Lord Broughamsaid, that a Petition had been put into his hands, which, being very respectfully worded, he should lay before their Lordships, and should move that it be read by the Clerk. He should only state thus much concerning it, for he never would make himself responsible for the contents of any petition he should ever present. The petition was from a gentleman who described himself as T. Peter Gurney, clerk. It stated, that he had been thirty-eight years officiating minister of St. Allen, Cornwall; that he held only a curacy; that no misconduct whatever had ever been charged against him; that a living had become vacant in the bishopric of Exeter; that he had humbly applied for it to the Lord Bishop of that diocese; but that his long services had been passed over, and the living given to another man. The 2 petitioner suggested, that to provide for poor clergymen in their old age, a sort of half-pay should be appropriated out of the surplus revenues of cathedral, and from Ecclesiastical sinecures.
The Bishop of Exeterfelt fully the force of the excellent example set this night by the noble and learned Lord and he should endeavour to follow it. The motives which induced a bishop to give or withhold a living, he was sure, was a question that their Lordships would not enter upon; and he should be wanting in due respect for the Church, if he entered into a statement of his motives on the present occasion. As to the general principles on which he acted in these matters, he was ready to declare, that he for one felt most anxious to bestow livings so as to reward meritorious individuals. He should say nothing of the individual who had presented this Petition, but he should state, that the living which he had not given to that individual, he had given to a curate of whom he had received a very high character. He should say it not in the spirit of boastfulness, but was entitled, when thus called upon, to state what was his general practice in these matters. A large proportion of livings had fallen into his hands during the four years that he had held the see of Exeter—no fewer than sixteen having come into his gift during that time. Thirteen of these he had given to curates, all of whom he bad selected 3 on the ground of merit alone, not one of them having been privately known to him, or related to him, or connected with him in any other way. Three he did not give to curates. The first of these three he gave to a son of his own; he was proud to say a very deserving son. Of the two others, one fell to him by a singular scruple of conscience of the patron. That gentleman had bought the next turn to the living, but after he had done so, his conscience told him, that that was not a proper way to acquire a presentation. This was a valuable living, which he confessed he should have liked to give to his son, but, having come into his hands in this way, he gave it to the best clergyman he could find in the neighbourhood, and he was happy afterwards to find, that he had bestowed it on the individual for whom it had been intended. The other living, the last of the three, was given by him to break down a plurality. He had placed in one of the most populous places of Cornwall, an excellent and popular clergyman, instead of allowing it to be in the hands of a non-resident incumbent.
The Petition laid on the Table.