Hume Campbell, raised to this bad eminence, seems to have acquitted himself ably in his opening attack, and to have delivered a masterly speech. He could see no reason, he said, why gentlemen were suffered to come every day to the House merely to threaten and arraign the conduct of their superiors. Such behaviour was unparliamentary and unprecedented. 'Let the House punish,' he said, 'these eternal invectives.' Pitt angrily called him to order for so describing the debates of that House. Horace Walpole, the elder, said, with some reason, that Pitt ought to be the last man in the House to complain of irregularity. Pitt declared that Campbell's words struck directly at the liberty of debate; that he had a mind to move to have the words taken down, but would refrain till the orator had explained himself. Campbell then proceeded with his discourse. He was followed by other speakers, Murray delivering a fine argument in defence of the treaties. Pitt, meanwhile, contrary to his habit, possessed himself in silence, collecting all his powers for his reply. When he arose he delivered one that was memorable and overwhelming. 'You never heard such a philippic as Pitt returned. Hume Campbell was annihilated. Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee. But think how charming a ridicule must be that lasts and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half! Some day perhaps you will see some of the glittering splinters that I gathered up.' So wrote Horace Walpole in the first enthusiasm produced by this effort. But the more deliberate record in his memoirs reveals few of the flashing splinters that he thought to have garnered. Luckily, Sir William Meredith has left a very brief account[316] of the tilt between Campbell and Pitt, which we can collate with Walpole's.