He had no feeling of resentment against the Government, no one had injured him. Yet he could not but think ill of their capacity and their measures. Could he, then, every day, arraign their policy and feel confidence in them? Pelham indeed had intended economy, but he was dragged into this foreign policy by his brother, now at the head of the Treasury. And if he, Pitt, saw Newcastle like a child driving a go-cart with that precious freight of an old King and his family on to a precipice, was he not bound to try and take the reins from his hands? And with a gloomy foreboding which must have chilled the anxious House, he solemnly prayed that the King might not have Minorca written on his heart, as Calais had been, in the dying declaration of Mary, engraved on hers. The debate ended with a bitter rally between Pitt and Lyttelton, the fiercer for their former friendship. Lyttelton had sneered at his epithets. This came well, said Pitt, from Lyttelton, whose own character was a composition of epithets. He himself had used no epithets that day, so Lyttelton had chosen ill the occasion for his taunt. But in any case the House was not an academy for the exchange of compliments. And when Lyttelton disclaimed any share in framing the motion, it was obvious that he was not at liberty to change it. If Lyttelton would declare that he had no more resources, he would only say that Lyttelton was incapable. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose heart was still warm with his old affection, was hurt by this attack, but he maintained his ground. 'He says I am but a thing made up of epithets. Is not this the language of Billingsgate? The world is complaining that the House was turned into a bear garden. I do not envy my friend the glory of being the Figg or Broughton of it.' Pitt retorted that Lyttelton was a very pretty poet, and that there was no one whom he more respected pen in hand. 'But it is hard that my friend, with whom I have taken sweet counsel in epithets, should now reproach me with using them.' Lyttelton replied once more that it was not his fault if he and Pitt were not still friends.[322] [Sidenote: May 14, 1756.] A day or two later Lyttelton unfolded to the House the provisions of the Treaty of Westminster. It had cleared up some small pecuniary claims on both sides, so much to Frederick for losses from British privateers, so much from Frederick for arrears of interest on the Silesian loan, a balance of 40,000_l._ due on the whole to Great Britain. On this, Pitt, inveterate against the Ministry, fulminated once more. He declared that by payment, even of a small sum, we had conceded the principle of our Empire over the sea, and went off into the usual rhetoric. 'For himself he should affect no superiority but what was common to him with the twelve millions of his countrymen, innocence of his country's ruin, the superiority of the undone over the undoers.'