"Because the bishop has looked after their education and principles," said the rector.
"And taught them how to choose their wives," said the Senator with imperturbable gravity.
"I am not the son of a bishop, sir," exclaimed the rector.
"I wish you had been, sir, if it would have done you any good. A general can't make his son a colonel at the age of twenty-five, or an admiral his son a first lieutenant, or a judge his a Queen's Counsellor,—nor can the head of an office promote his to be a chief secretary. It is only a bishop can do this;—I suppose because a cure of souls is so much less important than the charge of a ship or the discipline of twenty or thirty clerks."
"The bishops don't do it," said the rector fiercely.
"Then the statistics which have been put into my hands belie them. But how is it with those the bishops don't appoint? There seems to me to be such a complication of absurdities as to defy explanation."
"I think I could explain them all," said Mr. Surtees mildly.
"If you can do so satisfactorily, I shall be very glad to hear it," continued the Senator, who seemed in truth to be glad to hear no one but himself. "A lad of one-and-twenty learns his lessons so well that he has to be rewarded at his college, and a part of his reward consists in his having a parish entrusted to him when he is forty years old, to which he can maintain his right whether he be in any way trained for such work or no. Is that true?"
"His collegiate education is the best training he can have," said the rector.
"I came across a young fellow the other day," continued the Senator, "in a very nice house, with £700 a year, and learned that he had inherited the living because he was his father's second son. Some poor clergyman had been keeping it ready for him for the last fifteen years and had to turn out as soon as this young spark could be made a clergyman."