Potter, whom Pitt had come to describe as 'one of the best friends I have in the world,' wrote to Pitt, ten days after Ryder's death, conveying the news from an inspired source that if Murray went on the bench Newcastle would invite Pitt to join the Government, for he could repair the loss in no other way. But he adds, shrewdly enough, that the Duke was evidently ignorant of his own strength, for if he had to rely on Lyttelton and Dupplin (then Joint Paymaster of the Forces) alone, though the debates would no doubt be shorter, he would not, such was the temper of the House, lose a single vote. He added that, in his judgment, the Opposition had not made themselves popular by their conduct, because of the fear of invasion. Hanover treaties and Hanover troops had become popular; opposition to them must be wrong 'when we are ready to be eat up by the French.'[327] But these anticipations were premature, for the struggle with Murray lasted, as we have seen, from May till November. So that Pitt had leisure to squander on his improvements and to receive his eldest son John on John's entrance into the world. But his eye was vigilantly fixed on the distresses of the country. 'Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?' he writes to George Grenville (June 5, 1756). 'It is an inadequate and a selfish consolation, but it is a sensible one, to think that we share only in the common ruin, and not in the guilt of having left us exposed to the natural and necessary consequences of administration without ability or virtue.' Grenville, determined not to be undone, replies in a letter stuffed with Latin quotation. 'Distress,' rejoins Pitt (June 16, 1756), 'infinite distress seems to hem us in on all quarters. I am in most anxious impatience to have the affair in the Mediterranean cleared up. As yet nothing is clear but that the French are masters there, and that probably many an innocent and gallant man's honour and fortune is to be offered up as a scapegoat for the sins of the Administration.' In July he paid a visit at Stowe, and in August he was laid up at Hayes with 'a very awkward, uneasy, but not hurtful' malady. He must have seen with poignant interest Frederick's fierce irruption into Saxony, but all seems absorbed in his anxiety for his wife and his overflowing delight at the birth of his son. This event occurred on October 10, at a moment when the ministerial crisis had become acute.