From the military and naval departments nothing had ever been expected; but their condition was worse than their own chiefs understood. The machinery of both broke down as Madison took control. The navy consisted of a few cruisers and a large force of gunboats. Neither were of immediate use; but a considerable proportion of both were in active service, if service could be called active which chiefly consisted in lying in harbor or fitting for harbor defence when no enemy was expected. No sooner had Paul Hamilton succeeded Robert Smith at the navy department than the new secretary became aware that his predecessor had wasted a very large sum of money.[129] Hamilton made no concealment of his opinion that gunboats were expensive beyond relation to their value.[130] He intimated that the life of gunboats hardly exceeded one year, and that their value depended on the correct answer to the inquiry whether war was a defensive or aggressive operation. This hint that gunboats could do no harm to their enemies seemed to gain force from the suggestion that they had yet to prove their uses for their friends; but if Jefferson’s gunboat system should prove to be a failure, nothing would be left of the navy except a few frigates and sloops which could hardly keep the sea in the event of war with England. The navy was a sink of money. The army was something worse. At least the navy contained as good officers and seamen as the world could show, and no cruisers of their class were likely to be more efficient than the frigates commanded by Rodgers, Bainbridge, and Decatur, provided they could escape a more numerous enemy; but the army was worthless throughout, and its deficiency in equipment was a trifling evil compared with the effects of political influence on its organization. The first attempt to raise the army to efficiency ended in scandalous failure within a few months. Among a thousand obstacles to any satisfactory reform in the military service, the most conspicuous if not the most fatal was General Wilkinson, whom President Jefferson could not and would not sacrifice, but whose character and temper divided the army into two hostile camps. Wade Hampton, the next general officer in rank, regarded Wilkinson with extreme contempt, and most of the younger officers who were not partisans of Jefferson shared Hampton’s prejudice; but July 4, 1808, a military court of inquiry formally acquitted Wilkinson of being a Spanish pensioner. President Jefferson had already saved him from court-martial on account of his relations with Burr, and Secretary Dearborn restored him to command over an army whose interests required an officer of other qualities.