With regard to the sentence, the essence of it turns on the very few minutes in which the Admiral neglected to make all possible sail--and for _that_ he died! I, however, shocked at the severity of his fate, am still impartial; and with the truth that becomes an historian, from the most respectable down to so trifling a writer as myself, shall fairly declare all I know and observed: and difficult it would be for any man to have watched with more industry of attention even the most minute circumstance of this dark affair from the instant the sentence was made public. From that unremitted observation I formed this opinion:--Mr. Byng, by nature a vain man, by birth the son of a hero, was full of his own glory, and apprehensive of forfeiting any portion of what had descended on him. He went, conscious of the bad condition of his ships and men, to dispute that theatre with the French, on which his father had shone over the Spaniards; and he went persuaded that he should find a superior enemy. He dreaded forfeiting the reputation of forty years of brave service; he looked on Minorca as lost, and thought it could not be imputed to him. He had sagacity enough (without his strict orders) to comprehend, that if Gibraltar followed St. Philip’s, which he knew would be the case if he was defeated, that loss would be charged on him: and after all, to mislead him, he had the addition of believing that he had satisfied his duty by obliging the French to retire. This seems to have been the man:--He was, if I may be allowed the expression, a coward of his glory, not of his life; with regard to that, poor man! he had an opportunity of showing he was a hero. It is not to boast any sagacity, and yet perhaps it required some extent of it to exceed Mr. Byng’s enemies in discovering a fault which escaped their acuteness--but I did remark an instance that was never observed nor charged on him, in which he was undoubtedly guilty. In the course of the inquiry into the loss of Minorca, (to be mentioned hereafter,) a letter from the Admiral was read carelessly in a very thin Committee, which confirmed what the Ministry did charge him with--delay; and fully explanatory of that vain-glory which I have described as characteristic of the man. In that letter he told the Admiralty, that though their orders were so pressing, and the wind was fair, he did presume to stay for final orders--slightly he hinted, and seemingly without connecting it with his delay, that he thought he should have the rank of Commander-in-Chief.