342 MISSION TO PORTUGAL. [1806. 



martial to try the ringleaders ; and some of the worst 

 being singled out for punishment, an officer waited 

 upon him to know at what hour it was to be inflicted. 

 He said, " To-morrow morning at eight." The officer 

 begged leave to remind his Excellency that the morrow 

 was Sunday ; to which his Excellency did not return 

 a very gracious, but a very short, answer. "The 

 foolish man," he said, " did not perceive that an execu- 

 tion never before having taken place on a Sunday, I 

 was determined to make it have ten times its ordinary 

 effect, and to avoid the necessity of making more 

 examples than would suffice." 



So on a much more recent occasion, when he was 

 First Lord of the Admiralty, he related how he had 

 been attacked for the harshness of his proceedings 

 when our fleet, after having been long at sea, and ex- 

 pecting to be paid off upon the peace in 1802, was 

 suddenly ordered to sail after the French expedition 

 fitted out against St Domingo, and a general and 

 alarming mutiny broke out. Courts-martial were 

 held and men condemned. The fleet was drawn up 

 in a half-moon; signals were made for each ship to 

 man a boat for attending execution. The next signal 

 was for the convict in each ship who was to suffer 

 to be hanged up ; and the third signal was for all the 

 fleet to sail, which it did while the punishment was 

 barely over, I rather think he said, before the men 

 were cut down. But certainly there never was a 

 whisper of discontent on the whole voyage. It is 

 easy to understand how a less decided course might 



