the term of nine months or longer at any period of the war, on the Continental establishment or in the navy, and who was a resident citizen of the United States, and was by reason of his reduced circumstances in life "in need of assistance from his country for support," should receive a pension. The rate for officers was $20 per month, and for noncommissioned officers or privates $8 per month, during life. No person was entitled to receive the benefits of the act until he should have relinquished his claim to every pension heretofore allowed him by the laws of the United States. In administering the law the evidence in support of claims was taken before the district judges of the United States, or before any court of record of the state or county in which the applicant resided. If satisfied of the claimant's service, the judge transmitted the testimony and the proceedings in the case to the Secretary of War, whose duty it was, if he considered the

1 For Senator Smith's speech, see Annals of Congress, 1st Sess., 15th Cong., i, 140-150.

2 U. S. Statutes at Large, iii, 410.