§ Mr. W. S. O'Brienbegged to ask the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government, if it were intended to offer to the Lord Mayor of Dublin an honour similar to that which it had been intimated was to be conferred on the Lord Mayor of London, in consequence of the auspicious birth of the royal heir. He owed, perhaps, an apology to the hon. Member for Dublin for putting such a question without having mentioned it to him, but the question was one, not of individual, but of public interest; and the more so, inasmuch as it would be felt that no considerations of political or personal animosity ought to prevent the adherence to an old established usage, especially as it did so happen that the present was the first Catholic Lord Mayor of Dublin.
§ Sir R. PeelI hope the House will not think me at all disrespectful to them, or to the hon. Member, if I must, influenced by a sense of public duty, positively decline answering any such question, as to the advice which I may deem it right to give to the Crown on the disposal of civil honours.