The subject of compensation to the heads of bureaus and officials
holding positions of responsibility, and requiring ability and character
to fill properly, is one to which your attention is invited. But few of
the officials receive a compensation equal to the respectable support
of a family, while their duties are such as to involve millions of
interest. In private life services demand compensation equal to the
services rendered; a wise economy would dictate the same rule in the
Government service.
I have not given the estimates for the support of Government for the
ensuing year, nor the comparative statement between the expenditures
for the year just passed and the one just preceding, because all these
figures are contained in the accompanying reports or in those presented
directly to Congress. These estimates have my approval.
More than six years having elapsed since the last hostile gun was
fired between the armies then arrayed against each other--one for the
perpetuation, the other for the destruction, of the Union--it may well
be considered whether it is not now time that the disabilities imposed
by the fourteenth amendment should be removed. That amendment does not
exclude the ballot, but only imposes the disability to hold offices upon
certain classes.
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