Mr. Cleveland on May 12th addressed a deputation of a
Democratic Association, in a high-flown speech denouncing the extravagance of the Administration. The muddle in his metaphors is astounding, but his meaning is plain. He declares that the Congress, which has raised the sum-total of Army pensions to thirty millions sterling a year, or fifty times the cost of Monarchy in Great Britain, is only fostering a demoralising extravagance which has consumed even the American surplus in order to justify a Protectionist tariff. Mr. Cleveland's notion of the River and Harbour Appropriation Bill, under which £40,000,000 a year will be spent, being a "destructive creature " which "carries its pilfered benefit" to selfish house- holds, will create a smile in England, where rhetoric of that sort has died out; but the figure expresses a truth, and will be understood by Western farmers, who think the means for this mad extravagance are pilfered from them. They are in- sisting upon economy as well as "more money," and if they win the election in the autumn, will probably not hesitate much about a revision of the Pension List, even though the sufferers plead national faith. The pension scandal has gone so far, that a regular search has been made in the States for all persons with any colourable claim to pension, even if they had performed only a few days' service in the last years of the war. It is, we suppose, only a joke that numbers of persons are now drawing pensions for injuries and diseases incurred in running away from the conscription ; but the bogus claims run up to many thousands, and all the claims are at variance with the American idea that pensions are " monarchical abuses."
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