Kindred in character was the unprecedented attempt to devolve the duties of the Navy Department upon a deputy, so that orders were to be signed “A. E. Borie, Secretary of the Navy, per D. D. Porter, Admiral,” as appears in the official journal of May 11, 1869,--or, according to another instance, “David D. Porter, Vice-Admiral, for the Secretary of the Navy.” The obvious object of this illegal arrangement was to enable the incumbent, who stood high on the list of gift-makers, to be Secretary without being troubled with the business of the office. Notoriously he was an invalid, unused to public business, who, according to his own confession, modestly pleaded that he could not apply himself to work more than an hour a day; but the President soothed his anxieties by promising a deputy who would do the work. And thus was this great department made a plaything; but public opinion and other counsels arrested the sport. Here I mention, that, when this incumbent left his important post, it is understood that he was allowed to nominate his successor. PRESIDENTIAL PRETENSION AT THE INDIAN BUREAU. At the same time occurred the effort to absorb the Indian Bureau into the War Department, changing its character as part of the civil service. Congress had already repudiated such an attempt;[138] but the President, not disheartened by legislative failure, sought to accomplish it by manipulation and indirection. First elevating a member of his late staff to the head of the Bureau, he then, by a military order dated May 7, 1869,[139] proceeded to detail for the Indian service a long list of “officers left out of their regimental organizations by the consolidation of the infantry regiments,”--assuming to do this by authority of the Act of Congress of June 30, 1834, which, after declaring the number of Indian agents, and how they shall be appointed, provides that “it shall be competent for the President to require any military officer of the United States to execute the duties of Indian agent.”[140] Obviously this provision had reference to some exceptional exigency, and can be no authority for the general substitution of military officers, instead of civilians confirmed by the Senate and bound with sureties for the faithful discharge of their duties. And yet upward of sixty Army officers were in this way foisted into the Indian service. The Act of Congress of July 15, 1870, already quoted,[141] creating an incompatibility between military and civil service, was aimed partly at this abuse, and these officers ceased to be Indian agents. But this attempt is another illustration of Presidential pretension. MILITARY INTERFERENCE AT ELECTIONS.