TABLE OF PAY, SUBSISTENCE, FORAGE, &c.—(Continued.)

1. The officer in command of a company is allowed $10 per month for the responsibility of clothing, arms, and accoutrements.-Act March 2, 1827, Sec. 2.

2. Every commissioned officer below the rank of Brigadier-General is entitled to one additional ration per day for every five years' service.

8. Paymaster's clerks, $700 per annum, and 75 cents per day when actually on duty.

4. Chaplains in army, $40 to $60 per month and four rations a day.

5. Chaplains in volunteers, same as captain of cavalry.

Female Nurses, 40 cents a day and one ration.

The last act of Congress which granted bounty land was approved 3d March, 1855, and does not confer its benefits on any soldiers for services rendered since that date. There is no law granting bounty land to any person for services rendered in the war of 1861; but all soldiers are entitled to the benefits of the Homestead Law,* and may locate 160 acres of land on any of the lands belonging to the Government for sale at a dollar and a quarter per acre, and acquire a title to it by living on the same and cultivating it for five years. The discharge of a soldier is of no use to any other person. Soldiers cannot transfer any right to bounty or arrears of pay or any other claim whatever by selling their discharges, and no one who knows what he is doing will buy such discharges except as waste paper.†

* Act of Congress, approved May 30th, 1862.

See. 5, Opin., p. 237.

A pensioner cannot pledge or mortgage his pension, or sell it. Such contracts are illegal, and the person so advancing money acquires no right whatever to the pension. This is the law, and is meant to protect pensioners from sharpers.*

Soldiers who have served one term in the army have great inducements held out to them to reënlist. The hundred dollars bounty will be paid to them in cash on their rëenlistment, and besides this, three hundred dollars, in several payments during the period of their second term. If any die during such second term, all the bounty remaining unpaid will be paid to their representatives. See the General Orders of War Department on this subject, in chapter 17.

Officers are forbidden by the army regulations from selling their pay in advance. The practice is, nevertheless, more or less common. Heretofore all officers were paid on pay accounts, and after the services were performed the account might be assigned to whoever the officer saw fit. The practice, however, led to many abuses, and has been cor rected, so far as line officers are concerned, by the act of Congress which obliges them to be paid on the muster rolls of their company. The practice of mortgaging the pay of officers for advances is undoubtedly an evil, leading to dissolute habits, and encouraging vice in many ways. For the information of persons whom it may concern, I may state that the practice is clearly illegal, and that such contracts cannot be sustained. A careful survey of the subject shows that while a pension granted for past services might be sold or mortgaged, were it not for the act of Congress especially prohibiting its sale, transfer, or pledge, the salary of an officer for some continuing duty is incapable of alienation, transfer, or pledge, on grounds of public policy. This is eminently right and proper; the officer is paid a salary to

* Act of Congress, March 18th, 1818, 3 Stat., 410.

support him in the public service, and all of it should go to that purpose. He should not be left at the mercy of any Shylock who, taking advantage of his necessities, might swindle him out of his prospective earnings.*

Stone vs. Lidderdale, 2 Anstruther, 533; Priddy vs. Rose, 3 Merrivale, 102; Wells vs. Foster, 8 Meeson & Welsby, 152.

CHAPTER III.

ARTIFICIAL LIMBS AND TRUSSES.

LIMBS.

NON-COMMISSIONED officers and soldiers in the army, and seamen in the navy, who have lost a limb while in the service of the United States in the line of duty, are entitled to be supplied with an artificial limb, out of the appropriation in the act of Congress approved February 9th, 1863,* for that purpose.

The application should be made to any of the Department medical directors, who, if satisfied of the correctness of the claim, will order a limb from any one of the manufacturers who are authorized to supply such limbs.

The Department medical directors, to any one of whom application may be made, are located at the following places: