His defence lies buried amidst the documents of our Record Office, and has not yet fully seen the light.
For he was a reserved man, the warmth of whose nature blossomed forth only to a few friends, or on such occasions as his inspired speech on the emancipation of slaves.

To outsiders he had more than the usual fund of English coldness: he wrote no memoirs, he left few letters, he had scant means of influencing public opinion; and he viewed with lofty disdain the French clamour that it was he who made and kept up the war.

"I know it," he said; "the Jacobins cry louder than we can, and make themselves heard."[62] He was, in fact, a typical champion of our rather dumb and stolid race, that plods along to the end of the appointed stage, scarcely heeding the cloud of stinging flies.

Both the people and its champion were ill fitted to cope with Napoleon.
None of our statesmen had the Latin tact and the histrionic gifts needful to fathom his guile, to arouse the public opinion of Europe against him, or to expose his double-dealing.
But Pitt was unfortunate above all of them.

It was his fate to begin his career in an age of mediocrities and to finish it in an almost single combat with the giant.