Brutal as the wrath of the nation was, it was founded on a sound sentiment. If England was to take her place in the world, there had to be an end of Mathews and Lestock, of Peyton, Griffin, and Cornelius Mitchell. Voltaire’s famous jest that the English shot an admiral to encourage the others suffers from the worst defect a scoff can have. He meant it for a _reductio ad absurdum_. It was a perfectly accurate statement of fact. The shooting of Byng did encourage the others. Henceforward there might be errors and stupidities, and failures here and there. So there always will be while men remain men, but a service is to be judged by its general spirit, and by the view it takes of errors and failures. Nobody who looks critically at the history of the British Navy in the eighteenth century can fail to note a vast difference between the years before and those after 1757. And we insult the memory of the seamen of the eighteenth century if we suppose that this is so only because the wrath of the nation drove them to greater exertion, or that they did not think the execution of Byng just. Some did not. His second in command, Temple West, resigned rather than continue to serve if he was to be liable to punishment for “an error of judgment.” West by the use of that phrase gave currency to a sophism which has often been used to obscure the real significance of this great sacrifice. But the navy had not protested against the change in the Naval Discipline Act of 1749. The officers who tried Byng did not shrink from applying the law though it cut them to the heart to send a brother in arms to a shameful death. If they had been dishonest men, they might have acquitted him of negligence, but they saw the truth and they did their terrible duty. There is nothing to show that the seamen, whether on the quarter-deck or before the mast, did, as a body, think the sentence unjust. Indeed, the whole navy was now burning with a spirit which asked for nothing better than to be relieved of such leadership as Byng’s. Three months after the admiral met his fate, the great administration of the elder Pitt was formed. At last the power of England was about to be directed, not by pettifogging and parliamentary intrigue, but by genius and passion. Yet the full effect of the change could not be felt for a space, and until 1758 was well advanced the work of Newcastle may be said to overlap that of Pitt. We may look for a moment at the interval before the power of the navy was fully free to act.