er, thus influenced, has hesitated or kept aloof in the hour
of trial, the mind, eager for its own justification, assembles, with
surprising industry, every favourable circumstance of excuse, and broods
over them with parental partiality, until it becomes not only satisfied,
but even enamoured of their beauty and complexion, like a doating
mother, blind to the deformity of her own offspring. Whatever Mr. Byng's
internal feelings might have been, whatever consequences might have
attended his behaviour on that occasion; as the tribunal before which
he was tried acquitted him expressly of cowardice and treachery, he was,
without all doubt, a proper object for royal clemency; and so impartial
posterity will judge him, after all those dishonourable motives of
faction and of fear, by which his fate was influenced, shall be lost
in oblivion, or remembered with disdain. The people of Great Britain,
naturally fierce, impatient, and clamorous, have been too much
indulged, upon every petty miscarriage, with trials, courts-martial, and
dismissions, which tend only to render their military commanders rash
and precipitate, the populace more licentious and intractable, and to
disgrace the national character in the opinion of mankind.

[Illustration: 403.jpg PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM PITT]

CHAPTER XIII.

_Mr. Pitt and Mr. Legge taken into the Administration.....
Obliged to resign..... Restored to their Employments.....
Coalition of Parties..... Descent on the Coast of France
meditated..... Command of the Fleet given to Sir Edward
Hawke, and of the Land-Forces to Sir John. Mordaunt.....
Fleet sails September 8..... Admiral Knowles sent to take
Aix..... Attack and Surrender of Aix..... A Descent resolved
on..... The Fleet returns to Spithead..... His Majesty
appoints a Board of Inquiry into the Reasons of the Fleet's
Return..... Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry..... Its
Report..... Sir John Mordaunt tried by a Court-Martial, and
acquitted..... Fleets sent to the East and West Indies.....
Success of the English Privateers..... Riots occasioned by
the Price of Corn..... Operations in America..... Lord
Loudon's Conduct in America..... Fort William-Henry taken
by the French..... Naval Transactions in America.....
Attempt of M. de Kersin on Cape Coast Castle in Africa.....
State of Affairs in the East Indies..... Calcutta
recovered....