There really appears, however, to be no situation but that of a clergyman which offers any reasonable chance of these conditions being fulfilled. And as the education of such a person is necessarily expensive, and the double office which it is proposed he should fill, one of great responsibility, labour, and difficulty, as well as one of peculiar and irremediable discomfort and privation, without any of those energetic excitements which stimulate every other class of officers to exertion, the remuneration ought clearly to be very considerable, otherwise no set of properly qualified men will engage permanently in its pursuit. A distinct class of officers, of this sacred character, although as yet they do not exist, might be readily created. If the emoluments of the chaplain of a man-of-war were respectable, the situation rendered as agreeable, in point of comfort, as the nature of the elements will admit of, and if the prospects of future provision be made certain, or contingent only upon a right performance of duty, there cannot, I think, be a doubt that, in a short time, there would be an ample and steady supply of chaplains, as highly qualified, in point of attainments, as the Admiralty might choose to fix on the scale. If this important professional object were once fairly carried into effect, we should probably soon discover an improvement in the whole system of naval discipline, the best evidences of which would be, the increased efficiency of the whole service, arising out of the gradually ameliorated habits and higher intellectual cultivation, as well as improved tastes and more rational happiness, of every class of the officers, from the oldest captain down to the youngest first-class boy, just untied from his mother’s apron-string. In all that has been said, I have taken into view almost exclusively the advantages which would accrue to the officers from the adoption of this plan of uniform instruction. It is to them, individually as gentlemen, and collectively as a body, upon the certainty of whose hearty exertions the government can at all times depend, that the country must ever look for that energetic momentum in our naval strength, upon which the national power, in this department, essentially rests. Surely, however, it is not too much to say, as a matter of experience, that the influence of a resident clergyman on board ship, wherever there is one, over the minds of the crew, is felt to be quite as salutary, when properly exercised, as it is to the labourers in any parish of the empire.