This application was also rejected, on the ground that any disability that might have arisen from the cause alleged “had not existed in a pensionable degree since the date of filing the claim therefor,” which was February 10, 1885.

There still remained an appeal to Congress, and probably there were not wanting those who found their interests in advising such an appeal and who had at hand Congressional precedents which promised a favorable result.  That the parties interested did not miscalculate the chances of success is demonstrated by the bill now before me, which, in direct opposition to the action of the Pension Bureau, grants a pension to a man who, though discharged from enlistment for a certain alleged disability, made two applications for a pension based upon two distinct causes, both claimed to exist within two months prior to such discharge, and both different from the one upon which he accepted the same, and notwithstanding the fact that the proposed beneficiary, after all these disabilities had occurred, passed an examination as to his physical fitness for reenlistment, actually did reenlist, and served till finally mustered out at the close of the war.

If any money is to be given this man from the public Treasury, it should not be done under the guise of a pension.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 24, 1886.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I hereby return without approval Senate bill No. 857, entitled “An act granting a pension to Dudley B. Branch.”

This claim is based upon the allegation, as appears by the committee’s report, that the person named in the bill has a hernia, and that on the 9th day of June, 1862, while in the military service and in the line of duty, “in getting over a fence he fell heavily, striking a stone or hard substance, and received the hernia in his left side.”

In December, 1875, thirteen and a half years thereafter, he filed an application for a pension, which was rejected by the Pension Bureau on the ground that there was no record of the alleged hernia, and the claimant was unable to furnish satisfactory evidence of its origin in the service.

The fact is stated in the committee’s report that late in the year 1863 this soldier was transferred to the Invalid Corps, and the records show that he was thus transferred for a disability entirely different from that upon which he now bases his claim.  He was mustered out in September, 1864, at the end of his term of service.

I am convinced that the rejection of this claim by the Pension Bureau was correct, and think its action should not be reversed.