Lord Camelford's statement may be taken in the main to be correct without adopting the sour inference which he draws. Pitt may well have asked Pelham as to the practice of the office and Pelham have replied in the sense indicated. If so, it was nearly as creditable to Pelham as to Pitt, for one was scarcely less needy than the other. Pelham was a gambler, and so wanted all the money he could get. He was a politician, and politicians in those days required money for their purposes almost as much as gamblers. Lord Camelford implies that had Pelham not answered as he did, Pitt would have taken the percentages and the balances. This is mere surmise. But, had he done so, he could not have been blamed. These perquisites were regarded as legitimate by the practice and opinion of the day; the balances were matters of public account. They made the Paymaster's office a great prize, a recognised source of immense profits. The fact remains that Pitt, or Pitt and Pelham, thought them improper, and refused to take them. One signal difference must however be observed. Pelham abstained silently, the abstinence of Pitt was widely known. This notoriety may have been partly due to the fact that the King of Sardinia, having heard of Pitt's refusal to deduct the percentage on the Sardinian subsidy, sent to offer him a large present, which Pitt unhesitatingly declined. But there was another reason, which colours Pitt's whole life, and which may therefore well be noted here. His light was never hid under any sort of bushel, and he did not intend that it should be. He already saw that his power lay with the people, and that it was based not merely on his genius and eloquence, but on a faith in his public spirit and scrupulous integrity. His virtues were his credentials, and it was necessary that they should be conspicuous. Pulteney and St. John had wielded greater Parliamentary power, yet Pulteney and St. John had perished from want of character. Character he saw was the one necessary thing, but character must be known to be appreciated. Pitt was perhaps the first of those statesmen who sedulously imbue the public with a knowledge of their merit. He can scarcely be called an advertiser, but he was the ancestor of advertisers. Other statesmen no doubt had paid their pamphleteers. Pitt paid nobody, but he inspired; he had hangers-on who clung to the skirts of his growing fortune. This is not to imply that he had not a genuine scorn of meanness and corruption and the baser arts of politics. He had to use them through others; he had to ally himself with Newcastle and his gang; he could not govern otherwise. But he was anxious that the public should know that he was something apart from and above these politicians. His was a real but not a retiring purity; a white column rather than a snowdrop. This was all part of his essentially theatrical character, which he had found successful in Parliament, and which gradually absorbed him, with unhappy results.