. The claim of Colonel Towson is the
stronger because the arrangement of him to the office to which he is now
nominated is not to one from which any officer has been removed, and to
which any other officer may in any view of the case be supposed to have
had a claim. As Colonel Gadsden held the office of Inspector-General,
and as such was acknowledged by all to belong to the staff of the Army,
it is not perceived on what ground his appointment can be objected to.

If such a construction is to be given to the act of 1821 as to confine
the transfer of officers from the old to the new establishment to the
_corps of troops_--that is, to the line of the Army--the whole staff of
the Army in every branch would not only be excluded from any appointment
in the new establishment, but altogether disbanded from the service.
It would follow also that all the offices of the staff under the
new arrangement must be filled by officers belonging to the new
establishment after its organization and their arrangement in it.
Other consequences not less serious would follow. If the right of the
President to fill these original vacancies by the selection of officers
from any branch of the whole military establishment was denied, he would
be compelled to place in them officers of the same grade whose corps had
been reduced, and they with them. The effect, therefore, of the law as
to those appointments would be to legislate into office men who had been
already legislated out of office, taking from the President all agency
in their appointment. Such a construction would not only be subversive
of the obvious principles of the Constitution, but utterly inconsistent
with the spirit of the law itself, since it would provide offices for
a particular grade, and fix every member of that grade in those offices,
at a time when every other grade was reduced, and among them generals
and other officers of the highest merit. It would also defeat every
object of selection, since colonels of infantry would be placed at the
head of regiments of artillery, a service in which they might have had
no experience, and for which they might in consequence be unqualified.

Having omitted in the message to Congress at the commencement of the
session to state the principles on which this law had been executed, and
having imperfectly explained them in the message to the Senate of the
17th of January last, I deem it particularly incumbent on me, as well
from a motive of respe