But there was another reason why it was necessary that Pitt should advertise his virtue on this occasion. He was a patriot joining the Court party, a member of the Opposition accepting a place, which, with all deductions, had a fixed and ample salary. It was not possible for him, though his friends were already established in office, to join them without some loss of popularity. It was difficult for him to keep his shield untarnished in the royal armoury. The morose Glover states that he brought himself to the level of Lord Bath in public disfavour by his acceptance of office. Pitt himself, at the time of his bitter mortification in 1754, writes to Lord Hardwicke of his 'bearing long a load of obloquy for supporting the King's measures,' without the smallest abatement of the King's hostility, and about the same time describes himself as having parted with that weight in the country which arose from his independent opposition to the measures of the Government. He must indeed have counted the cost. It seemed obvious and in the nature of things that Lytteltons, Grenvilles, and Cobhams should follow the other patriots into office when opportunity offered; they had no doubt barked loudly at ministers, but they belonged to the families which always governed the country, and it was proper, indeed inevitable, that they should take up their predestined positions on the Treasury Bench. But Pitt had stood on a different pedestal. He had been marked out by Walpole for punishment and by the King for exclusion. He had thundered against the King and the King's trusted Ministers, the Walpoles and the Carterets, with a voice that overbore all others, and which apparently could not be silenced. The people seemed at last to have found an incorruptible champion. Then suddenly he was muzzled with a sinecure. Had he insisted on the Secretaryship of War and wrenched it from the reluctant sovereign, the position would have been totally different. But to pass into the sleek silence of the Vice Treasurership, and almost to disappear from sight or hearing for eight years, seemed a moral collapse. It is not one of the least remarkable features of Pitt's career that he should have survived this lucrative obscurity.