The grave considerations connected with courts martial, commands, and other legal consequences, which unavoidably offer themselves when we are made acquainted with so extraordinary a state of facts, are materially lessened by the circumstances that all the gentlemen thus irregularly promoted were officers in the navy under their former commissions, and that no relative rank was disturbed. Thus if Messrs. Stewart and Hull were not legally the two oldest commanders in the service, they were the two oldest lieutenants, and all the other commanders being in the same dilemma with themselves, their relative rank remained precisely as it would have done had no new commissions been granted. So also as regards courts; the judge having a right to sit as a lieutenant, unless, indeed, the informality of annexing a wrong rank to the orders might raise a legal objection.[1] That so gross an irregularity should have arisen under a government that professes to be one purely of law, excites our wonder; and this so much the more, when we remember it occurred in a service in which life itself maybe the penalty of error. The explanation is to be found in the infancy of the establishments, and in practices in which principles remained to be settled, aided by the known moral courage and exceeding personal popularity of the statesman who then presided in the councils of the republic. While Jefferson affected, and probably felt, a profound respect for legality, he is known to have used the power he wielded with great political fearlessness, and to have considered himself as the head of a new school in the administration of the government, which did not always hesitate about the introduction of new rules of conduct. To these remarks, however, it must in justice be added, that no party or personal views could have influenced the appointments in question, which, apart from the irregularity of their manner, were certainly required equally by justice and the wants of the service, and which were made in perfect conformity with the rules of promotion as observed under the severest principles of military preferment. They prove even more in favor of the statesman, as they show that he did not deserve all the accusations of hostility to this branch of the national defences that were heaped upon him; but rather that he was disposed to stretch his authority to foster and advance it. The introduction of a new class of vessels, too, required the revival of a class of officers of a rank proper to command them; and, though we wish never to see illegality countenanced in the management of interests as delicate as those of a marine, it is desirable to see the proper authorities of the country imitate this feature of the case, now that the republic has fleets which flag officers alone can ever lead with a proper degree of dignity and authority.