'5. That if he came into His Majesty's service, he thought it necessary, in order to serve him, and to support his affairs, to have such powers as belonged to his station, to be in the first concert and concoction of measures, and to be at liberty to propose to His Majesty himself anything that occurred to him for his service, originally, and without going through any other minister.'
Pitt, who was evidently disappointed, acknowledged the accuracy of Hardwicke's recital, and desired to know if the message from the King was an answer to the whole. Hardwicke replied that it was the King's answer in the King's own words,[352] and that he could not take on himself to explain it; but that he understood it as an answer to everything that had been conveyed by Mr. Pitt to the King.
To this Pitt rejoined with thanks for the King's condescension that he would say to Hardwicke, 'as from one private gentleman to another,' that he would not come into the service, in the present circumstances of affairs, upon any other terms for the whole world.
'I then,' continues the Chancellor, 'said that undoubtedly He must judge for himself; But I would also say to Him, as from Lord Hardwicke only to Mr. Pitt—
'That, as He professed great Duty to the King & Zeal for his Service, & I dared to say had it; That as He had expressed an Inclination to come into his Majesty's service, in order really to assist in the support of his Government;
'That as He was a Man of Abilities & knowledge of the World; That, as Men of Sense, who wish the End, must naturally wish the means; why would He at the same time make the thing impracticable?
'To This He answered that he would say to me in the same private manner That he was surprized that it should be thought possible for Him to come into an Employment to serve with the D. of Newcastle, under whose Administration the things he had so much blamed had happened, & against which the Sense of the Nation so strongly appeared; & I think he added,—which Administration could not possibly have lasted, if he had accepted.
'In answer to That I said some general things in the same sense with what I had mentioned on that head on Tuesday last.
'He then rose up & we parted with great personal Civility on both sides.'
Meanwhile Newcastle, proscribed by Pitt and spurned by Fox, knew not whither to turn. He broke out in a wail against them to the Chancellor, the keeper of his conscience even more than of the King's. 'My dearest Lord,' he writes (October 20, 1756), 'tho' a consciousness of my own innocence and an indifference as to my own situation may, and I hope in God will, support me against all the wickedness and ingratitude which I meet with, yet your Lordship cannot think that I am unmindful of or senseless to the great indignity put upon me by these two gentlemen.' Newcastle in the character of a Christian martyr, the prey of heathen raging furiously, has something humorous and incongruous about it, were the attitude less abject. But in a sentence or two he returns to a more familiar character. 'Allow me only to suggest to your Lordship the necessity of making the King see that the whole is a concert between Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox. The news and principles upon which they act are the same, viz., to make themselves necessary, and masters of the King ... that the only thing Mr. Pitt alledges against me is the conduct of the war.' ... 'Quit before the Birthday I must and will.' He goes on to consult the Chancellor as to whether he shall ask any favours for his relations.[353]