The rule governing the operation of general pension laws which forfeits a widow’s pension on her remarriage seems so reasonable and just and its relaxation must necessarily lead to such a departure from just principles and to such vexatious pension administration that I am convinced it ought to be strictly maintained.

I hope I may be permitted to call the attention of the Senate to the increasing latitude clearly discernible in special pension legislation.  It has seemed to me so useless to attempt to stem the tide of this legislation by Executive interference that I have contented myself with nonacquiescence in numerous cases where I could not approve.

There have been already presented to me for Executive action during the present session of the Congress 206 special pension bills, of which I have actually examined 115.  The entire number of such bills that have become laws during the four sessions of the Congress since March 4, 1893, is 391.  Some of those presented at the present session are not based upon the least pretext that the death or disability involved is related to army service, while in numerous other cases it is extremely difficult to satisfactorily discover such relationship.

There is one feature of this legislation which I am sure deserves attention.  I refer to the great number of special bills passed for the purpose of increasing the pensions of those already on the rolls.  Of the 115 special pension bills which I have examined since the beginning of the present session of the Congress, 58 granted or restored pensions and 57 increased those already existing, and the appropriation of money necessary to meet these increases exceeds considerably the amount required to pay the original pensions granted or restored by the remaining 58 bills.

I can not discover that these increases are regulated by any rule or principle, and when we remember that there are nearly a million pensioners on our rolls and consider the importunity for such increase that must follow the precedents already made, the relation of the subject to a justifiable increase of our national revenues can not escape attention.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 22, 1897.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return herewith without my approval House bill No. 6902, entitled
“An act granting a pension to Mrs. Mary A. Viel.”

This beneficiary was married in 1862 to Major W.D.  Sanger, then in the volunteer military service.  He died in 1872, never having made any application for pension.  His widow made no application for pension, but within three years after her husband’s death, and in 1875, became the wife of Paul Viel.  Eight years thereafter he died, leaving her his widow, and it is now proposed to pension her as the widow of the soldier, Major Sanger, though she long ago by her own deliberate act surrendered that title and all its incidents.