In the third sitting of the new Parliament, held on February 20, the Postmaster General, Mr. Sydney Buxton, announced that the Government had decided to appoint a Select Committee of the House of Commons.[245] And on March 6, the Postmaster General introduced a motion for a Committee of seven to be nominated by the Committee of Selection. In response to the wishes of the House, the Postmaster General subsequently changed his motion to one calling for a Committee of nine, to be appointed by the whips of the several parties in the House.[246] [Sidenote: _The Prime Minister on Election Pledges_] The motion was carried without debate upon the question whether a Committee should be appointed. In the course of the debate whether the Committee should be appointed by the Committee of Selection, or by the Party Whips, Lord Balcarres, who had been a Junior Lord of the Treasury in the Balfour Government, used these words: "As regards those Honorable Gentlemen who had entered Parliament for the first time,[247] he thought he was fairly accurate when he said that they had given pretty specific pledges upon the matter [of the appointment of a Select Committee] to those who had sent them to the House." Sir A. Acland-Hood, who had been Chief Whip and Patronage Secretary to the Treasury in the late Balfour Government, said: "There was a debate and a division [upon this question, last year,] and nearly the whole of the supporters of the Government voted against the appointment of the Committee. No doubt many of them suffered for it at the General Election; they either lost their seats or had their majorities reduced in consequence of the vote." And, finally, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the new Prime Minister, expressed himself as follows in the course of an argument in favor of a Committee appointed by the Committee of Selection rather than by the House itself through the agency of the Party Whips. The Prime Minister said: "There was a great deal of force in what the Right Honorable Gentleman [Sir A. Acland-Hood] had said as to the fears that were entertained in many quarters of the effect on the Committee if appointed under pressure and insistence, and the retroactive effect of old promises extracted in moments of agony from candidates at the General Election."[248] The Select Committee on Post Office Servants consists of: 4 Liberals, Messrs. Barker, Edwards, Hobhouse and Sutherland; 2 Conservatives, the Honorable Claude Hay and Sir Clement Hill; 2 Liberal and Labor Members, Messrs. John Ward and G. J. Wardle; and 1 Nationalist, Mr. P. A. Meechan.[249]