§ MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Lord Clarendon's regulations issued by direction of Her Majesty, which forbid British subjects to accept a Foreign Order "without previously having obtained Her Majesty's permission to that effect, signed by a Warrant under Her Royal Sign Manual," and which lay down as an absolute rule that—
Such permission shall not be granted to any subject of Her Majesty unless the Foreign Order shall have been conferred inconsequence of active and distinguished service before an enemy, either at sea or in the field, or unless he shall have been actively or entirely employed beyond Her Majesty's Dominions, in the service of the Sovereign by whom the Order is conferred,had been revoked; and if they have not been revoked, why gentlemen whose services are limited to carying, at the public 2071 cost, an English Order to a Continental Sovereign, are allowed to accept and wear a Foreign Decoration?
LORD STANLEYsaid, that the regulations from which the hon. Member had quoted, issued by Lord Clarendon by direction of Her Majesty, had not been revoked; but he found it on record in the Office that during the administration of Lord Clarendon, and as was stated, at the desire of Her Majesty, those rules were generally and prospectively dispensed with in the case of that very limited class of persons who were referred to in the hon. Member's Question. He (Lord Stanley) was not at that time one of Her Majesty's Advisers, and he therefore had only to state the fact. Of course he need not say that it was entirely within Her Majesty's power to dispense with the observance of any rule of this kind in any such case as she might think fit. With regard to the limitation of the acceptance to the Heads of Missions, that, as he understood, was always contemplated.