The miscarriage of the Smyrna fleet was the chief subject of discussion.

The cry for inquiry was universal: but it was evident that the two parties raised that cry for very different reasons.
Montague spoke the sense of the Whigs.

He declared that the disasters of the summer could not, in his opinion, be explained by the ignorance and imbecility of those who had charge of the naval administration.

There must have been treason.

It was impossible to believe that Lewis, when he sent his Brest squadron to the Straits of Gibraltar, and left the whole coast of his kingdom from Dunkirk to Bayonne unprotected, had trusted merely to chance.