the
art of navigation may be acquired on the cruises of the squadrons which
from time to time are dispatched to distant seas, but a competent
knowledge even of the art of shipbuilding, the higher mathematics, and
astronomy; the literature which can place our officers on a level of
polished education with the officers of other maritime nations; the
knowledge of the laws, municipal and national, which in their
intercourse with foreign states and their governments are continually
called into operation, and, above all, that acquaintance with the
principles of honor and justice, with the higher obligations of morals
and of general laws, human and divine, which constitutes the great
distinction between the warrior-patriot and the licensed robber and
pirate--these can be systematically taught and eminently acquired only
in a permanent school, stationed upon the shore and provided with the
teachers, the instruments, and the books conversant with and adapted to
the communication of the principles of these respective sciences to the
youthful and inquiring mind.

The report from the Postmaster-General exhibits the condition of that
Department as highly satisfactory for the present and still more
promising for the future. Its receipts for the year ending the 1st of
July last amounted to $1,473,551, and exceeded its expenditures by
upward of $100,000. It can not be an oversanguine estimate to predict
that in less than ten years, of which one-half have elapsed, the
receipts will have been more than doubled. In the meantime a reduced
expenditure upon established routes has kept pace with increased
facilities of public accommodation and additional services have been
obtained at reduced rates of compensation. Within the last year the
transportation of the mail in stages has been greatly augmented. The
number of post-offices has been increased to 7,000, and it may be
anticipated that while the facilities of intercourse between
fellow-citizens in person or by correspondence will soon be carried to
the door of every villager in the Union, a yearly surplus of revenue
will accrue which may be applied as the wisdom of Congress under the
exercise of their constitutional powers may devise for the further
establishment and improvement of the public roads, or by adding still
further to the facilities in the transportation of the mails. Of the
indications of the prosperous condition of our country, none can be more
pleasing than those presented