Equally inopportune was his motion of 15th December, for sending a Minister to Paris to treat with that Government. His knowledge of all that went on at the French Embassy in Portman Square was so exact (witness his repetition publicly on the 13th of the very words of one of Lebrun's despatches to Chauvelin),[143] that he must have known of the informal communications between Pitt and Maret, and of the arrival on the 14th of despatches from Paris, which negatived the requests of the Prime Minister. Doubtless it was this last circumstance which curtailed and weakened Fox's second speech. Grey, Erskine, and Whitbread vigorously supported the motion; but there was a general feeling that the despatch of an ambassador to Paris would be a weak acquiescence in the French claims. The motion was therefore negatived. Pitt was not present at these first debates, not having yet been re-elected by the University of Cambridge after his recent acceptance of the Lord Wardenship of the Cinque Ports. The defence of the Government therefore devolved chiefly upon Dundas, Windham, and Burke--a significant conjunction of names. On 16th December Burke for the first time took his seat on the Treasury Bench. A national party might now have been formed but for the inaction of the Duke of Portland. During the meetings at his mansion, Burlington House, he evinced strong disapproval of the views of Fox; and, as official leader of the Whigs, he had it in his power to bring nearly the whole of the party over to the Government side. From this course, which would have placed country above party, the Duke shrank; and his followers were left to sort themselves at will. There was a general expectation that Portland would publicly declare against Fox; but friendship or timidity held him tongue-tied. Malmesbury sought to waken him from his "trance," but in vain.[144] He lay under "the wand of the magician" (Pitt's phrase for the witchery that Fox exerted), even when so staunch a Whig as Sir Gilbert Elliot saw that the wizard's enchantments were working infinite mischief.[145] Owing to the wrong-headedness of Fox and the timidity of Portland, Pitt's triumph in the Commons was not decisive enough to tear the veil away from the eyes of the French Jacobins. Nothing short of unanimity at Westminster could have worked that miracle. Surely not even that novice in diplomacy, Lebrun, would have threatened to appeal from the British Government to the British nation, had he not believed the Government to be without support.