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In 1682, however, the king, prompted by the need of maintaining a considerable force and inspired, doubtless, by the magnificent example of Louis XIV of France, issued a decree for the establishment of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea for disabled soldiers. About the same time steps were also taken for the establishment of the Greenwich Hospital for invalided seamen. Both institutions were carried to completion under William and Mary. Chelsea Hospital was supported chiefly by money compulsorily deducted from the soldiers' pay. Not until the nineteenth century did Parliament provide more generously for the maintenance of the institution. In addition to the relief provided by these hospitals, a pension system was inaugurated shortly after the opening of both establishments, based on disability incurred during service or on infirmity after twenty years' service. Before long the numbers qualifying on this basis had increased so extensively that it was necessary to establish a system of "out-pensioners," organized into "invalid companies" and liable to special service in time of war.

The pension system was subject to great abuses, the pensioners generally receiving but a fraction of the income (small enough in itself) they were legally entitled to. In 1754 William Pitt reformed the system, "having it much at heart to redeem these helpless unthinking creatures from their harpies."

Oliver Goldsmith, in one of his essays, quotes a disabled sailor who had been driven to begging at the outskirts of a town as saying to him: "As for my misfortunes, master, except for the loss of my limb, and my being obliged to beg, I don't know any reason, thank Heaven, that I have to complain. Blessed be God, I enjoy good health, and will forever love liberty and Old England. Liberty, property, and Old England, Huzza!"

Early in the nineteenth century. Parliament passed an act granting pensions to all soldiers who were invalided, disabled, or discharged after from fourteen to twenty-one years of service. Since then, and especially after the South African War, the system has been generously extended, including relief not only for disabled and retired soldiers, but also for the widows and orphans of those dying in service.

It is pleasant to be able to say that no nation has hitherto been so generous in its provision for the disabled soldier as the United States of America. In fact, the first relief measures were undertaken very shortly after the founding of the early colonies. Plymouth Colony was founded in 1620; it passed its first pension legislation in 1636, providing that any man who should be sent forth as a soldier and return maimed was to be maintained competently the rest of his life. Eight years later, the Virginia Assembly passed a disability pension law, and not long thereafter another law creating a system of relief for the needy dependents of any colonist killed in the service of the colony.

Long before the Revolution, other colonies had taken similar measures, Rhode Island not only providing pensions for the disabled and for the dependents of those killed in service, but also decreeing that every wounded soldier was entitled to medical care at the colony's expense until cured.

A few months after the beginning of the Revolution the Continental Congress declared that half-pay would be allowed every officer, soldier, and sailor incapacitated during the war. However, since the Continental Congress possessed neither funds nor any real powers, the pension obligations incurred by this and by similar resolutions rested solely upon the several states, some of which repudiated them.

Several times during the bitter struggle, at critical moments when the outlook was gloomiest and the army discouraged. General Washington appealed to the Congress for more generous pension provisions. The opposition to these proposals was always strong. A provision granting officers somewhat more favorable schedules than those set up for the men was violently denounced as undemocratic.

The first general pension law enacted under the Constitution was passed in 1792 and amended the following year. In its amended form it provided that five dollars monthly (raised to eight dollars twenty-three years later) was to be paid all privates and non-commissioned officers disabled in the service of the Continental Army. Incapacitated officers were allowed half-pay.

This measure furnished the model for the regular army pensions law that was passed in 1802 and which continued unaltered in its essentials down to the Civil War. At various times throughout the first half of the nineteenth century special pension legislation for special groups, such as the widows of the Revolutionary soldiers, was enacted, the details of which need not be here discussed. During the Civil War the principle of fixed rates for specific disabilities -- the loss of a hand, the loss of a foot, both hands, both feet, both eyes, etc. -- was introduced, a principle which has since found fruitful application not only in military but also in industrial legislation. In 1870 it was enacted that artificial limbs, renewable every five years at public cost, be provided.