"He believed that the greatest abuses existed in every department of the government, and that the extravagances of all required correction. Look at the army of 8,000 men only, kept up at an expense to the nation of $1,000 for each man. Was not this a crying abuse that ought to be corrected? Why, if the proposition had succeeded to increase the army to 20,000 men, the expenditure at this rate would have been twenty millions annually. If any gentleman knew of the existence of abuses, let him bring them to the notice of the House, and he would vote not only for the proper inquiry into them, but to apply the remedy. In regard to this home squadron, he begged leave to disclaim any of the suspicions entertained by the gentleman from Massachusetts. In offering his resolution he had no reference to Cuba, or any thing else suggested by the gentleman. He wanted the House and the country to look at it as the Secretary of the Navy presented it to their view. As to the pretence that it was intended for the protection of the coasting trade, it was a most idle one. He wished the gentlemen from Maine (the State most largely interested in that trade) to say whether they needed any such protection. He would answer for them, and say that they did not. He himself lived among those who were extensively engaged in the coasting trade, and part of his property was invested in it. He could, therefore, speak with some knowledge on the subject; and he hesitated not to say, that the idea of keeping up this squadron for its protection was a most preposterous and idle one. Sir, said he, the navy has been the pet child of the nation, and, like all other pet children, has run away with the whole patrimonial estate. If it were found that the best interest of the country required the maintenance of the home squadron, then he would go for it; but if it were found to be utterly useless, as he believed, then he was decidedly against it. But he would give this further notice; that he did not mean to stop here; that when the appropriations should come up, he intended to propose to limit those appropriations to a sum sufficient only to support the squadron stationed in the Mediterranean. It was entirely useless for this country to endeavor to contend with monarchies in keeping up the pageantry of a naval establishment."
The proposed inquiry produced no result, only ending in demonstrating what was well known to the older members, namely, the difficulty, and almost impossibility of introducing any reform, or economy into the administration of any department of the government unless the Executive takes the lead. And of this truth a striking instance occurred at this session and upon this subject. The executive government, that is to say, the President and his Secretary of the Navy had made a lawless expenditure of about $700,000 during the recess of Congress; and Congress under a moral duress, was compelled to adopt that expenditure as its own, and make it good. When the clause in the naval appropriation bill for covering this item, was under consideration, Mr. Ezra Dean, of Ohio, stood up and said:
"It was nothing less than a bill making appropriations to the amount of $750,000 which had been expended by the department in virtue of its own will and pleasure, and without the sanction of any law whatever; and the House was called on to approve this proceeding. He had supposed that any department which took upon itself the power of expending the public money, without authority of law, would have been subjected to the severest rebuke of Congress. He had supposed that this would have been a reform Congress, and that all the abuses of this administration would be ferreted out and corrected; but in this he had been grievously disappointed. He had endeavored to get the consent of the House to take up the navy retrenchment bill, which would correct all these abuses, but he had been mistaken; and so far from being able to get the bill before the House, he had been unable even to get the yeas and nays on the question of taking it up. There was great reason for this. This Navy Department had been for the last two years the great vortex which had swallowed up two-thirds of the revenues of the government. In 1840, a law was passed that no money should be expended for the building of ships without the express sanction of Congress; and yet, in defiance of this law, the Navy Department had gone on to build an iron steamship at Pittsburg, and six sloops-of-war; and he was told that part of the appropriations in this bill were to complete these vessels. Mr. D. then spoke of the utter uselessness of these steamships on the western waters, and referred to the number of ships that were now rotting for want of use, both on the stocks and laid up in ordinary; and particularly referred to the magnificent ship Delaware, which had just returned from a cruise, and was dismantled, and laid up to rot at Norfolk, while the department was clamorous for building more ships. There were not only more ships now built and building than could be used, but there were three times as many officers as could be employed. There were 96 commanders, with salaries of $3,500 a-year, while there was only employment for 38 of them; and there were 68 captains, while there was only employment for but 18. He then referred to the number of officers waiting orders, and on leave of absence, and said that the country would be astonished to learn, that for such officers, the country was now paying $283,700 a year; and that, by referring to the records of the Navy Department, it would be found that for the last twenty years, more than half of the officers of the navy were drawing their pay and emoluments while at home, on leave of absence, or waiting orders. Mr. D. spoke of many other abuses in the navy, which he said required correction, and expressed his great regret that he had not been able to get the House to act on his navy retrenchment bill."
Mr. McKay, of North Carolina, who was the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, whose duty it became to present this item in the appropriation bill, fully admitted its illegality and wastefulness; but plead the necessity of providing for its payment, as the money had been earned by work and labor done on the faith of the government, and to withhold payment would be a wrong to laborers, and no punishment to the officers who had occasioned the illegal expenditure. A high officer had done this wrong. He was ready to join in a vote of censure upon him: but to repudiate the debt, and leave laboring people without pay for their work and materials was what he could not do. And thus ended the session with sanctioning an abuse of $700,000 in one item in the navy, which session had opened with a manly attempt to correct some of its extravagances. And thus have ended all similar attempts since. A powerful combined interest pushes forward an augmented navy, without regard to any object but their own interest in it. First, the politicians who raise a clamor of war at the return of each presidential canvass, and a cry for ships to carry it on. Next, the naval officers, who are always in favor of more ships to give more commands. And, thirdly, the contractors who are to build these ships, and get rich upon their contracts. These three parties combine to build ships, and Congress becomes a helpless instrument in their hands. The friends of economy, and of a wise national policy, which prefers cruisers and privateers to ships of the line, may deliver their complaints in vain. Ship building, and ship rotting, goes on unchecked, and even with accelerated speed; and must continue to so go on until the enormity of the abuse produces a revulsion which, in curing the abuse may nearly kill the navy itself.
[CHAPTER CXXXIII.]
PROFESSOR MORSE: HIS ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
Communication of intelligence by concerted signals is as old as the human race, and by all, except the white race, remains where it was six thousand years ago. The smokes raised on successive hills to give warning of the approach of strangers, or enemies, were found to be the same by Frémont in his western explorations which were described by Herodotus as used for the same purpose by the barbarian nations of his time: the white race alone has made advances upon that rude and imperfect mode of communication, and brought the art to a marvellous perfection, but only after the intervention of thousands of years. It was not until the siege of Vienna by the Turks, that the very limited intelligence between the besieged in a city and their friends outside, was established by the telegraph: and it was not until the breaking out of the French revolution that that mode of intelligence was applied to the centre and to the circumference of a country: and at that point it was stationary for fifty years. It was reserved for our own day, and our own country to make the improvement which annihilates distance, which disregards weather and darkness, and which rivals the tongue and the pen in the precision and infinitude of its messages. Dr. Franklin first broached the idea of using electricity for communicating intelligence: Professor Morse gave practical application to his idea. This gentleman was a portrait painter by profession, and had been to Europe to perfect himself in his art. Returning in the autumn of 1832, and while making the voyage, the recent discoveries and experiments in electro-magnetism, and the affinity of electricity to magnetism, or rather their probable identity, became a subject of casual conversation between himself and a few of the passengers. It had recently been discovered that an electric spark could be obtained from a magnet, and this discovery had introduced a new branch of science, to wit: magneto-electricity. Dr. Franklin's experiments on the velocity of electricity, exceeding that of light, and exceeding 180,000 miles in a moment, the feasibility of making electricity the means of telegraphic intercourse, that is to say of writing at a distance, struck him with great force, and became the absorbing subject of his meditations. The idea of telegraphing by electricity was new to him. Fortunately he did not know that some eminent philosophers had before conceived the same idea, but without inventing a plan by which the thought could be realized. Knowing nothing of their ideas, he was not embarrassed or impeded by the false lights of their mistakes. As the idea was original with him, so was his plan. All previous modes of telegraphing had been by evanescent signs: the distinctive feature of Morse's plan was the self-recording property of the apparatus, with its ordinarily inseparable characteristic of audible clicks, answering the purposes of speech; for, in impressing the characters, the sounds emitted by the machinery gave notice of each that was struck, as well understood by the practised ear as the recorded language was by the eye. In this he became the inventor of a new art—the art of telegraphic recording, or imprinting characters telegraphically.
Mr. Morse then had his invention complete in his head, and his labor then begun to construct the machinery and types to reduce it to practice, in which having succeeded to the entire satisfaction of a limited number of observers in the years 1836 and '37, he laid it before Congress in the year 1838, made an exhibit of its working before a committee, and received a favorable report. Much time was then lost in vain efforts to procure patents in England and France, and returning to Congress in 1842, an appropriation of $30,000 was asked for to enable the inventor to test his discovery on a line of forty miles, between Washington and Baltimore. The appropriation was granted—the preparations completed by the spring of 1844, and messages exchanged instantaneously between the two points. The line was soon extended to New York, and since so multiplied, that the Morse electro-magnetic telegraph now works over 80,000 miles in America and 50,000 in Europe. It is one of the marvellous results of science, putting people who are thousands of miles apart in instant communication with the accuracy of a face to face conversation. Its wonderful advantages are felt in social, political, commercial and military communications, and, in conjunction with the steam car, is destined to work a total revolution in the art of defensive warfare. It puts an end to defensive war on the ocean, to the necessity of fortifications, except to delay for a few days the bombardment of a city. The approach of invaders upon any point, telegraphed through the country, brings down in the flying cars myriads of citizen soldiers, arms in hand and provisions in abundance, to overwhelm with numbers any possible invading force. It will dispense with fleets and standing armies, and all the vast, cumbrous, and expensive machinery of a modern army. Far from dreading an invasion, the telegraph and the car may defy and dare it—may invite any number of foreign troops to land—and assure the whole of them of death or captivity, from myriads of volunteers launched upon them hourly from the first moment of landing until the last invader is a corpse or a prisoner.