(Vol. iv., pp. 9. 137.)
I will not attempt to follow all the statements of L. M., because some
of them are totally beside the question, and others contradict each
other. I shall only observe that he totally mistakes _my_ argument when
he says, as if in reply to me, that _it is not necessary to have the
courtesy title of lord to be a privy councillor_. No one ever said any
such thing. What I said was this, that the Mayor of London, like those
of Dublin and York, had the courtesy title of _lord_, and that this
title of _lord_ brought with it the other courtesy designation of _right
honorable_, which latter being _also_ (but not _likewise_) the
designation of privy councillors, had, as I suppose, occasioned the
error now predicated of the Mayor of London being a privy councillor,
which, I repeat, he is no more than any Lord John or Lady Jane, who have
also the title of Right Honorable.
L. M., however, states as a matter of fact, that "the Lord Mayor is
always _summoned to council_ on the accession of a new sovereign." Now I
assert, and I think have proved in my former note, that the Lord Mayor
never was so _summoned to council_. I now add that he never has on any
occasion entered the _council chamber_, that he has never taken the oath
nor performed any act of a privy councillor, and that in short there is
not the smallest doubt with any one who knows anything about the Privy
Council, that the _Lord Mayor of London_ no more belongs to it than the
_Lord Mayors of York or Dublin_, or the _Lord Provost of Edinburgh_, all
of whom are equally styled Right Honorable, which title, I repeat, is
the sole and silly pretence of this new-fangled hypothesis.