ever items of doubtful propriety may have escaped observation or may
have been tolerated in previous Executive approvals of similar bills,
I am convinced that the bill now under consideration opens the way to
insidious and increasing abuses and is in itself so extravagant as to be
especially unsuited to these times of depressed business and resulting
disappointment in Government revenue. This consideration is emphasized
by the prospect that the public Treasury will be confronted with other
appropriations made at the present session of Congress amounting to more
than $500,000,000.

Individual economy and careful expenditure are sterling virtues
which lead to thrift and comfort. Economy and the exaction of clear
justification for the appropriation of public moneys by the servants
of the people are not only virtues, but solemn obligations.

To the extent that the appropriations contained in this bill are
instigated by private interests and promote local or individual projects
their allowance can not fail to stimulate a vicious paternalism and
encourage a sentiment among our people, already too prevalent, that
their attachment to our Government may properly rest upon the hope and
expectation of direct and especial favors and that the extent to which
they are realized may furnish an estimate of the value of governmental
care.

I believe no greater danger confronts us as a nation than the unhappy
decadence among our people of genuine and trustworthy love and affection
for our Government as the embodiment of the highest and best aspirations
of humanity, and not as the giver of gifts, and because its mission is
the enforcement of exact justice and equality, and not the allowance of
unfair favoritism.

I hope I may be permitted to suggest, at a time when the issue of
Government bonds to maintain the credit and financial standing of the
country is a subject of criticism, that the contracts provided for in
this bill would create obligations of the United States amounting to
$62,000,000 no less binding than its bonds for that sum.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _May 29, 1896_.

_To the Senate_:

I herewith return without approval Senate bill No. 147, entitled "An act
granting a pension to Elvira Bachelder."

This bill provides for a pension to the beneficiary as dependent mother
of "J.K.P. Bachelder, late a private in Company D, Seventh New Hampshire
Volunteer Infantry."

On the merits of the case I am sati