And now comes a letter of which not a word must be omitted, the memorable letter to Newcastle of March 24, long supposed to be lost, but now discovered among the Newcastle Papers. It was penned under the just resentment caused by the knowledge of the arrangements for office from which he had been insultingly ignored. It is, so far as we know, the greatest that Pitt ever wrote, full of scornful humility, suppressed passion, and pointed insinuation. Unlike most of his letters it needs no interpretation, it speaks for itself. That bitterness of indignation, which is said to produce poetry, has in this instance evolved clearness and force. Towards the end, after speaking of resignation, and of his wish for retirement, he utters this prophecy, baleful to Newcastle, who should have remembered that the prophet had it in his power to fulfil his own prediction. 'Indeed, my lord, the inside of the House must be consider'd in other respects besides merely numbers, or the reins of government will soon slip or be wrested out of any minister's hands.' A few months were to bring home to the duke the truth of this prediction. PITT TO NEWCASTLE. _Bath, 24 March, 1754._ My Lord Duke,--I have heard with the highest satisfaction by a message from Sr George Lyttelton the effectual proofs of his Majesty's great kindness and firm confidence in your Grace for the conduct of his Government. You have certainly taken most wisely the Province of the Treasury to yourself, where the powers of Government reside, and which at this particular crisis of a General Election may lay the foundations of the future political system so fast as not to be shaken hereafter. But this will depend upon many concomitant circumstances. For the present the nation may say with consolation, _uno avulso non deficit alter aureus_. The power of the Purse in the hands of the same family may, I trust, be so used as to fix all other power there along with it. Amidst all the real satisfaction I feel on this great measure so happily taken, it is with infinite reluctance that I am forced to return to the mortifying situation of your Grace's humblest servant and to add some few considerations to those, which, I have the satisfaction to learn from Sr George Lyttelton, had the honour to be receiv'd by your Grace and my Lord Chancellor without disapprobation. The difficulties grow so fast upon me by the repetition and multiplication of most painfull and too visible humiliations that my small store of prudence suggests no longer to me any means of colouring them to the world; nor of repairing them to my own mind consistently with my unshaken purpose to do nothing on any provocation to disturb the quiet of the King and the ease and stability of present and future Government.