In the talents of a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed.

Of the interests and the tempers of the continental courts he knew more than all his Privy Council together.

Some of his ministers were doubtless men of great ability, excellent orators in the House of Lords, and versed in our insular politics.

But, in the deliberations of the Congress, Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been found as far inferior to him as he would have been found inferior to them in a parliamentary debate on a question purely English.

The coalition against France was his work.
He alone had joined together the parts of that great whole; and he alone could keep them together.