It must be remembered, too, that the state of affairs as regards office in the eighteenth century was very different from the present. Now, if a man be a bold and popular speaker, both in Parliament and on the platform, but more especially on the platform, he leaps into the Cabinet at once; he disdains anything else; a Vice-Treasurership such as Pitt accepted he would regard as an insult. But in the middle of the eighteenth century there was nothing of this. There was no such thing as platform speaking outside the religious movement. A man made himself prominent and formidable in Parliament, but that was a small part of the necessary qualifications for office. The Sovereign then exercised a control, not indeed absolute, but efficacious and material, on the selection of ministers. The great posts were mainly given to peers; while a peerage is now as regards office in the nature of an impediment, if not a disqualification. In those days an industrious duke, or even one like Grafton who was not industrious, could have almost what he chose. But most of the great potentates preferred to brood over affairs in company with hangers-on who brought them the news, or with their feudal members of parliament. Still they formed a vital element in the governments of that time. Pelham's administration at this very time contained five dukes: he himself was the only commoner in it, and he was a duke's brother. It was necessary to have a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons, but all the other high offices could be held preferably by peers. The two Secretaries of State were both dukes. A brilliant commoner without family connection or great fortune was an efficient gladiator to be employed in the service of these princes, but he was not allowed to rise beyond a fixed line. The peers lived, as it were, in the steward's room, and the commoners in the servants' hall; in some parlour, high above all, sate the King. Pitt, according to the practice of the twentieth century, would have received at least the highest office outside or, more probably, office within the Cabinet on the fall of Walpole, and he certainly would have been a Secretary of State or the equivalent before 1746. As it was, in that year he had to climb on hands and knees into a subordinate position. It had been difficult for him to get even that far at the cost of a ministerial crisis of capital importance. The veto of the King had certainly been the principal obstacle. But the iron rules of caste forbade any idea of office for Pitt at all commensurate with his importance. He had under the system in force to get in as he could, and into much the same sort of office as his inferior but more influentially connected colleagues, the Grenvilles, the Lytteltons, and the like.