fficial life, Mr. Lincoln would
have been required to labor for five and twenty years before he could have
received as much as was paid to the author of the "Sketch Book." The
labors of the historian of Ferdinand and Isabella have been, to himself
and his family, ten times more productive than have been those of Mr.
Stanton, the great war minister of the age.--Turning now, from civil to
military life, we see among ourselves officers who have but recently
rendered the largest service, but who are now quite coolly whistled down
the wind, to find where they can the means of support for wives and
children. Studying the lists of honored dead, we find therein the names of
men of high renown whose widows and children are now starving on pensions
whose annual amount is less than the monthly receipt of any one of the
authors above referred to.

Such being the facts, and, that they are facts cannot be denied, let us
now suppose a proposition to be made that, with a view to add one, two,
three, or four thousand dollars to the annual income of ex-presidents, and
ex-legislators, and half as much to that of the widows and children of
distinguished officers, there should be established a general pension
system, involving an expenditure of the public moneys, and consequent
taxation, to the extent of ten or fifteen millions a year, and then
inquire by whom it might be supported. Would any single one of the editors
who are now so earnest in their appeals for further grants of privilege
venture so to do? Would not the most earnest of them be among the first to
visit on such a proposition the most withering denunciations? Judging from
what, in the last two years, we have read in various editorial columns, we
should say that they would be so. Would, however, any member of either
house of Congress venture to commit himself before the world by offering
such a proposition? We doubt it very much. Nevertheless it is now coolly
proposed to establish a system that would not only tax the present
generation as many millions annually, but that would grow in amount at a
rate far exceeding the growth of population, doing this in the hope that
future essayists might be enabled to count their receipts by half instead
of quarter millions, and future novelists to collect abroad and at home
the hundreds of thousands that, as we are assured, are theirs of _right_,
and that are now denied them. When we shall have determined to grant to
the widows and children