As the result of a meeting held at the Memorial Hall, May 30, it was decided to put the matter before the Postmaster-General as the subject of an inquiry. This was accordingly done, and the reply, through the Permanent Secretary, one of the newly-constituted committee, was to the effect that as Mr. Clery “is no longer a servant of the Post-Office, he will not be at liberty to appear before the committee which it is Mr. Morley’s intention to appoint.” The one question which, as a matter of the highest principle, was of the utmost importance to postal servants, was to be burked from the outset. The treatment of this question went far to strengthen the prejudice against Lord Tweedmouth’s inquiry. The sorters had, however, meanwhile consented to accept the inquiry, and accordingly prepared evidence. The sorters’ case was to be taken first. The committee held its first meeting, Monday, June 24, 1895, and the inquiry was conducted in Committee-Room “B,” a small apartment of the House of Lords overlooking the Thames. The proceedings had all the air of a police court inquiry, and the court seemed centred in a strong atmosphere of officialdom imported from St. Martin’s-le-Grand. But it was scarcely imposing either in its assembly or its surroundings. There was little to relieve the sombre dulness of it except the red splashes of colour supplied by the crimson-leather chairs with their embossed coronets, and the gliding vision of Thames steamers and barge traffic beyond, seen through the generous expanse of window. The grave and reverend seigniors who constituted the committee were ranged in a semicircle at a horseshoe-shaped table, and the enclosed space was occupied by the witness, an arrangement which hinted at inquisitors and a prisoner in a trap. Lord Tweedmouth as the presiding judge, and perhaps the chief inquisitor, was a striking figure. Gaunt and towering even as he sat, the sunlight strongly reflecting on his curious pyramidal-shaped cranium, his visage hawk-like, for the most part silent and grim, he seemed like a great brooding eagle, supported on either side by kindred birds of lesser personality. Sir Francis Mowatt, with his disposition towards making ponderous jokes in a dry croaking raven’s voice, pitched curiously enough, however, in a surprisingly pleasant key, was perhaps, next to Lord Tweedmouth, the most striking figure among the committee. The others were ordinary unobtrusive-looking gentlemen; and the most unassuming-looking of them all was a rather slight elderly man, with grey hair and beard turning white. That was Mr. Spencer Walpole, late Governor of the Isle of Man, and now Permanent Secretary to the Post-Office. Courteous, bland and dignified in demeanour, there was nothing except the mouth, seeming set in a perpetual sneer, to indicate the man; yet he it was who was to dominate the proceedings from start to finish.