But, in truth, his denunciation of Walpole is much less remarkable than the poisoned shafts which, as is manifest even in the faulty report, he aimed at the King, or at Hanover, which was much the same thing. He declared that the changes were unreal, that Walpole remained Minister behind the scenes. 'Though he be removed from the Treasury,' said Pitt, 'he is not from the King's closet, nor probably will be, unless by our advice or by our sending him to a lodging at the other end of the town, where he cannot do so much harm to his country.'[140] This pointed hint at the Tower must have been greatly to the taste of his audience. Allusions to the debts of the Civil List, caused certainly not by hospitality or by expenditure on any public object, but inferentially by corruption, were artfully framed so as to cause the King the greatest possible annoyance;[141] so, too, were the innuendoes as to our foreign policy having been framed in the sole interests of Hanover. Lord Limerick's second motion was carried by seven votes, and Pitt was named on the secret committee, which, however, owing to the loyal silence of Walpole's associates, to the placing one of them in the privileged security of the House of Lords, and to the refusal of the King to allow disclosures as to the manner in which secret service money had been employed, came to a futile and inglorious end. We catch one glimpse of Pitt in its proceedings. Scrope, the doughty old Secretary of the Treasury, who had fought under Monmouth at Sedgemoor, refused to reply to the questions of the inquisitors. Pitt seems to have pushed him hard, and he was so stung that he wished to call his tormentor out. From this we may at least infer that Pitt took a leading part in the deliberations of the Committee. On the other hand, it may be noticed that he only received 259, or one more than the lowest number of votes, while the member who headed the poll scored 518, a circumstance which would seem to indicate that he had as yet no strong position in the House.