Fox now found it was time to consult his own security. He saw Newcastle flinging up works all round himself; and suspected that Pitt would be invited to defend them. He saw how little power he had obtained by his last treaty with the Duke. He saw himself involved in the bad success of measures on which he had not been consulted, scarce suffered to give an opinion; and he knew that if Newcastle and Pitt united, he must be sacrificed as the cement of their union. Indeed, his Grace, so far from keeping terms, had not observed common decency with him: a few instances, which Fox selected to justify to the King the step he was reduced to take, shall suffice. Early in the summer, Newcastle complaining of want of support, Fox told him, that if it would facilitate his Grace’s measures, he would resign Secretary of State to Mr. Pitt, and take an inferior place. This, at the beginning of October, the Duke recollected, and told Lord Barrington, that if Fox would not take it ill, he would offer his place to Pitt the next day. So far from _not_ taking it ill, Fox made it matter of complaint that his Grace had dared to think he was sincere in the offer. In the list for the Prince’s family, Fox saw the names of eight or ten members of Parliament, of whom he had not heard a word, till the Duke of Newcastle told him all was settled with the King; and, which though meant to soften, was an aggravation by the manner, at the same time acquainted him that the King would let Lord Digby (Fox’s nephew) be a Lord of the Bedchamber to the Prince, preferably to the other competitors: “But it was at my desire,” said the Duke; “for his Majesty was very averse to do anything for you.”--Fox replied, coldly, “Lord Digby is not likely to live.”--“Oh!” said Newcastle, with a brutality which the hurry of folly could not excuse, “then _that_ will settle it.” Fox made no reply; but the next day wrote him a letter to notify that he would go on no longer. Newcastle, thunderstruck with having accomplished what he had projected, reached the letter (he received it at the Board of Treasury,) to Nugent, and cried, “What shall I do?”--and then hurried to Lord Granville, and told him he would resign his place to him. “I thought,” said Granville, “I had cured you of such offers last year: I will be hanged a little before I take your place, rather than a little after.” Fox, too, went to vent his woes on Lord Granville, and prefacing them with a declaration of his unambitious temper, that shrewd jolly man interrupted him, and said, “Fox, I don’t love to have you say things that will not be believed--if you was of my age, very well; I have put on my night-cap; there is no more daylight for me--but you _should_ be ambitious: I want to instil a nobler ambition into you; to make you knock the heads of the Kings of Europe together, and jumble something out of it that may be of service to this country.”