CHAPTER LVIII.

Naval Academy.

1. WE will place our notice of this institution next to that of the Military Academy, as there is a strong analogy between the two. We remarked on that, that it might be considered a branch of the War Department. So we say of this, it may be considered a branch of the Navy Department. Both are designed to educate and train men for future public service, in different departments.

2. This school is now established at Annapolis, in the State of Maryland, near Washington. Like the Military Academy, it has its superintendent and professors. The pupils are called midshipmen. They are taught navigation and such other branches of science as are necessary to make them good seamen and naval officers. They are selected upon nearly the same plan as cadets. Each Congressional District in every State and Territory, is entitled to send two students to be educated at the Academy. The District of Columbia is also entitled to send two. Besides which, the President is allowed to appoint ten additional ones at large, and three more from the boys enlisted in the navy.

3. After their graduating examination, if they pass, they are commissioned as ensigns in the navy, and rank according to merit. Before admission, they are examined according to the regulations made by the Secretary of the Navy, and must be between the ages of fourteen

and seventeen years, sound, robust, and of good constitution.

4. The course of study in this, as well as in the Military Academy, is adapted to the profession which the students are expected to follow,-the one in the navy, the other in the army. More are educated at these great national schools than the government needs in time of peace. Hence it is that many of the graduates are engaged in civil employment. Thus these institutions have been of great service to the country, outside of the army and navy, for they have added to the number of well educated and scientific men, who may be useful in any of the walks of life. Their graduates elevate the standard of intelligence in the community, especially when they engage in the work of instruction.

Both of these institutions are supported at the expense of the government. The tuition and board of cadets in one, and of the midshipmen in the other, costs them nothing.

lessness, and the wickedness of a part of mankind that nothing but compulsion will keep them in order; nothing but force will keep them from the violation of the best of laws. This reckless and vicious class of persons are so numerous that laws could never be executed, nor order preserved, if no military or naval power stood behind the civil power to enforce the laws when they are resisted by any considerable body of persons. But for the known fact that the military power stands ready at the call of the executive authority of the government, resistance to every law which was distasteful to the most depraved and vicious, would be made. Thus order at home almost as much requires the military power, as our defense against the wrongs or invasions of foreigners.

3. The navy cannot act in all emergencies as the army can, because it is necessarily restricted in its actions. It can only act on the seas or upon places accessible to it by water; whereas the army can operate any where upon land. It never has been the policy or the practice of the United States to keep a large standing army, for it has been thought inconsistent with a Republican government; first, because it seemed to imply a want of confidence in the intelligence and patriotism of the people, the majority of whom are deemed law-abiding, patriotic, and willing without compulsion to support the authority of the civil power of the government. And another reason is that a large army is a very expensive thing. Indeed the army and the navy are by far the two most expensive departments of the government. Economy, therefore,