Note 1 — RICHARD SOMERS.

There are so many modes for evading the simplest provisions of a written constitution, when power feels itself fettered, that it is not easy to say in what manner the difficulties of this case were got over. The reduction law said that there should be only nine captains, thirty-six lieutenants, and one hundred and fifty midshipmen during peace, and, as the country was at war with Tripoli in 1804, there was a show of plausibility in getting over the force of this particular enactment. Still the appointments of the commanders were not to fill vacancies, under any common sense construction of their nature; and, even admitting that political ingenuity could torture the law of Congress to build four vessels like those actually put into the water, into an obligation to appoint proper persons to command them, these appointments could have no validity after the termination of the next session of the Senate. Of the facts of the case we believe there can be no doubt.