CONGRESSMAN JAMES, of Michigan, has discovered, according to the Springfield Republican, that under the present law "a man may enlist, desert, be apprehended, court-martialed, found guilty, sentenced, serve a dishonorable discharge and yet he eligible to receive a pension." Mr. James and the Republican, if they had carried their investigations further, might have discovered also that the pension rolls include the names of many patriots whose service may be described in the exact words quoted above.
Of course, a pension law so framed and applied is a ghastly farce, and yet more ghastly fraud. Nobody in the country, nobody in the South, certainly has anything but approval of the determination of the nation to pension deserving soldiers and sailors, whether they took part in the War Between the States or any other war, but to hand out the nation's bounty to deserters, camp followers, and scalawags of every kind and description is an abominable outrage.
Mr. James has introduced a bill to make a dishonorable discharge a bar to the receipt of a pension, commenting on which the Republican says that "out of a rather full knowledge of efforts at pension reform in the past forty years, one is disposed to pronounce the honorable member from Michigan a courageous man." That is true, and he is a rash man as well, but if Northern men of his courage and right principle received more support from Southern men who are, or ought to be, similarly endowed, one particular pork pie.  Annually sliced and distributed in Congress, would give forth a far less disagreeable odor. 