March 1st.--The Lords read the Bill. Lord Mansfield treated Keppel’s behaviour as weak and inconsistent: made a panegyric on the twelfth Article, which he said had restored discipline: censured the House of Commons for precipitate proceedings; and went indecently into the question of the Admiral’s behaviour; for which he was called to order by Lord Denbigh, who told him, that to evade the pressing arguments that called for the Bill, he had endeavoured cruelly to raise indignation against the prisoner, who might receive benefit from the scruples of his Judges; whose scruples and request were alone the objects before the House. The Chief Justice replied, he did not intend to oppose the whole Bill--but he must ask, who they were that demanded it? What! a month[81] after sentence!--was what they had to say within the oath of secrecy? Indeed, he had always been against the oath; he never approved judging in a mask. He had heard of a case where a _majority_ voted that a sentence should be _unanimous_. He said the proviso, empowering only the willing to speak, was partial. If _all_ should say they meaned error of judgment, the Admiral ought to be acquitted. If the sentence was iniquitous, it ought to be annulled. But it was cruel to fix this examination on the King: the Lords ought to step between the Crown and the people. The sentence, he said, could only be annulled by Parliament. A Bill might be necessary, but one totally different from this. He proposed to have the members of the Court-Martial called to the bar of the House; and he concluded with no humane observations, nor more to the Bill than his former speech, that there had been times when a sea-officer had blown up his ship, rather than be taken, or retreat. As I would by no means blend in one censure the behaviour of the two lawyers, Mansfield and Hardwicke, I will here say a few words on the former. He took a severe part against the persecuted Admiral--why, I pretend not to determine. As the death of Mr. Byng tended no ways to his interest, as he had no guilt to expiate by the blood of another, and as friendship infuses humanity, but not cruelty, one should not suppose that Lord Mansfield acted on personal motives, or from a desire of screening Newcastle. I will not even suppose that a propensity to thwarting Pitt dictated his asperity. He saw his country undone; might think Mr. Byng had hastened its fate; might feel a national resentment; might think severity necessary; and as it is observed that timorous natures, like those of women, are generally cruel, Lord Mansfield might easily slide into rigour on this as he did on other occasions, when he was not personally afraid. Lord Temple gave much the same account that I have given, of his own behaviour, as first Lord of the Admiralty; he read the letter from the Court-Martial, and thought that their anxiety must have proceeded from having meant error of judgment.