REMARKS ON ADMIRAL BYNG’S FATE.

Notwithstanding all that has been said in his favour, notwithstanding the infamous arts that were practised to keep up the cry against him, notwithstanding this solemn appeal to heaven in his last moments, and even self-conviction of innocence, the character of admiral Byng, in point of personal courage, will still, with many people, remain problematical. They will still be of opinion, that if the spirit of a British admiral had been properly exerted, the French fleet would have been defeated, and Minorca relieved. A man’s opinion of danger varies at different times, in consequence of an irregular tide of animal spirits, and he is actuated by considerations which he dares not avow. After an officer, thus influenced, has hesitated or kept aloof in the hour of trial, the mind, eager for its own justification, assembles, with surprising industry, every favourable circumstance of excuse, and broods over them with parental partiality, until it becomes not only satisfied, but even enamoured of their beauty and complexion, like a doating mother, blind to the deformity of her own offspring. Whatever Mr. Byng’s internal feelings might have been, whatever consequences might have attended his behaviour on that occasion; as the tribunal before which he was tried acquitted him expressly of cowardice and treachery, he was, without all doubt, a proper object for royal clemency; and so impartial posterity will judge him, after all those dishonourable motives of faction and of fear, by which his fate was influenced, shall be lost in oblivion, or remembered with disdain. The people of Great Britain, naturally fierce, impatient, and clamorous, have been too much indulged, upon every petty miscarriage, with trials, courts-martial, and dismissions, which tend only to render their military commanders rash and precipitate, the populace more licentious and intractable, and to disgrace the national character in the opinion of mankind.

ENLARGE

Portrait of William Pitt