THE EARL OF SANDWICHMy Lords, I wish to trouble your Lordships for a few moments with a personal matter relating to a charge brought against me by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham (MR. Bright). That right hon. Gentleman, a Member of the late Cabinet, in a speech addressed to the other House upon a Bill now pending there, stated that, among other grivances suffered by Nonconformists, I had carefully excluded Nonconformists from the Commission of the Peace in the county of Huntingdon, of which county I am Lord Lieutenant. 366 To that statement I give my most distinct and unqualified denial. I will tell your Lordships how the matter arose. At the last General Election, MR. Arthur Arnold was a candidate for the borough of Huntingdon. I suppose he thought himself fit successor to the distinguished men who had in turn represented that borough—Pollock, Peel, and Baring. MR. Arnold, however, was not elected; and, being no doubt very much annoyed at his ill success, he wrote a letter to MR. Gladstone, the late Premier, declaring that I had distinctly refused to admit Nonconformists to the Commission of the Peace. MR. Gladstone did not take the course which I should have expected him to take, and which I submit would have been the proper course—namely, to apply to me to know whether the statement was correct—but he at once assumed that the case was so, and replied to MR. Arnold, recommending him to write to the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor, being thus appealed to, gave a very dignified and proper answer—to the effect that he did not think a proper time to enter into such a matter was during the heat of a contested election; and, further, that if, at anytime, any complaint was to be made upon such a subject, it should, in his opinion, come from a gentleman connected with the county, and not from a stranger, and should be addressed to him directly and not indirectly through another. In this opinion I thoroughly agree, and I think your Lordships will also be of opinion that, under all the circumstances, MR. Arnold was not the man to make such a complaint. My Lords, I can only give a general denial to the statement. In making the appointments to the magistracy I have exercised my discretion without reference to either religion or politics. If there are so few Nonconformists on the Bench for the County of Huntingdon, the fault is not mine, but probably arises from the fact that there are so few Nonconformists in the county. I have never made politics a ground of disqualification for the magistracy, still less have I entered into religious questions in deciding upon the fitness of gentlemen for this office. It is impossible for me to know the religious opinions of the different gentlemen whose names are submitted to me, and the course I have usually followed has been to apply to the different chairmen, 367 of petty sessions, or else some gentleman in the district, so as to ascertain from those who are best qualified to give the information whether the gentleman recommended to me is a proper person to be appointed. That, I think, is the right course to adopt; and I can only repeat that I have never in any one instance suffered politics or religion to influence me in making appointments to the magistracy.
THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AND GORDONPerhaps I may say that when MR. Arnold wrote the letter to which my noble Friend refers, my noble Friend did me the honour of consulting me as to the course he should take. I then told him I thought his reputation as Lord Lieutenant of the county stood so high that it would be beneath his dignity to take any notice of a letter written, not to himself to complain of what had occurred, but to another person. I said that if his conduct as Lord Lieutenant of the county was to be found fault with, it should be in this House, where he would have an opportunity of explaining his conduct and the course he had taken. My noble Friend followed that advice and took no further notice of the charge then made against him, and I think he acted wisely in not bringing it forward. On the present occasion I think he has been justified in making this explanation, considering the charge has been repeated by a gentleman of such high position as the right hon. Member for Birmingham.