This reasoning, I presume, is the best defence that could be made for these expounders of naval law. An anecdote, much asserted at the time, belongs to this part of the proceeding. When the severer part of the Court (the steady part of Admiral Boscawen’s foretold majority) found great difficulty to wring from their associates acquiescence in condemnation, they are said to have seduced the latter by promising on their part, if Mr. Byng was condemned, to sign so favourable a representation of his case, that it should be impossible but he must be pardoned. If anything could excuse men for condemning a person whom they thought innocent, it would be this, because there is nothing more uncommon, I might almost say, more unheard of, than the execution of a criminal, when his Judge strongly recommends him to mercy. If this bargain for blood was suggested by the return of the Courier who was dispatched by the Court-Martial for illumination--but I will not make surmises--the late Ministers had sufficiently barricaded the gates of mercy when they engaged the King in that promise to the city of London; and whoever will read the inhuman letters of their tool, Cleland, the Secretary of the Admiralty, will be a competent judge of what mercy Mr. Byng had to expect after condemnation. The first flame lighted by this extraordinary sentence was the dissatisfaction it occasioned in the Navy, when they found such a construction of the twelfth Article, as made it capital for an officer to want, what he could not command, judgment. Admiral West threatened to resign if it was not altered. But they who had power to enforce execution on such an interpretation, took care not to consent to any correction. With what face could they put the Admiral to death, if they owned that the Article on which he was condemned wanted amendment? Before I proceed to the consequences of this affair, I will say a few words, as I promised, on the engagement itself; though with regard to the fate of Mr. Byng, I think it ceased from this moment to be any part of the question. If he was guilty of any fault, his most conscientious Judges thought it so small an one, that they did not hesitate to censure the law itself for blending it with capital crimes: and it will appear as fully that the duration of it was as short, as the nature of it was light; not extending beyond very few minutes. Had he been guilty of all that cowardice which had first been charged on him, and of which he was so honourably acquitted, it would still have been a notorious violation of the custom of England, (and the common law itself is scarce more than custom,) to put him to death after such earnest recommendation of his Judges--Judges under no influence of the favourable sort!