Reflecting with high
satisfaction on the distinguished bravery displayed whenever occasions
permitted in the late Mediterranean service, I think it would be an
useful encouragement as well as a just reward to make an opening for
some present promotion by enlarging our peace establishment of captains
and lieutenants.
With Tunis some misunderstandings have arisen not yet sufficiently
explained, but friendly discussions with their ambassador recently
arrived and a mutual disposition to do whatever is just and reasonable
can not fail of dissipating these, so that we may consider our peace on
that coast, generally, to be on as sound a footing as it has been at any
preceding time. Still, it will not be expedient to withdraw immediately
the whole of our force from that sea.
The law providing for a naval peace establishment fixes the number of
frigates which shall be kept in constant service in time of peace, and
prescribes that they shall be manned by not more than two-thirds of
their complement of seamen and ordinary seamen. Whether a frigate may
be trusted to two-thirds only of her proper complement of men must
depend on the nature of the service on which she is ordered; that may
sometimes, for her safety as well as to insure her object, require her
fullest complement. In adverting to this subject Congress will perhaps
consider whether the best limitation on the Executive discretion in
this case would not be by the number of seamen which may be employed in
the whole service rather than by the number of the vessels.
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