The establishment of a naval academy,
furnishing the means of theoretic instruction to the youths who devote
their lives to the service of their country upon the ocean, still
solicits the sanction of the Legislature. Practical seamanship and 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.
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