I suppose an injury of the description claimed, if caused by violence directly applied, is quite palpable, its effect usually immediate, and its existence easily proved.  The long time which elapsed between the injury and the claimant’s application for a pension may be fairly considered as bearing upon the merits of such application, while the fact that the claimant was transferred to the Invalid Corps more than a year after he alleges the injury occurred, for an entirely different disability, can not be overlooked.  In the committee’s report the statement is found that the beneficiary named in the bill was in two different hospitals during the year 1863, and yet it is not claimed that the history of his hospital treatment furnishes any proof of the injury upon which his claim is now based.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 25, 1886.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I return without approval Senate bill No. 1998, entitled “An act for the relief of John D. Ham,” which grants a pension to the party named.

The claimant alleges that he enrolled in the Army in January, 1862, and was “sworn in at his own home;” that the next day he started on horseback to go to the regiment he was to join, and that on the way his horse fell upon his left ankle, whereby he sustained an injury which entitles him to a pension.

His name is not borne upon any of the rolls of the regiment he alleges he was on his way to join.

He filed his application for pension in the Pension Bureau October 17, 1879 (seventeen years after his alleged injury), which was rejected apparently on the ground that he was not in the military service when the disability claimed was incurred.

He was drafted in 1863 and served until he was mustered out in 1865.

It is entirely clear that this claimant was not in the military service at the time he claims to have been injured; and his conduct in remaining at home until he was drafted, nearly two years afterwards, furnishes proof that he did not regard himself as in the meantime owing any military duty.  These considerations, and the further facts that upon being drafted he was accepted as physically qualified for service, that he actually thereafter served a year and eight months, and that he waited seventeen years before claiming pension for his injury, in my mind present a case upon which the claimant is entitled to no relief even if charity instead of just liberality is invoked.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 25, 1886.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I herewith return without approval Senate bill No. 1290, entitled “An act granting a pension to David W. Hamilton.”

A claim for pension filed by him in November, 1879, was rejected by the Pension Bureau on the ground that his alleged disability existed prior to his enlistment.