s the community has no means of positive action.*

* It is a singular fact, which contains matter for deep
consideration, that the District of Columbia, the national capital,
is the only populated area in the civilized world without any sort of
suffrage rights.

In the same month in which President Cleveland issued his memorable
special message to the Senate on the Tenure of Office Act, he began
another struggle against congressional practice in which he was not
so fortunate. On March 10, 1886, he sent to Congress the first of his
pension vetoes. Although liberal provision for granting pensions had
been made by general laws, numerous special applications were made
directly to Congress, and congressmen were solicited to secure favorable
consideration for them. That it was the duty of a representative to
support an application from a resident of his district, was a doctrine
enforced by claim agents with a pertinacity from which there was no
escape. To attempt to assume a judicial attitude in the matter was
politically dangerous, and to yield assent was a matter of practical
convenience. Senator Cullom relates that when he first became a member
of the committee on pensions he was "a little uneasy" lest he "might
be too liberal." But he was guided by the advice of an old, experienced
Congressman, Senator Sawyer of Wisconsin, who told him: "You need not
worry, you cannot very well make a mistake allowing liberal pensions to
the soldier boys. The money will get back into the Treasury very soon."

The feeling that anything that the old soldiers wanted should be granted
was even stronger in the House, where about the only opportunity of
distinction allowed by the procedure was to champion these local demands
upon the public treasury. It was indeed this privilege of passing
pension bills which partially reconciled members of the House to
the actual control of legislative opportunity by the Speaker and
the chairmen of a few dominating committees. It was a congressional
perquisite to be allowed to move the passage of so many bills; enactment
followed as a matter, of course. President Cleveland made a pointed
reference to this process in a veto message of June 21, 1886. He
observed that the pension bills had only "an apparent Congressional
sanction" for the fact was that "a large proportion of these bills have
never been submitted to a majority of either branch of Congress, but are
the results of nominal sessions held f