can scarce fluctuate for an hour without affecting the
destiny of Europe. I see the inward workings of fear struggling
with pride in an ardent, enterprising, and tumultuous mind. I
see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation, dreaded,
detested, and obeyed, the giddiness and intoxication of splendid
but unmerited success, the arrogance, the presumption, the
selfwill of unlimited and idolized power, and more dreadful than
all in the plenitude of authority, the restless and incessant
activity of guilt, but unsated ambition.

This scrap of mere phrases indicates a mind that was far beneath the
calibre of that of a real statesman. It was a terrible fate for Great
Britain to have at the head of the Government a man whose public life
was a perpetual danger to the state. Had Pitt been the genius his
eloquence led his contemporaries to believe he was, he would have
availed himself of the opportunities the Great Figure, who was making
the world rock with his genius, afforded the British Government from
time to time of making peace on equitable terms. But Pitt's vision of
the large things that constituted human existence was feeble and
narrowed down to the nightmare of the "tumultuous mind" whose sole
aim was the conquest of the Continent of Europe and the invasion of
these Islands. The "usurper" must be subdued by the force of arms, the
squandering of British wealth, and the sanguinary sacrifice of human
lives. That was the only diplomacy his mental organism could evolve.
He used his power of expression, which was great, to such good purpose
that his theories reflected on his supporters. Had Pitt been talented
in matters of international diplomacy, as he was in the other affairs
of Government, he would have seized the opportunity of making the
Peace of Amiens universal and durable. It is futile to contend that
Napoleon was irreconcilable. His great ambition was to form a concrete
friendship with our Government, which he foresaw could be fashioned
into a continental arrangement, intricate and entangled as all the
elements were at the time. Napoleon never ceased to deplore the
impossibility of coming to any reciprocal terms with England so long
as Pitt's influence was in the ascendant, and he and a large public in
France and in this country profoundly believed that Fox had not only
the desire but the following, and all the diplomatic qualities to
bring it about. Any close, impartial student