Samuel Freeman Miller

“ The persons described who may be guilty are those prosecuting claims for pensions or bounty before the pension office. The offence described is 'withholding from a pensioner or other claimant the whole or any part of the claim allowed and due said pensioner or claimant,' and it is but a just limitation of the word 'claimant' that he should be a claimant under that act, a claimant before the pension bureau. ”

“ The pensions to soldiers, their widows and orphans, is not pay, and the provisions for paying them are not under that act. Arrearages of pay were not collected under any pension law, or through the pension office. What is meant by bounty here is said in the briefs to be also passed upon and paid in another bureau. The indictment is perhaps on this point a little obscure. In the sixth count the defendant is charged as guilty of withholding arrearages of pay and bounty, and in the tenth with withholding pay and bounty. ”

“ The party might very well be criminally wrong in failing to pay when he received it; but Congress could hardly be supposed to intend to punish as a crime his failure to pay afterwards what was in law but a debt created five years before. ”