Robinson made less than no difficulties in accommodating himself to the new pretensions. He only yearned to return to the Great Wardrobe of which he had been Master. And so with a pension of 2000_l._ a year, fixed upon luckless Ireland, he vanishes into space, with the natural remark that he had never looked on his seven children with so much satisfaction as on the completion of these domestic arrangements. CHAPTER XIX. This blank though important space in the life of Pitt himself seems favourable for picking up a few threads which had to be dropped in the narrative of his negotiations with Newcastle. After the baiting to which Robinson had been subjected in the first days of the session he disappeared from debate; and Fox, then in close negotiation for a seat in the Cabinet, represented the Government in the Commons, and turned a deaf ear to the proposal that he should join Pitt in a combined attack on Newcastle. Fox's game, it will be seen, was not calculated to win the confidence of Pitt, to whom, however, during the session, he showed marked courtesy on the one hand, while negotiating with the Duke on the other. [Sidenote: Feb. 26, 1755.] The Lord Advocate had introduced a Bill continuing for a further period the provisions passed after the rising of 1745 which had temporarily placed the tenure of sheriff-deputyships at the King's pleasure instead of for life as before. This seems to have raised an animated debate, memorable to us as having produced two fine speeches from Pitt, which Horace Walpole alone mentions, and of which he gives a spirited sketch. It is only possible to give Walpole's record in his own words, as there is no other. Pitt spoke in answer to Murray (who, by-the-by, speaking in defence of the Bill, had said that there was not a single Jacobite left in Scotland) 'with great fire, in one of his best worded and most spirited declarations for liberty, but which, like others of his fine orations, cannot be delivered adequately without his own language; nor will they appear so cold to the reader, as they even do to myself, when I attempt to sketch them, and cannot forget with what soul and grace they were uttered. He did not directly oppose, but wished rather to send the Bill to the Committee, to see how it could be amended. He was glad that Murray would defend the King, only with a salve to the rights of the Revolution; he commended his abilities, but tortured him on his distinctions and refinements. He himself had more scruples; it might be a Whig delicacy--but even that is a solid principle. He had more dread of arbitrary power dressing itself in the long robe, than even of military power. When master principles are concerned, he dreaded accuracy of distinction: he feared that sort of reasoning: if you class everything, you will soon reduce everything into a particular; you will then lose great general maxims. Gentlemen may analyse a question till it is lost.