. By the act of 1815-16
the Pay Department, of which the Paymaster General was the chief, was
made one of the branches of the staff, and he and all those under him
were subjected to the Rules and Articles of War. The appointment,
therefore, of him, and especially to a new office, was strictly
conformable to law.

The only difference between the fifth section of the act of 1815 for
reducing the Army and the twelfth section of the act of 1821 for still
further reducing it, by which the power to carry those laws into effect
was granted to the President in each instance, consists in this, that by
the former he was to cause the arrangement to be made of the officers,
noncommissioned officers, musicians, and privates of the several _corps
of troops_ then in the service of the United States, whereas in the
latter the term _troops_ was omitted. It can not be doubted that that
omission had an object, and that it was thereby intended to guard
against misconstruction in so very material and important a circumstance
by authorizing the application of the act unequivocally to every corps
of the staff as well as of the line. With that word a much wider range
was given to the act of 1815 on the reduction which then took place than
under the last act. The omission of it from the last act, together with
all the sanctions which were given by Congress to the construction of
the law in the reduction made under the former, could not fail to dispel
all doubt as to the extent of the power granted by the last law and of
the principles which ought to guide, and on which it was thereby made
the duty of the President to execute it. With respect to the other
objection--that is, that officers of the same grade only ought to have
been transferred to these new offices--it is equally unfounded. It is
admitted that officers may be taken from the old corps and reduced and
arranged in the new in inferior grades, as was done under the former
reduction. This admission puts an end to the objection in this case;
for if an officer may be reduced and arranged from one corps to another
by an entire change of grade, requiring a new commission and a new
nomination to the Senate, I see no reason why an officer may not be
advanced in like manner. In both instances the grade in the old corps
is alike disregarded. The transfer from it to the new turns on the merit
of the party, and it is believed that the claim in this instance is felt
by all with peculiar sensibility