but to the Board of Treasury. He carried his point with
characteristic audacity and celerity. The news of the vacancy
reached London on a Sunday. On the Tuesday the new Auditor was
sworn in. The ministers were amazed. Even the Chancellor, with
whom Montague was on terms of intimate friendship, had not been
consulted. Godolphin devoured his ill temper. Caermarthen ordered
out his wonderful yacht, and hastened to complain to the King,
who was then at Loo. But what had been done could not be undone.

This bold stroke placed Montague's fortune, in the lower sense of
the word, out of hazard, but increased the animosity of his
enemies and cooled the zeal of his adherents. In a letter written
by one of his colleagues, Secretary Vernon, on the day after the
appointment, the Auditorship is described as at once a safe and
lucrative place. "But I thought," Vernon proceeds, "Mr. Montague
was too aspiring to stoop to any thing below the height he was
in, and that he least considered profit." This feeling was no
doubt shared by many of the friends of the ministry. It was plain
that Montague was preparing a retreat for himself. This flinching
of the captain, just on the eve of a perilous campaign, naturally
disheartened the whole army. It deserves to be remarked that,
more than eighty years later, another great parliamentary leader
was placed in a very similar situation. The younger William Pitt
held in 1784 the same offices which Montague had held in 1698.
Pitt was pressed in 1784 by political difficulties not less than
those with which Montague had contended in 1698. Pitt was also in
1784 a much poorer man than Montague in 1698. Pitt, in 1784, like
Montage in 1698, had at his own absolute disposal a lucrative
sinecure place in the Exchequer. Pitt gave away the office which
would have made him an opulent man, and gave it away in such a