Legislation has been at the present session of Congress perfected
considerably increasing the rate of pension in certain cases.
Appropriations have also been made of large sums for the support of
national homes where sick, disabled, or needy soldiers are cared for,
and within a few days a liberal sum has been appropriated for the
enlargement and increased accommodation and convenience of these
institutions.
All this is no more than should be done.
But with all this, and with the hundreds of special acts which have been
passed granting pensions in cases where, for my part, I am willing to
confess that sympathy rather than judgment has often led to the
discovery of a relation between injury or death and military service, I
am constrained by a sense of public duty to interpose against
establishing a principle and setting a precedent which must result in
unregulated, partial, and unjust gifts of public money under the pretext
of indemnifying those who suffered in their means of support as an
incident of military service.
GROVER CLEVELAND.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _July 6, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I herewith return without approval House bill No. 4642, entitled "An act
granting a pension to James Carroll."
The claimant alleges that he was wounded while in the service as a
member of Company B, Third Regiment North Carolina Mounted Volunteers,
while securing recruits for the regiment at Watauga, N.
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