Nothing can better illustrate the extraordinary power which Newcastle wielded in the House of Commons than the dumb terrified fidelity of the great majority who clung to his knees in spite of the attacks of Pitt and Fox. Hapless majority! They had neither voice nor faith; they despised almost equally their nominal chief Robinson, and their real chief Newcastle; so they huddled together for warmth and sympathy. And this was a House of Commons produced by a general election carried on under the auspices of a consummate manipulator and by long years of cozening, patronage, and corruption. The success had been complete, a devoted and passive majority had been returned, and this was the result. It was a strange and instructive spectacle. This docile flock was shepherdless, it was not thought to need any superintendence, it had only to receive its instructions from Newcastle through the channel of some such agent as Robinson. What Newcastle thought well to give, it was prepared gladly to take. Could Minister want more? Yet, before the session was a fortnight old, Newcastle was to learn, but not completely, the futility of such a scheme of government. He had promised the King that the new House of Commons would need no leader, that indeed the position of leader of the House of Commons was both dangerous in power and superfluous in practice. He was yet to learn that there was something more formidable; a ship without captain or helmsman, and two loose cannon banging about at large. For, two days after the annihilation of Robinson, Pitt again took the field, this time against Murray, the most formidable antagonist that he ever had to face after the resignation of Walpole. It was on the vote for the army. Barrington and Nugent had made fulsome speeches, dwelling on the popularity of the King and the Ministry, declaring, indeed, that there were no Jacobites in England. People, said Nugent, sometimes reared those whom they thought would be Jacobites, but who turned out very differently. So had he seen in his rural retirement a hen, which had hatched duck's eggs, watch with apprehension her nurslings betake themselves to the water. Pitt rose and declared with solemn pleasantry that this image had greatly struck him, 'for, sir, I know of such a hen.' The hen, it appeared, was the University of Oxford. This, we think, in its demure unexpectedness, is the best stroke of humour in all his speeches. But he begged the House not to be sure that all she hatched would ever entirely forget what she had taught them. Then followed an innuendo at old Horace Walpole which is immaterial and obscure. Sir Roger Newdigate, whose name is still cherished by budding poets, rose, as member for the University, to make a meek defence. Pitt rose again, and told 'inimitably' the story of a recent adventure at Oxford. He was with a party at the Angel Inn, one of whom was asked to sing 'God save Great George our King' (one can hardly imagine that it was Pitt who called for this).