In 1801 came into power a new political school of which Jefferson was the great exponent. With strong French sympathies, he had not favored the naval war with France, and his party was bent upon naval economy. Thus an early act of his administration, which began March 4, 1801, was to carry into effect a law passed toward the close of the Congress which had just expired, it is true, but which had been elected under the new political inspiration. The law referred to empowered the President to sell all or any of the vessels of the navy with the exception of thirteen frigates, and obliged him to reduce the list of officers to nine captains, thirty-six lieutenants, and one hundred and fifty midshipmen. The selling of twenty of the smaller ships was not so great an evil in itself, as new ordnance was coming into use and small guns of light calibre, carrying balls from six to nine and twelve pounds, were being superseded by carronades--short guns with thin walls and very small charges. They were of two calibres, 32 and 24 pounders. The former with a powder charge of two pounds had a range of about 300 yards. It is evident that at long range the long gun with a much heavier charge had a great advantage. The carronade was only fit for close quarters. This change required vessels of much stouter build than the light sloops-of-war such as most of those sold were. But the mistake was that they were not replaced. The law of 1798 had authorized the building of six ships-of-the-line to carry 74 guns each. This was now unhappily suspended; an error bitterly to be repented. It was a period of utmost world unrest when we were to be ground between the upper and nether millstones of Napoleonic authority and British arrogance. Depredations upon our commerce were constant, not only by Barbary corsairs but by highly civilized France and England which latter also for years impressed our seamen at will. It was a period when true statesmanship demanded a powerful naval force; when but a mere fraction of the losses by seizure of our merchant marine and of the cost of the War of 1812 would have built a fleet of ships-of-the-line and would have saved us both the spoliation and the war. But Jefferson, though he had taken the finer stand as to the Barbary outrages, seemed incapable of understanding that his views as to these were of universal application, and that they held good against Britain and France as well as against Algiers and Tripoli. He seemed obsessed with an enmity to any naval force. He expressed the view that a navy was “a ruinous folly.”[21] And in his annual message of December 15, 1802, advised “to add to our navy yard at Washington a dock within which our vessels may be laid up dry and under cover from the sun.” Perhaps no more extraordinary views as to national defence ever came from any one with a claim to be a statesman.