Mr. Ward Hunt is certainly not likely to leave behind
him a reputation for good judgment in his administration of the Admiralty. 021 Tuesday night, Mr. Ashley brought forward a motion mildly censuring the Government for its conduct in the case of Captain Sulivan, of H.M.'s ship London,' whom the- Admiralty had removed from his command when serving on the coast of Zanzibar, for a dispute with a very High- Church chaplain, Rev. E. L. Penny, in which neither party seems to have behaved with much discretion; indeed, the Admiralty decided to supersede both, though in point of fact, when the captain was removed, the chaplain had not yet been replaced, so that the latter appeared to have had a triumph ; also, the Admiralty refused' Captain Sulivan the court-martial he demanded. The papers- show that Captain Sulivan, who seems to be in every respect an exceedingly able commander, is a Nonconformist, and that fifty of the crew were also Nonconformists ; and that Mr. Penny's Ritualistic stole,—his stole had three golden crosses embroidered on it,—and his mode of celebrating the service, and his High- Church sermons, were offensive to the captain and objectionable to this part of the crew. Of course, squabbles ensued, and doubtless there was want of judgment and perhaps pettiness on both aides ; but because both were in fault, it did not follow that the captain need have been removed from his com- mand for errors so trifling. He ought to have been reprimanded, and his impracticable chaplain both reprimanded and trandhrred-to some other ship; but to remove a Nonconformist captain for such
a fault was both bad judgment and bad policy, it being a matter of great importance to prevent the Nonconformists in the Navy from feeling themselves placed at any serious dis- advantage. And so thought the House of Commons, which gave the Government the very narrow majority of 12,—Mr. Ashley's supporters numbering 91, against only 103 for the Government. As Mr. Goschen remarked, a collision with a chaplain ought not to be visited by the authorities like a collision with another ship. Mr. Ward Hunt appears to think it even worse.
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