The culture of print bulks large in any discussion of the mechanics of debate, but it would be misleading to ignore other ways in which national interest and foreign policy were debated. The correspondence between William, Lord Grenville, Foreign Secretary in the 1790s, and William Pitt the Younger, the First Lord of the Treasury, was secondary to their confidential meetings. The extent to which Britain remained a face-to-face society is often underrated, as is the degree to which this characteristic affected politics. Furthermore, although the official reports of diplomats survive in readily-accessible series, the survival of most ministerial correspondence is patchy. An analogous situation was provided by manuscript newsletters, which contained more information than newspapers, but from which most readers were excluded by factors of cost. The relationship between the press and foreign policy was scarcely indirect, although policy, as in the United Provinces, had more influence on the press, than the press did on policy.