When carried to his dungeon, Damiens was wrapped up in mattresses, lest despair might tempt him to dash his brains out—but his madness was no longer precipitate. He even sported, horridly sported, with indicating variety of innocent persons as his accomplices; and sometimes, more harmlessly, with playing the fool with his Judges. In no instance he sunk either under terror or anguish. The very morning on which he was to endure “the question,” when told of it, he said with the coolest intrepidity, “La journée sera rude”—after it, insisted on wine with his water, saying, “Il faut ici de la force.” And at the accomplishment of his tragedy, studied and prolonged on the precedent of Ravaillac’s, he supported all with unrelaxed firmness; and even unremitted torture of four hours, which succeeded to his being two hours and a half under the question, forced from him but some momentary yells—a lamentable spectacle; and perhaps a blameable one. Too severe pains cannot be used to eradicate the infernal crime of holy assassination; but what punishments can prevent madness? Would not one rather stifle under a feather bed, than draw out on the rack a being infected with a frenzy of guilt and heroism?
King George ordered Mr. Pitt to send a compliment on the French King’s escape, which was conveyed by the Spanish Minister, and was handsomely received and answered.
The year opened in England in the same temper with which the last had closed. Pitt was much confined; when he appeared at Council, was haughty and visionary; so much, that after one of their meetings, Lord Granville said, “Pitt used to call me madman, but I never was half so mad as he is.” Legge had little power, and was unsatisfied. The Duke of Devonshire preserved what he called candour; that is, he listened with complaisance to Pitt’s secrets, and to be impartial, repeated them to Fox. The Duke of Bedford accepted Ireland; the Primate was come over to feel what would be the future temper of that Government; and threw himself into great court to the new Lord Lieutenant and his friends. Lord George Sackville, to promote those views, seemed to incline to Fox, and took every opportunity of showing how useful or troublesome he could be.
In the mean time the trial of Admiral Byng proceeded, having begun at the conclusion of the preceding year. At the same time had been held a novel sort of Court of Justice. The Generals Legonier, Huske, and Cholmondeley, had been appointed by the King to examine the conduct of Lord Effingham, and the Colonels Stewart and Cornwallis, who having been sent to join their regiments at Minorca, gave their opinions with General Fowke at Gibraltar against granting to Admiral Byng the force which he had been ordered to take from thence. This inquiry was private, and a kind of trial whether there ought to be a trial. The inquisitors made a favourable report, and the officers in question were admitted to Court as usual.
Before the conclusion of the more solemn trial at Portsmouth, an incident happened of an indecent kind, and served, as perhaps was intended, to renew unfavourable sentiments of the Admiral. Among numbers whose curiosity led them to attend the trial, were the Scotch Earl of Morton and Lord Willoughby of Parham, both men of very fair characters; the latter attached to Lord Hardwicke. Both assiduously attended the examination of the witnesses against the Admiral; both returned to London without hearing one word of his defence; and as they forbore to speak their opinions, the mystery of their silence, which could not be interpreted propitiously, and the seeming candour, in men of reputation, of not being willing to condemn, carried double condemnation. Yet as Mr. Byng proceeded on his defence, these omens dispersed; and before the examination of his witnesses was finished, the tide of report promised him an honourable acquittal. On the 20th of January the trial was closed; and nine days intervening between that and the sentence, and many whispers getting wind of great altercations in the Court-Martial, no doubt was entertained but that the contest lay between an entire absolution, and the struggles of some, who wished to censure, when it was impossible to condemn.
Before sentence was pronounced, an express was dispatched to the Admiralty at London, to demand, whether the Court Martial were at liberty to mitigate an Article of War on which they had doubts. They were answered in the negative. It was the twelfth of the Articles of War on which they had scruples. It was formerly left to the discretion of the Court to inflict death or whatever punishment they thought proper, on neglect of duty; but about three years before this period the Articles had been new modelled; and to strike the greater terror into the officers of the Fleet, who had been thought too remiss, the softer alternative had been omitted. From the most favourable construction (for the members of the Court) of the present case, it was plain that the Court Martial, who had demanded whether the law would not authorize them to mitigate the rigour of the article, thought the Admiral by no means deserved to be included in its utmost severity. This they must have thought—they could not mean to inquire whether they might mitigate what they did not desire to mitigate.
How the more moderate members of the Court obtained the acquiescence of their brethren to this demand is surprising, for Admiral Boscawen, who had the guard of the prisoner at Portsmouth, and who was not one of the Judges, but a Lord of the Admiralty, seems by the event to have understood to a prophetic certainty the constitution of the Court. Dining at Sir Edward Montagu’s before the trial, and it being disputed what the issue of it would be, Boscawen said bluntly, “Well, say what you will, we shall have a majority, and he will be condemned.” This the Duchess of Manchester[74] repeated to Mrs. Osborn,[75] and offered to depose in the most solemn manner.
Accordingly, January 29th, Mr. Byng was summoned to hear his sentence. He went with that increase of animated tranquillity which a man must feel who sees a period to his sufferings, and the rays of truth and justice bursting in at last upon his innocence. His Judges were so aware of the grounds he had for this presumption, that they did permit a momentary notice to be given him, that the sentence was unfavourable. A friend was ordered to prepare him—and felt too much of the friend to give the hint sufficient edge; but by too tenderly blunting the stroke, contributed to illustrate the honour and firmness of the Admiral’s mind. He started, and cried, “Why, they have not put a slur on me, have they?” fearing they had censured him for cowardice. The bitterness of the sentence being explained, and being satisfied that his courage was not stigmatized, his countenance resumed its serenity, and he directly went with the utmost composure to hear the law pronounced. For a moment he had been alarmed with shame; death, exchanged for that, was the next good to an acquittal.
I have spoken of Admiral Byng, not only as of a man who thought himself innocent, but as of one marked for sacrifice by a set of Ministers, who meant to divert on him the vengeance of a betrayed and enraged nation. I have spoken, and shall speak of him as of a man most unjustly and wickedly put to death; and as this was the moment from which my opinion sprung, however lamentably confirmed by the event, it is necessary in my own vindication to say a few words, lest prejudice against the persecutors, or for the persecuted, should be suspected of having influenced my narrative. I can appeal to God that I never spoke to Mr. Byng in my life, nor had the most distant acquaintance with any one of his family. The man I never saw but in the street, or in the House of Commons, and there I thought his carriage haughty and disgusting. From report, I had formed a mean opinion of his understanding; and from the clamours of the world, I was carried away with the multitude in believing he had not done his duty; and in thinking his behaviour under his circumstances weak and arrogant. I never interested myself enough about him to inquire whether this opinion was well or ill founded. When his pamphlet appeared, I read it, and found he had been cruelly and scandalously treated. I knew enough not to wonder at this conduct in some of his persecutors—yet it concerned not me; and I thought no more about it till the sentence, and the behaviour of his Judges which accompanied it, struck me with astonishment! I could not conceive, how men could acquit honourably and condemn to death with the same breath! How men could feel so much, and be so insensible at the same instant; and from the prejudice of education which had told me that the law of England understood that its ministers of Justice should always be Counsel for the prisoner, I could not comprehend how the members of the Court-Martial came to think that a small corner of a law ought to preponderate for rigour, against a whole body of the same law which they understood directed them to mercy; and I was still more startled to hear men urge that their consciences were bound by an oath, which their consciences told them would lead them to murder. Lest this should be thought a declamatory paraphrase, I will insert both the sentence and the letter of the Court-Martial; and will appeal to impartial posterity, whether I have exaggerated, whether it was necessary for me, or whether it was possible for me to exaggerate, the horrid absurdity of this proceeding. Supplements indeed there were made to it!