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In our country, there being nothing as yet deserving the name of a standing army, and few men being found who have served more than one term, pensions for length of service have not yet received any recognition as such. But with the results likely to flow from the present war, it seems more than probable that we shall have to maintain in future a standing army of considerable magnitude. This army will tend to increase with the further increase of our population and territory, and those who serve in it should be provided with sufficient inducement to re-enlist, when their original term of service has expired. In this way, and adopting the military profession as a permanent career, men may be found who, having faithfully served the State for the best portion of their active life, are certainly entitled to some gratuity on retiring. A grant of land is not sufficient reward in itself for such men. The quarter section bestowed upon them, from their little disposition to settle upon it, falls readily into the hands of speculators. Soldiers are not like merchants; they cannot afford to wait for a rise in real estate to produce a capital on which to support their old age. They must live every day, and have something to live upon. Hence, a regular annuity or pension, however small, is far better for them than the gift of a tract of land, whose ultimate and excessive value they may never live to realize. It is, therefore, the most equitable form in which they can be rewarded, and the one, too, which the wisdom even of the ancients, no less than of the moderns, has adopted throughout the civilized world. Even in the days of the Emperor Augustus, the Roman veterans (emeriti) preferred the gift of an annuity to that of a grant of land, and it was this fact more than any other, which led him to create a military treasury, although at the same time extending the time of service. This custom of rewarding length of service, having had the sanction of experience, wherever tried, it seems but just to infer will be found as applicable to our army as to any other.

It is therefore suggested that there should be such an amendment of the existing pension laws, as will provide for the exigencies of the future, on the supposition, now almost accepted as a foregone conclusion, that we shall have to maintain hereafter a large standing army. Under this aspect of things, the following propositions are submitted for the purpose of awakening public attention to the subject, while at the same time offering some suggestions as a nucleus for more extensive development.

PROPOSITION FIRST.

All non-commissioned officers and privates serving in the army for twenty-five years should be entitled to the full pension of their rank, just as if they had been honorably discharged from the service, at any time, on account of wounds or disease contracted in the line of their duty. This pension should be additional to any bounty given for enlisting, or any tract of land bestowed at the expiration of the first term of service. The gratuities to the soldier would then stand thus:

1st. Bounty for enlisting (fitted by Congress).

2d. Tract of land on being honorably discharged after the first term of service.

3d. Full pension after serving honorably for twenty-five years.

In our introductory remarks we have so fully explained the reasons foreshadowing this proposition, that nothing more need be added to it. Of course, it will be understood that a man wounded or disabled in the service, may at any time (as is now the case) be discharged and pensioned -- length of service applying only to those who have escaped casualties of this kind, and choose to continue in the army up to the period designated above, as necessary to entitle a soldier to a retiring pension. The retiring pension should, therefore, always be a full pension, and not susceptible of sub-division, by reason of serving any less number of years.

A young man, entering the army at twenty, would thus be able to retire at forty-five on a full pension, and with the prospect of twenty to twenty-five years of life before him, during which he might embark into business of any kind which his taste selected. In this way the possibility of increasing his fortune would inspire his industry to exert itself to the utmost.

PROPOSITION SECOND.

All soldiers having served honorably in this war, and who may re-enlist at its expiration, should have their time dated back to the day of their original entry into the war, so as to make the period of their first service count double.

This would serve to give them honorable distinction among all other soldiers who may begin their term of service after the war, and make them also the more willing to continue in the army, knowing that at the expiration of a certain length of time, whether disabled or not, they would receive a full pension. Hereafter the rule should be adopted, as in the European armies, that time spent in campaigns should count double. The object of this is to infuse a high spirit of zeal into an army at the outset of a war, and to make it court rather than shun the dangers and hardships of a campaign, by showing this to be the true road to promotion and honorable rewards. Such a stimulus as this would not fail to keep the ranks of any future army full of veterans, and it seems the part of wisdom to avail ourselves of it at the earliest possible moment.