mileage

is a very large and even extravagant allowance made to members of Congress, and some others of the favored, for travelling expenses--eight dollars for every twenty miles. [J. Inman.]

CONSTRUCTIVE MILEAGE

is the same allowance for journeys supposed to be made, but not actually made, from and to the seat of Government. The allowance enures to members of the United States Senate once in every four years. When a new President comes into office, Congress adjourns, of course, on the 3d of March, the new President being inaugurated on the 4th. But the Senate is immediately called again into session, to act on the nominations of the new President; and though not a man of them leaves Washington, each is supposed to go home and come back again, in the course of the ten or twelve hours intervening between the adjournment and the re-assembling. For this supposed journey the Senators are allowed their mileage, just as though the journey was actually made; the sum being, in the case of Senators from distant States, from 1000 to 1500.

Many of the Senators, in 1845, when Mr. Polk was inaugurated, refused to pocket their constructive mileage, holding it to be an imposition on the public.

Constructive mileage is allowed when an extra session of Congress is called, whether the Senators and Members have actually gone to their homes or not, after the regular session. [J. Inman.]

The mileage is a still less excusable abomination. Texas sends hither two Senators and two Representatives, who receive, in addition to their pay, some 2,500 each every session for merely coming here and going away again (I would sooner pay them twice the money to stay away)--10,000 in all for travelling expenses which are not actually 1000. Arkansas will take 6000 out of the Treasury this year merely for the travel of her Senators. When we come to have Senators and Representatives from Oregon and California, we shall have to negotiate a loan expressly to pay the mileage of their members.--Letter from H. Greeley. N. Y. Tribune, May 2, 1848.