"In his manners, Pitt, if not repulsive, was cold, stiff, and without suavity or amenity. He seemed never to invite approach or to encourage acquaintance, though when addressed, he could be polite, communicative, and occasionally gracious. Smiles were not natural to him, even when seated on the Treasury bench, where, placed at the summit of power, young, surrounded by followers, admirers, and flatterers, he maintained a more sullen gravity than his antagonist exhibited, who beheld around him only the companions of his political exile, poverty, and privations. From the instant that Pitt entered the doorway of the House of Commons, he advanced up the floor with a quick and firm step, his head erect and thrown back, looking neither to the right nor to the left, nor favouring with a nod or a glance any of the individuals seated on either side, among whom many who possessed five thousand pounds a year would have been gratified even by so slight a mark of attention. It was not thus that Lord North or Fox treated Parliament, nor from them would Parliament have so patiently endured it; but Pitt seemed made to guide and to command, even more than to persuade or to convince, the assembly that he addressed."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandLawyers from EnglandPeople from LondonChancellors of the Exchequer
Original Language: English
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Sources
Nathaniel Wraxall, The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, 1772–1784, Vol. III., ed. Henry B. Wheatley (1884), pp. 217-218
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Pitt_the_Younger
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William Pitt the Younger
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