It was a vindictive act which seems alien to Walpole's boisterous good humour, but of a kind to which Walpole's arbitrary notions of political discipline made him singularly prone. So petty an act of vengeance wreaked on so young and subordinate an officer by a powerful Prime Minister seems incredible in our larger or laxer days. But it was perhaps the very slightness of Pitt's position which was an inducement to Walpole. He was determined, it may be, that the whole army, from the highest to the lowest, should feel the weight of his hand. The disgrace of political generals seemed just and proper, it was cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies, a proceeding recognised and respectable since the days of Tarquin. These penalties had left the mass of the army unmoved, not impossibly because the removal of chiefs means the promotion of subordinates. So Walpole may have resolved that all in the service of the Crown should feel that revolt against the minister of the Crown was a flagrant crime. Generals had been punished, and so all officers from the highest, to the lowest should be liable to the same pains and penalties; nay private soldiers, were their lot enviable, might suffer the same deprivation. 'The King,' wrote Lady Irwin, a lady of the Prince of Wales' household, to her brother, Lord Carlisle, 'two days ago turned out Mr. Pitt from a cornetcy for having voted and spoke in Parliament contrary to his approbation. He is a young man of no fortune, a very pretty speaker, one the Prince is particular to, and under the tuition of my Lord Cobham. The Army is all alarmed at this, and 'tis said it will hurt the King more than his removing my Lord Stairs and Lord Cobham, since it is making the whole army dependent, by descending to resent a vote from the lowest commission, which may occasion a representation in parliament to prevent all officers of the army from sitting there.'[110] It may, however, have been that Pitt's dismissal was due not to his obscurity but to an exactly opposite consideration.