281
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1856
who are unworthy of peership with the gentlemen of the board. They love praise, they love glory too, but they love to earn it before they wear it. The Senator from Delaware told us that Mr. Du Pont had noth- ing to dread from an investigation of his character; that he had received the indorsement of the Secretary. It is a singular coinci- dence that he was associated with Missroon, Godon, and Pender- grast at the time when they were arraigned in 1838, 1839, 1840, and 1841, and when they lay under censure. They have main- tained, no doubt, a fine social feeling for each other from that time to this; but is it not a singular coincidence that being indorsed, they should all meet on the board again-all friends again by continuous friendship-united in the ties of brotherhood? Two of them, we are told, have been unlucky in being called to account for their actions; and my friend thinks the members of the board are not bound to fight everybody of the two hundred and one. I will not encourage reclamation of that kind; but if gentlemen of the Navy happen to cannon on one another and jostle, it is their own business, and they have to settle it. I hold that every gentleman is to be the judge of the injury which he receives, from whom he receives it, and the redress he is to require. I am not going to restrict it. I will discountenance it by a repeal of this law, restoring them all to their proper positions, placing them where they were, and then no wrong can be done. The President will have the power to order a court of inquiry into cases of doubt- ful utility and character; and upon a court of inquiry reporting the facts to him he has the function to displace such a man from the Navy. Let us create a list for the retired and furloughed; and let him, on the examination of surgeons, determine their dis- ability, and retire them for age, wounds, or disease. By this course we should follow the recommendation of the present Secre- tary of the Navy. He suggested that he should have the power of recommending culpably inefficient officers to the President for removal; the President should then lay them before the Senate; and the Senate concurring with the President, he should remove every man who was useless, or who did not deserve a place in the Navy. This was suggested by the Secretary of the Navy previous to this unfortunate, and I will say criminal enactment. If this suggestion had been followed, we should have had peace to-day; we should have had the Navy with none of it but those who should be in it; and only those removed from it who were inefficient or unworthy of it. But it is different now. I ha\'e
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