Mr. DAVIS. Allow me to say that with regard to most of those who distinguished themselves for bravery in the 'field, who led our gallant men to the breach, stormed the enemy’s fortresses, and tilled down the stars and bars of secession, those men might receive elsewhere than in the public service a far greater compensation than they can get under the Government. With many of them it is nothing but the esprit du corps that keeps them in the service. Sir, I believe in this Government doing jus tice. I ask for nothing in behalf of an officer located in the city of Washington which I would not ask on behalf of one located any where else. But I know something about the operation of this bill. Why, sir, in 1846 a friend of mine in the Army bein ordered to military duty in California, paid for a single room not ten feet square $100 a month as rent. His fin pay was about $1,500 perannum. This became so great a grievance on the pay cific coast that Congress passed special acts to relieve the officers. An it is so here. Officers with families pay $1, 200 rent, and for their fuel besides, when their commutation allowance does not amount to more than $027. Now, when you come to fix an unchanging, unvarying system, and say that the pay of an officer shall be so much under all circumstances, you at once introduce under the name of uniformity that which is nothing but its opposite. Now, sir, the pay of a captain located in the city of Washin ton by this bill is $2, 500 a year, and yet the sum which is found necessary for the Government to allow him as commutation for quarters and fuelwithout anything else is $027 61. If he be a man of family, how can he live upon $2, 600? He has in the 1st place to pay out of his $2, 500 5%. income tax. Then he has his gas bills to pay, his repairs to his dwellin, his incidenta expenses, his wife and c ildren to clothe, his children to educate, and all in a state of society where it costs him vastly more to live than it did 5 years ago. He receives less than $1, 200 for their entire support.