'On February 20th I was asked by Lord Hartington to serve upon the Government Select Committee on the business and forms of the House, upon which Parnell was asked to represent the obstructive element. It was somewhat a distinction, as I was to be the sole representative of the English independent members, and in consequence I gave up the Standing Committee on Commons, upon which I asked Fitzmaurice to replace me. The proceedings of Sir Stafford Northcote's Committee, as the Committee on Public Business was called, presented only one singularity--namely, the examination of the Speaker--a prolonged one-- by Parnell. Both of them were in a way able men; but both were extraordinarily slow of intellect--that is, slow in appreciating a point or catching a new idea--and Mr. Brand (as he then was) and Parnell used to face one another in inarticulate despair in the attempt to understand each the other's meaning. There were a good many fairly stupid men on the Committee, but there was not a single member of it who did not understand what Parnell meant by a question more quickly than could the Speaker, and not a man who could not understand what the Speaker meant by a reply more quickly than Parnell.' 'With Speaker Brand I afterwards had a singular connection. 'At the time when the President of the Free State, whose name was also Brand, had rendered important services to the British Government, I made one of the briefest of my brief minutes and put it in a box, and sent it round the Cabinet: "I think Brand should be knighted.--Ch's W. D." Nearly all the members of the Cabinet having added their initials in approval, Brand was knighted, but the wrong Brand, for they gave the G.C.B. to the Speaker, and it was only some time afterwards that the G.C.M.G. was conferred on the South African statesman. I had not thought of the Speaker, and Mr. Gladstone or his private secretary, Edward Hamilton, had forgotten the Free State. What may have been the frame of mind of the various members of the Cabinet who approved my suggestion I do not know, but some probably meant the one and some probably meant the other, and no one remembered that there were two.' Concerning the proposals which Sir Stafford Northcote was contemplating as the result of the Committee on Public Business, but not in exact accordance with its decisions, Sir Charles notes, under June 25th, that he was not in agreement with the mass of the Liberal party.