Some have declined to accept, others have resigned soon after their acceptance, while many have received commissions, and been placed on the roll of supernumeraries--officers without men to command, or military duties to perform. Those who have graduated are by no means all who have entered the academy. Since 1815 the whole number of students has been 2,942. Deducting the 1,231 who have graduated, and are expected to graduate at the close of the present year, and there will remain 1,711 who have not graduated. Less than 200 remain at the academy, and between 1,500 and 1,600 must have left it without completing their education, or rendering any equivalent to the nation for the expense incurred for them. Perhaps, however, it is not a subject of regret that so many of the cadets have left the institution, or been dismissed from it without completing their education, and claiming their privilege of military commissions, as many more yet remain than we have the means of employing. The number of cadets at the academy usually amounts to about 250--the number annually admitted to about 100, of whom about 40 graduate. The army absorbs 22, and the remaining 18 are supernumeraries, holding brevet commissions, without active duties. It is rather a subject of congratulation, therefore, than of regret, that 60 out of a hundred of the students do not so persevere unto the end as to entitle themselves to commissions, and become quartered for life upon the treasury; but it is not on this account less objectionable in principle thus to educate them at the public expense, without an equivalent, in service or otherwise. A law providing, in terms, that 100 students should be admitted annually into the academy, and educated at the public expense--that 40 of them should be retained as officers of the army, and the remainder be discharged from all claims for the instruction they receive, and the expense they occasion, would be denounced as unjust and unconstitutional; but a law effecting indirectly precisely the same objects, receives not only the sanction, but the eulogies of the most strict constructionists. What cannot constitutionally be done directly, may be accomplished indirectly, without trenching upon the constitution. Be it so. I shall not raise a constitutional question here. My observation has taught me that the constitution is formed of materials very like India-rubber. It will stretch on the one side so as to admit anything a man desires to introduce, and close so tight on the other as to shut out everything he wishes to exclude.