Behind Hardwicke shuffles Newcastle. 'Feel for me,' he plaintively exclaims, 'for my melancholy and distressed situation: compelled to leave the department of which I was a master to one with which I was entirely ignorant, exposed to envy and reproach, and sure of nothing but the comfort of an honest heart.' It had first been suggested that Fox should be Secretary of State to make Newcastle's elevation more palatable to his opponents. But 'that for certain reasons did not take place; upon which the King himself, of his own motion declared Sir Thomas Robinson Secretary of State.' And this Pitt's friends thought the best practicable arrangement. For though an excellent man for the office, Robinson had not Parliamentary talents which could excite jealousy, and as, from circumstances deeply lamented by Newcastle, 'it was impossible to put one into that office who had all the necessary qualifications both within and out of the House,' there seemed nothing better to do than to appoint the inoffensive Sir Thomas. All interspersed with copious assurances of love and affection. 'I honour, esteem, and ... most sincerely love you.'[244] Pitt replies to Newcastle in a letter which it is necessary to print in full from the original in the Newcastle Papers, for this is very different from the draft printed in the Chatham Correspondence. PITT TO NEWCASTLE. _Bath, 4 Apr. 1754._ My Lord Duke,--I was honour'd with your Grace's letter of ye 2nd inst. yesterday evening. How shall I find words to express my sense of the great condescension and kindness of expression with which it is writ? It would be making but an ill return to so much goodness, were I to go back far into the disagreeable subject that has occasion'd your Grace so much trouble, and wou'd be tearing and wounding your good nature to little purpose. Whatever my sensations are, it is sufficient that I have once freely laid them before you, and that your Grace has had the indulgence to pardon that freedom, which I thought I used both to your Grace and myself. As for the rest, my attachment shall be ever found as unalterable to Government as my inability to be of any material use to it is become manifest to all the world. I will enter again, but for a word or two, into a subject your Grace shall be troubled no more with. It is most obliging to suggest as consolations to me that I might have been much more mortify'd under another management than under the present: but I will freely own I shou'd have felt myself far less personally humiliated, had Mr. Fox been placed by the King's favour at the head of the House of Commons, than I am at present: in that case the necessity wou'd have been apparent: the ability of the subject wou'd in some degree have warranted the thing. I shou'd indeed have been much mortify'd for your Grace and for my Lord Chancellor: very little for my own particular. Cou'd Mr.