The impression against Mr. Byng was no sooner taken, than every art and incident that could inflame it were industriously used and adopted. Though he had demanded the Mediterranean service as his right, and had pressed for it as the scene of his father’s[61] glory, his courage was now called in question, and omens were recollected to have foretold this miscarriage. A letter from him before the engagement had mentioned nothing of Minorca; it only said, that if he found the French too strong, he would retire under the cannon of Gibraltar. The King was now reported to have dashed this letter on the ground in a passion, saying, “This man will not fight!”--his Majesty, it seems, had great skill in the symptoms of cowardice! He was represented, too, as neither eating nor sleeping, and as lamenting himself that this account would be his death. As Minorca was but too likely to follow the fate of Calais, his Ministers prepared to write Mahon on that heart, which had never yet felt for any English possession. The Duke, whose sensibility on this occasion can less be doubted, took care to be quoted too: he said, “We are undone! Sea and land are cowards! I am ashamed of my profession!” But on the arrival of the Admiral’s own dispatch, _an abstract_ of which was immediately published, the rage of the people rose to the height. The letter spoke the satisfaction of an officer, who thought he had done his duty, and done it well--an air of triumph, that seemed little to become a man who had left the French masters of the sea, and the garrison of St. Philip’s without hope of relief. Their despair on the disappearance of the British fleet must have been extreme, and could not fail to excite the warmest compassion here. The Admiral was burned in effigy in all the great towns; his seat and park in Hertfordshire were assaulted by the mob, and with difficulty saved. The streets and shops swarmed with injurious ballads, libels, and prints, in some of which was mingled a little justice on the Ministers. Charles Townshend undertook a weekly paper, called the Test, of which only one number was published: he had too much mercury and too little ill-nature to continue a periodical war. We shall see in the following winter that some of the persons attacked were rather more settled in their passions, when they revived the title of this paper, and turned it on its patrons.