The ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY, after presenting petitions from two places in his diocese against Sunday labour in the Post Office, said: My Lords, I take this 1158 opportunity of explaining a matter relating to myself, which has been greatly misunderstood. It is with much reluctance that I trouble your Lordships on a subject chiefly personal, but I have no other means of clearing myself from an imputation which, I trust, cannot justly be laid to my charge. My Lords, it has been supposed—and your Lordships may perhaps have heard—that I have nominated one of my sons to a valuable reversionary sinecure in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The case is so as regards the reversionary office; the case is not so as regards either the value or the sinecure. My Lords, it is not generally known, or I should not have the necessity of addressing you—it is not generally known, that in the Session of 1847 an Act was passed which placed the Prerogative Court of Canterbury under the control of Parliament in respect to all future nominations; and the office of registrar, if ever held by my son, which is very uncertain, not to say improbable, will be performed in person, and its salary regulated according to the duties and responsibilities of the station. So much, my Lords, in regard to the sinecure and the value. Indeed the value, according to the doctrine of chances, would be scarcely equal to the stamp on which the nomination is recorded. But it has been supposed, my Lords, that in making this appointment I have availed myself of a privilege which my venerable predecessor declined to exercise. My Lords, I have already explained the reason why my predecessor would not nominate to this office; it would have been inconsistent with that disinterestedness and moderation which distinguished all that he did if he had nominated to a reversionary sinecure. It was not till the close of the Session of 1847, a few months before his death, that the Act passed which took away the sinecure. It took away the sinecure, and it limited the value; but the office must remain, and must be filled; wherever there is a diocese there must be a registry, and where there is a registry there must be a registrar; and I trust that in nominating, prospectively, that registrar, I shall in the judgment of your Lordships have exercised a privilege to which I was both legally and morally entitled; and have done nothing which, when explained, can subject me to the charge of nepotism; an imputation which I hope neither has been, nor ever will be, the characteristic of my official career.
The BISHOP of LONDONIn reference to what has just fallen from my most rev. Friend and Brother, I wish to state to your Lordships a circumstance which, to my certain knowledge, occurred on another similar occasion. The office of registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese of Chester is an office worth many thousands a year. A former Prelate of that see nominated to that office a son of his own, an infant not more than six months old. The person so nominated held that office for no less a period than seventy years. The office became vacant after I left the diocese of Chester. My most rev. Friend and Brother had afterwards the right to appoint to that office. He did not fill it up with the name of one of his sons, not having a son old enough to take it, except as a sinecure; but he gave it to a person totally unconnected with his family, on condition that he should always perform its duties in person. My most rev. Brother had not given away a valuable office, which he had in his own gift, to his own son, but to a stranger; but he has given to his son an office in reversion, which is subject to the control of Parliament, and of which the duties must be performed in person. I therefore think that the charge of nepotism cannot be preferred with any show of justice against the most rev. Prelate.