I have spoken of Admiral Byng, not only as of a man who thought himself innocent, but as of one marked for sacrifice by a set of Ministers, who meant to divert on him the vengeance of a betrayed and enraged nation. I have spoken, and shall speak of him as of a man most unjustly and wickedly put to death; and as this was the moment from which my opinion sprung, however lamentably confirmed by the event, it is necessary in my own vindication to say a few words, lest prejudice against the persecutors, or for the persecuted, should be suspected of having influenced my narrative. I can appeal to God that I never spoke to Mr. Byng in my life, nor had the most distant acquaintance with any one of his family. The man I never saw but in the street, or in the House of Commons, and there I thought his carriage haughty and disgusting. From report, I had formed a mean opinion of his understanding; and from the clamours of the world, I was carried away with the multitude in believing he had not done his duty; and in thinking his behaviour under _his_ circumstances weak and arrogant. I never interested myself enough about him to inquire whether this opinion was well or ill founded. When his pamphlet appeared, I read it, and found he had been cruelly and scandalously treated. I knew enough not to wonder at this conduct in _some_ of his persecutors--yet it concerned not me; and I thought no more about it till the sentence, and the behaviour of his Judges which accompanied it, struck me with astonishment! I could not conceive, how men could acquit honourably and condemn to death with the same breath! How men could feel so much, and be so insensible at the same instant; and from the prejudice of education which had told me that the law of England understood that its ministers of Justice should always be Counsel _for_ the prisoner, I could not comprehend how the members of the Court-Martial came to think that a small corner of a law ought to preponderate for rigour, against a whole body of the same law which they understood directed them to mercy; and I was still more startled to hear men urge that their consciences were bound by an oath, which their consciences told them would lead them to murder. Lest this should be thought a declamatory paraphrase, I will insert both the sentence and the letter of the Court-Martial; and will appeal to impartial posterity, whether I have exaggerated, whether it was necessary for me, or whether it was possible for me to exaggerate, the horrid absurdity of this proceeding. Supplements indeed there were made to it! “At a Court-Martial, assembled on board his Majesty’s ship St. George, in Portsmouth harbour, upon the 28th of December, 1756, and held everyday afterwards (Sundays excepted), till the 27th of January inclusive-- Present,