“If you’ll pass half an hour with Mr. Surtees to-morrow morning, he’ll explain it all to you,” said the rector, who did not like that any subject connected with his profession should be mooted after dinner.

“I should be delighted,” said Mr. Surtees.

“Nothing would give me more pleasure,” said the Senator; “but what I mean is this;—­the question is, of course, one of paramount importance.”

“No doubt it is,” said the deluded rector.

“It is very necessary to get good doctors.”

“Well, yes, rather;—­considering that all men wish to live.”  That observation, of course, came from Doctor Nupper.

“And care is taken in employing a lawyer,—­though, after my experience of yesterday, not always, I should say, so much care as is needful.  The man who wants such aid looks about him and gets the best doctor he can for his money, or the best lawyer.  But here in England he must take the clergyman provided for him.”

“It would be very much better for him if he did,” said the rector.

“A clergyman at any rate is supposed to be appointed; and that clergyman he must pay.”

“Not at all,” said the rector.  “The clergy are paid by the wise provision of former ages.”

“We will let that pass for the present,” said the Senator.  “There he is, however he may be paid.  How does he get there?” Now it was the fact that Mr. Mainwaring’s living had been bought for him with his wife’s money,—­a fact of which Mr. Gotobed was not aware, but which he would hardly have regarded had he known it.  “How does he get there?”

“In the majority of cases the bishop puts him there,” said Mr. Surtees.

“And how is the bishop governed in his choice?  As far as I can learn the stipends are absurdly various, one man getting 100 pounds a year for working like a horse in a big town, and another 1000 pounds for living an idle life in a luxurious country house.  But the bishop of course gives the bigger plums to the best men.  How is it then that the big plums find their way so often to the sons and sons-in-law and nephews of the bishops?”

“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.”