and whole paragraphs,
which either tended to his own justification, or implied a censure on
the conduct of his superiors. Whatever use might have been made of this
letter while it remained a secret to the public, we shall not pretend to
explain; but sure it is, that, on the sixteenth day of June, sir Edward
Hawke and admiral Saunders sailed from Spit-head to Gibraltar,
to supersede the admirals Byng and West in their commands of the
Mediterranean squadron; and Mr. Byng's letter was not published till
the twenty-sixth day of the same month, when it produced all the
effect which that gentleman's bitterest enemies could have desired.
The populace took fire like a train of the most hasty combustibles,
and broke out into such a clamour of rage and indignation against the
devoted admiral, as could not have been exceeded if he had lost the
whole navy of England, and left the coasts of the kingdom naked to
invasion. This animosity was carefully fomented and maintained by
artful emissaries, who mingled with all public assemblies, from the
drawing-room in St. James' to the mob at Charing-cross. They expatiated
upon the insolence, the folly, the cowardice, and misconduct of the
unhappy admiral. They even presumed to make their sovereign in some
measure an instrument of their calumny, by suggesting, that his majesty
had prognosticated Byng's misbehaviour from the contents of his first
letter, dated at Gibraltar. They ridiculed and refuted the reasons
he had given for returning to that fortress, after his scandalous
re-encounter with the French squadron; and, in order to exasperate them
to the most implacable resentment, they exaggerated the terrible
consequences of losing Minorca, which must now be subdued through
his treachery or want of resolution. In a word, he was devoted as the
scape-goat of the ministry, to whose supine negligence, ignorance, and
misconduct, the loss of that important fortress was undoubtedly owing.
Byng's miscarriage was thrown out like a barrel to the whale, in order
to engage the attention of the people, that it might not be attracted by
the real cause of the national misfortune. In order to keep up the flame
which had been kindled against the admiral, recourse was had to the
lowest artifices. Agents were employed to vilify his person in all
public places of vulgar resort, and mobs were hired at different parts
of the capital to hang and burn him in effigy.

ADMIRAL BYNG SUPERSEDED AND SENT HOME PRIS