Per damna, per cœdes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.’”[[121]]
Pitt, indeed, is famous for such felicities. In his speech on resigning the chancellorship in 1782, after claiming “to have used his best endeavors to fulfil with integrity every official engagement,” he continued: “And with this consolation, the loss of power, sir, and the loss of fortune, though I affect not to despise, I trust I shall soon be able to forget.”
“Laudo manentem: si celeres quatit
Pennas, resigno quæ dedit ...
... probamque
Pauperiem sine dote quæro.”[[122]]
Sir Robert Walpole had worse luck in attempting a like feat on his retirement, made not so gracefully in the shadow of a threatened impeachment.
“Nil conscire sibi, nulli pallescere culpæ,”[[123]]
he quoted, and was at once taken up by his rival, Pulteney, who offered to bet him a guinea that the line read Nulla pallescere culpa. Walpole lost, and, tossing the coin to Pulteney, the latter, before pocketing it, held it up to the House with the grim remark: “It is the first money I have received from the treasury for many years, and it shall be the last.”