The Massachusetts Spy, And Worcester County Advertiser

CABINET WISDOM.

The following is from the Columbian Gazette, a paper recently established in the District of Columbia.

"Col. Samuel D. Harris, the Marshal at Boston, having heard that another person had applied for his office, was fearful he might lose it; he therefore wrote to his friend Col. Towson, who sent his letter to Mr. Van Buren, knowing that Marshals held their offices under the State Department. Mr. Van Buren in turn sends the letter to the President with a line or two hastily written and scarcely legible; after pondering over two or three weeks, the President endorses, either on Col. Harris's letter or Mr. V. B.'s scrawl, referred to the Navy Department."

Among the one thousand and one applications which the President has doubtless received since his induction into office, there was one for the appointment of Naval Officer at some port, and another for the command of a Revenue Cutter;—certainly any clerk in any one of the departments, and probably many school-boys, could have told him that these appointments were made by the Secretary of the Treasury; but he, in his wisdom, endorses on each of these applications, referred to the Navy Department. Yet these same letters passed through the hands of his Secretary of the Navy without the error being detected. The President might have thought that a Revenue Cutter belonged to the Navy, and a Naval Officer was an Officer of the Navy, but we will not undertake to interpret his thoughts.