They had arrived at an impassable barrier, Pitt would take nothing but the seals which the King would not give him, and Newcastle was determined not to force on another crisis with the King on account of Pitt; whom, in truth, he dreaded little less as a colleague than as a foe. So they turned to matters of public policy, 'and then,' writes the hapless Minister, 'nothing can equal my astonishment and concern.' He tried Pitt first with the Hessian Treaty, and then with the Russian. For the Hessian Treaty the Duke characteristically urged every reason but the true one, and for the Russian that it was the fruit of four years of negotiation, and that it would seem strange to drop it now. But Pitt was obdurate. He would be no party to a system of subsidies. If the Duke of Devonshire attacked the Hessian subsidy in the House of Lords, as was his intention, Pitt would echo the attack in the House of Commons. If the Russian Treaty were dropped he might acquiesce in the Hessian from regard for the King; as, for the same reason, he would always speak with the utmost respect of Hanover. But no consideration would make him support both, or a system of subsidies. It was his regard for the King, presumably, which impelled him to make a further suggestion, which Newcastle did not venture to transmit even to Hardwicke. Out of the fifteen millions sterling that the King was said to have saved why, asked Pitt, should he not give Hesse 100,000_l._, and Russia 150,000_l._, to be out of these bad bargains? Newcastle was driven to his usual resource of the Chancellor, and suggested a conference with him in the ensuing week. Pitt agreed to this with, we may presume, a shrug of the shoulders.