arbitrary interference of the same too powerful subject in a parliamentary election that Pitt was now screening with jesting scorn. But Pitt thought little of consistency, and he might well have forgotten for the moment his earlier performance, when seeing and seizing the opportunity for a speech which placed him on a moral elevation above the House of Commons. In 1748 we find him intervening comically enough in an affair, suspiciously like a local job, which affected his friends, the Grenvilles, and which proved the bitter and jealous animosity with which they were regarded. Hitherto the summer assizes for Buckinghamshire had been held at Buckingham, and the winter at Aylesbury; but suddenly the summer assizes had also been transferred to Aylesbury. The reason seems to have been simple enough; for the gaol being at Aylesbury, prisoners had to be transferred thence and back again when the assizes were at Buckingham. Richard Grenville (afterwards Lord Temple), however, for obvious reasons, took up the cudgels for Buckingham, which was the close neighbour and borough of Stowe, and brought in a Bill to enact that the summer assizes should be held at that town. All Bucks rushed into the conflict, and as is generally the case in a local affair, the debate was extraordinarily diverting. Richard Grenville, Sir William Stanhope of Eythrope, the brother of Chesterfield, and afterwards a brother of the famous or infamous Medmenham fraternity, Potter again, who had now become secretary to the Prince of Wales, who was soon to be member for Aylesbury, probably for his services on this occasion, and also a future monk of Medmenham, George Grenville, the solemn figure of Pitt, Robert Nugent (whose daughter married George Grenville's son), Lee of Hartwell, were all visible and ardent in the thick of the battle. Henry Fox, then a friend of Pitt, was the only outside member who intervened, and then with a sort of puzzled surprise at the fury of the combatants. Sir William Stanhope, who led the attack on Buckingham, made a speech which was specially piquant. He began: 'Sir, if I did not think I could prove that this Bill is the arrantest job that ever was brought to Parliament, I should not give the House the trouble of hearing me.' He attributed the Bill to the fact that the County of Bucks had not elected two Grenvilles as their members. 'Here let me condole with that unhappy, rather that blinded, county who neglected to choose two gentlemen of such power and interest that I am persuaded they will have more votes in this House to-day than they would have had at the General Election in the whole county in question if they had done it the honour to offer themselves for representatives.' After this bitter exordium he proceeded: 'It is the power and interest of these gentlemen that I am afraid of, not of their arguments;' with good reason, for though to posterity the claim of Aylesbury with its gaol will seem conclusive, the Bill was triumphantly carried.