Mr. FARNSWORTH. Mr. Speaker, ifthat be a correct conclusion, if the President be right in that reard, then we ought to pay the officers and soldiers mustered out ten 11 ths and leave one 11thunpaid. [Laughter] Now the truth is, Mr. Speaker, that the country so understood it, the officers and soldiers so understood it. When Lee capitulated and Johnston surrendered they understood that, in the contemplation of these statutes which provided for the payment of troops mustered out, &c., the war was concluded, and then the men who did not want to stay about garrisons, these officers who enlisted to fight and not to hang about and draw pay, commenced resi in, for there was nothing more for them to 5:. what does the War Dept but construe the law so as to cut off all such men from the 3 months extra pay and give it to the lazy men who hung aroundv and would not resign until they were forced to be mustered out? They construed another law sin larly, and I am glad to be assured by the chairman of the ComMilAffrs that he proposes to present a bill remedying that evil. We provided by law that the veterans should receive a certain amounmf bounty, I think $400, if they should serve to the end of the war. After the war had ceased, after all active hostilities had ceased, many who had left shops and farms at home, applied to the War Dept to be discharged. They were for law ile discharged with great facility, for they were not needed. Now, the War Dept construes the law so as to cut off these men from the unpaid installment of the bounty. I know of several in stances where men received their discharges only 2 or 3 days before the order came to muster out the entire regiment, and they have been cut off from the payment of some 200 or 300 dollars of bounty as well as transportation to their homes, while the men who were mustered out only a few days afterward received both bount and transportation to their homes. Still urther, a rent many of those regiments were mustere out after the surrender of Lee, and when they were mustered out they received 3 months extra pay as well as bounty, yet men beloning to the regiments still in service discharge by order of the War Dept who were enlisted upon the same terms with the men who were mustered out, were denied the payment of 3 months pay and bounty. while the War Dept paid men who were mustered out last April, they refused to pay men who were discharged long afterward. What kin of construction of the law is that? I hope, therefore, the chairman of the ComMilAffrs will consent to amend his bill by striking out that portion that the officer shall be required to have served 2 years, so as to put all the officers upon the same footing.