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number of dismissals of cadets for inaptitude or misconduct. The regulations are admitted to be rigid. A "conduct roll" is kept, on which all offences against orders or regulations are recorded. These offences are divided into seven grades, each of which comprises those of nearly the same degree of criminality. The degree of criminality of offences of each grade is expressed by a number, as follows: offences of the first grade, by 10; of the second grade, by 8; of the third, by 5; of the fourth, by 4; of the fifth, by 3; of the sixth, by 2; of the seventh, by 1. For each year after the first that a cadet has been a member of the institution, his offences are made to count more, by adding to the number expressing the degree of criminality of each offence, one sixth for his second, one third for his third, and one half for his fourth year. The numbers expressive of the offences of each cadet are added up at the end of the year, making a sum total of criminality; and a dismissal is incurred by the commission of offences to the amount of two hundred in the scale of criminality for one year. Most of these offences are tried by courts-martial, composed of officers of the army, for which punishments short of dismissal are inflicted, such as extra duty and confinement to rooms; although where a serious offence has been committed, the sentence may, for that alone, without reference to the conduct roll, amount to disinissal. The author, after enumerating the dismissals, and from thence arguing that there is a great want of moral power and influence over the cadets, says:

"It is believed that such results are attributable almost exclusively to the inevitable and natural tendency of a system of education founded in government patronage alone. They cannot arise from want of rigid rules for the government of the institution, any more than from a want of ordinary vigilance in the officers attached to it. A mere glance at the rules prescribed for the observance of both officers and cadets will at once dispel such a suspicion." p. 25.

Very well! this is fair testimony in favour of the "vigilance of the officers" at least. But the evil is in the mere tendency of something which the author, after wading through a page of generalities, is unable to explain, except at last by an insinuation against the conduct of these very officers of the institution. Thus he acquits them of the fact, which he afterwards hints in the following paragraph:

"The table deduced from the 'conduct roll' of the years mentioned, exhibits the most conclusive evidence of the moral inefficiency of the institution, though aided by the most rigid regulations, and its inherent weakness against the spirit of insubordination to which young men are ever inclined to give indulgence, when conscious of their irresponsibility or their responsibility only to a power that is a dependent recipient of the public bounty, and, consequently, solicitous to husband for itself the friendly feelings of all sorts of men."

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If this means any thing, it means that the officers in charge ("the power"), of whom we have just seen there is not even a suspicion of a want of vigilance in their management of the cadets according to the regulations, are yet so solicitous to husband friendly feelings" for themselves, that they are induced thereby to discharge the cadets from responsibility for the commission of offences. We have given this as a specimen of the fair reasoning of a committee of the house of representatives, of the majority of whose members it is but charity to suppose, that they claim the ordinary privilege of assenting to the final recommendation of the report, without agreeing to the assertions or arguments of its author in submitting it: we leave our readers to draw their own conclusions. But the truth of the matter before us is pregnant with testimony in favour of the school. About one in five of the youths who are appointed to a cadetship, is the proportion of dismissals for inaptitude or misconduct. Of these, there are some who are unable to pass the first examination and satisfy the requisitions of the law, in consequence of defective reading, writing, and arithmetic. The others are discharged for causes which, if not thus acted on, would by their example do great mischief. We have said the regulations are severe, and it is all important they should be rigorously enforced. The destiny of the cadet is not like that of the student in a private college. He is, and is to be, a soldier. Obedience is his first duty; it is the pivot on which his profession and the whole army can alone successfully move. faithful performance of the most minute duty on the part of the soldier, is indispensable to military efficiency. Should not the cadet then be subject to severe rules, and should not the influence of martial law-the law by which, in after life, he is to be governed-fix in him those early habits of mind, which in youth easily become a second nature? It is a gross mistake, as established by the irrefragable testimony of visiters and committees for fifteen years, to say that "evil associations" and "insubordination" exist, or that "moral influences" are wanting in the school. Many of the dismissals are for demerit of inaptitude, or for offences in regard to conduct, not known as such to other collegiate institutions, and in which not the slightest point of moral turpitude is involved; trifling in themselves, but which, in a military point of view, are important. And, in regard to the order and police of the whole academy, how does it compare with other colleges? Look into the history of Harvard, Princeton, Virginia, Yale, and others, and ask of combinations, risings, and barrings out, and then put the question as to this school. We mean to draw no invidious distinctions to the discredit of the justly celebrated colleges alluded to; all that we desire to explain, are results by comparison, arising from the difference

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of character and purposes of the institutions named. That the regulations in question are practically useful, is proved by a single fact. A few years since it was too often the case, through the influence of members of congress and other official personages, that cadets, who had been dismissed, were reappointed. This unwise practice, it is but justice to say, was protested against by the academic board, was strongly censured by boards of visitors, and has latterly been discontinued by the government. The records of the academy show that out of about sixty youths who had been dismissed for inaptitude, and who were reappointed, only five succeeded in graduating, and were found too very low in their classes. A test and a proof of the value of the regulations! What then does the fact of the dismissals prove? It proves, conclusively, that the standard of proficiency in learning and of merit in conduct in the institution is a high one, and still further, that those who reach that standard, even although not with the first honours, are good scholars, good soldiers, and good men, or at least have laid a permanent foundation for proving such in the service of their country. Beyond all this, we agree with the "Graduate," in his letter, that the yearly dismissals from the academy, if they prove any thing, speak greatly in its favour. As abstract propositions, the sentiments conveyed by him in the following questions, are just :— "Where the education is entirely gratuitous, and the competition among our youths to gain admittance to the school is without precedent great, ought the bounty of the state to be lavished on bad subjects, whose inaptitude or evil propensities render them unworthy of this favour? Ought not the country to cull out the flower of her youth under such circumstances, and rigidly exact from them a truly Spartan discipline, cutting off all bad members with almost as ruthless a hand as that famous republic cast out those infants whom misfortunes even, and not faults, rendered unserviceable to the state?" p. 19.

A further censure is thrown upon the tendency of the academy, in reference to the supposed ill-consequences of associating, as officers in the army, those who have been its graduates and others who have never been within its walls. Many vague anticipations of embarrassments and dangers in the service, likely to arise from personal jealousies, quarrels, and broils, are thrown out by the author of the report, &c., and a strong effort is made by him to class the officers who have, and those who have not had the advantage of a diploma, into diffent castes. We are very sure that no such reprehensible and absurd feeling exists at this time in the service, and the evidence of an ounce of fact is worth a pound of surmise. With some opportunity to know, and therefore to speak advisedly, we have scarcely ever heard an officer, not a graduate, express any other sentiment than a favourable one, concerning the academy or the general conduct of the mass of its pupils, after they have become

attached to the roll. Nor is there occasion for any other feeling. The cadet does not quit the limits of the school, immediately on entering the service, to strip the elder soldier of his honour, his rank, or his pay. On the contrary, the institution merely turns out annually a certain number of subalterns of the lowest grade, qualified to fill the higher situations, when attained by the slow and gradual process of regular promotion, by which all in the service must abide, whether graduates or not. What occasion then for jealousies or broils? Indeed, while the very nature of the education received by the youths at West Point tends to the exercise of gentlemanly courtesy and forbearance, it also promotes the existence of moral and Christian feeling. There the indulgence of the mere brute passions incident to humanity is quelled, and mere impulse is disciplined to operate in the channels of morality and religion, while sensual habits, too often the precursors to offensive conduct, may not be formed. Look around the army for the facts. Always excepting some decided and striking désagrémens of some of the superior chiefs, who claim no relationship to the school, the corps of officers, having gradually become filled up by graduates, is more free from quarrels and duels than it ever was. Where is the complaint of the private against the subaltern? When have the militia, in the Indian campaign, complained of tyranny or superciliousness on the part of the graduates? Have they not been connected together by strong ties of attachment in scenes of trial and carnage, where not to murmur was a positive virtue? For these reasons, as well as that these youths are attached to their country, and being connected with it in heart by those ties which are inseparable from place of birth, and the existence of relations and friends filling posts of eminence or moving in private stations with honour, are ready, in common with their fellow-citizens, to shed their best blood in its defence, we cannot admire either the patriotism, the justice, or the taste of those who would attempt to create invidious distinctions where none exist or ought to be found, and to sow the seeds of jealousy and dislike, where all is harmony, and this merely to gratify a visionary theory. Nor, in connection with this branch of the subject, can we yield approval to the idea, among others, of the deliramenta doctrine of the author of the report, &c., intended to be conveyed in the following sentences:

"These considerations and this reasoning result in the conclusion, that the graduates at West Point are not the men upon whom the command of the army of the United States will probably devolve, or upon whom the army itself will suffer to be devolved the command, in case of war. Their artificial qualifications will not win the confidence of American soldiers." p. 29.

In this there is much of the reasoning of honest Dogberry, when he tells us that "to be a well-favoured man is the gift of

fortune, but to read and write comes by nature." If we understand the last sentence of the quotation, it means that an education in any particular science (i. e. "artificial qualifications") will not win the confidence of those who may require the benefits of the application of that science to practical purposes. We, in common with a considerable portion of mankind, have been in the habit of thinking that all qualification in knowledge, being the result of education, was acquired by means of art, and that the intuitive knowledge which causes wisdom to come from the mouths of sucking babes, was a rare gift. We are however corrected by a committee of the house of representatives, and are given to believe by the author of its report, that

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."

But seriously, if it be possible so to deal with such matter as this, is not all military proficiency, whether acquired theoretically in the closet and practically in the field or in a military academy, an “artificial qualification?" Have American soldiers or the American people ever refused to repose confidence in its possessors, when it has been found united with gallantry, honesty, honour, and success? Will they, in such cases, stop to ask how it may have been acquired? We have indeed mistaken their character, if these questions should be answered by them according to the views of the author of the report.

But we must pass on to another of the disjecta membra of this report, to the whole of which may well be applied the maxim, as sound in literature as in law, dolus versatur in generalibus. We are told there is a point of insuperable irreconcilableness in the character of this institution to the genius of our political organization, in the alleged fact of the exclusion, as officers, from the army of all persons above the age of twentyone years, as well as all persons under that age who do not previously obtain admission and graduation at the West Point Academy. With regard to the fact here asserted, there is the following passage in the "Remarks on the Report:"

"This is not the case, either in theory or practice. There is no law nor regulation by which others than graduates of the Military Academy are excluded from commissions in the army, except for the grade of brevet second lieutenant, which grade was formed by law to entitle the government to the services of the graduates, when the full grades should at any time be filled up. The law was made to apply to graduates alone, to prevent this grade from being filled by less competent persons than graduates were supposed to be. The appointments in the regiments of dragoons, lately raised, refute this statement. .. The graduates

of the academy have no claim, founded either in law or in regulation, upon- any commission in the army, except on the grade just specified, and even on this it rests with the president whether it shall or shall not be filled. As to the complaint of excluding all persons above the age of twenty-one years from appointments to the academy, it is founded on

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