There is no pretense made now that this beneficiary is a widow, though she at one time claimed to be, and was allowed a pension on that allegation.  Her present claim rests entirely upon injuries received by her when she was concededly not employed in the military service.  If the pension now proposed is allowed her, it will be a mere act of charity.

Her husband, Daniel Dougherty, is now living in Philadelphia, and is a pensioner in his own right for disability alleged to have been incurred while serving in the Thirty-fourth New Jersey Volunteers.  Of this fact this beneficiary has been repeatedly informed; and yet she states in her petition that her husband deserted her in 1865 and has not been heard of since.

It is alleged in the Pension Bureau that in 1878 she succeeded in securing a pension as the widow of Daniel Dougherty through fraudulent testimony and much false swearing on her part.

The police records of the precinct in which she has lived for years show that she is a woman of very bad character, and that she has been under arrest nine times for drunkenness, larceny, creating disturbance, and misdemeanors of that sort.

It happens that this claimant, by reason of her residence here, has been easily traced and her character and untruthfulness discovered.  But there is much reason to fear that this case will find its parallel, in many that have reached a successful conclusion.

I can not spell out any principle upon which the bounty of the Government is bestowed through the instrumentality of the flood of private pension bills that reach me.  The theory seems to have been adopted that no man who served in the Army can be the subject of death or impaired health except they are chargeable to his service.  Medical theories are set at naught and the most startling relation is claimed between alleged incidents of military service and disability or death.  Fatal apoplexy is admitted as the result of quite insignificant wounds, heart disease is attributed to chronic diarrhea, consumption to hernia, and suicide is traced to army service in a wonderfully devious and curious way.

Adjudications of the Pension Bureau are overruled in the most peremptory fashion by these special acts of Congress, since nearly all the beneficiaries named in these bills have unsuccessfully applied to that Bureau for relief.

This course of special legislation operates very unfairly.

Those with certain influence or friends to push their claims procure pensions, and those who have neither friends nor influence must be content with their fate under general laws.  It operates unfairly by increasing in numerous instances the pensions of those already on the rolls, while many other more deserving cases, from the lack of fortunate advocacy, are obliged to be content with the sum provided by general laws.

The apprehension may well be entertained that the freedom with which these private pension bills are passed furnishes an inducement to fraud and imposition, while it certainly teaches the vicious lesson to our people that the Treasury of the National Government invites the approach of private need.