This surely was no inordinate claim from indisputably the first member of the House of Commons, whom the King had kept at bay for so many years, and to keep whom still in subjection every possible manoeuvre, childish or cunning, was being adopted. 'Why,' said he bluntly to Newcastle, 'cannot you bring yourself to part with some of your sole power?' This of course produced voluble asseverations from the Duke. Sole power! What an idea! He had no conception of what Pitt could mean. He was in his present place, not by his own choice, far from it! but by the King's command, and, though he was devoted to the King, he would retire to-morrow if he was distasteful to the House of Commons. (This was a safe promise, for, as we have seen, the House of Commons was with but few exceptions at his absolute disposal.) Pitt replied that he himself had no objections to a Peer as First Lord of the Treasury, but there must be men of ability and responsibility in the House of Commons, a Secretary of State and a Chancellor of the Exchequer, that they must be sufficiently supported, and they must have access to the Crown, not a nominal, but an habitual, free, familiar access. In speaking of the Chancellor of the Exchequer he burst out into so enthusiastic a eulogy of Legge, 'the child, and deservedly the favourite child of the Whigs,' that Newcastle suspected that all this was concerted between his rebellious Chancellor of the Exchequer and his insubordinate Paymaster. Pitt and the Duke next proceeded to analyse their own expressions; a task which the statesmen of that day seem to have avoided, to our detriment, as much as possible. Newcastle had spoken of the proposed seat in the Cabinet as a designation. 'What did this mean?' asked Pitt. 'Did it mean the seals of Secretary of State, though not immediately?' The Duke was obliged to shuffle out, for in truth he had no power to promise any such thing. Designation only meant that the seat in the Cabinet would design him as the King's man of confidence. 'Then the Secretaryship of State is not intended,' was the fierce rejoinder. The Duke replied that he was not authorised to offer more than a seat in the Cabinet. If, rejoined Pitt, 'the Secretaryships of State are to remain as they are, there is an end of any question of my giving active support to the Government in the House of Commons.'