to Minorca, with the whole, or the greater part, of the force under your Lordship’s command, for the protection of that island, as I shall, in all probability, have left the Mediterranean before your Lordship will receive this.  Keith.”  The second letter of the same date ended with the words:  “I therefore trust the defence of Minorca to your Lordship, and repeat my directions that the ships be sent for its protection.”  On the receipt of these, though Capua had not yet surrendered, Nelson at once sent Duckworth with four ships-of-the-line to Minorca, detaining only their marines for the land operations.

It seems scarcely necessary to say that, while an officer in subordinate command should have the moral courage to transcend or override his orders in particular instances—­each of which rests upon its own merits, and not upon any general rule that can be formulated—­it would be impossible for military operations to be carried on at all, if the commander-in-chief were liable to be deliberately defied and thwarted in his combinations, as Keith was in this case.  It does not appear that Nelson knew the circumstances which Keith was considering; he only knew what the conditions were about Naples, and he thought that the settlement of the kingdom might be prevented by the departure of several of his ships.  In this opinion, in the author’s judgment, his views were exaggerated, and colored by the absorbing interest he had come to take in the royal family and their fortunes, linked as these were with the affections of a particular woman; but, even granting that his apprehensions were well founded, he was taking upon himself to determine, not merely what was best for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but what was best for the whole Mediterranean command.  It was not within his province to decide whether Minorca or Naples was the more important.  That was the function of the commander-in-chief.  Had the latter, while leaving Nelson’s force unchanged, directed him to follow a particular line of operations in the district committed to him, it is conceivable that circumstances, unknown to his superior, might have justified him in choosing another; but there was nothing in the conditions that authorized his assumption that he could decide for the whole command.  And this is not the less true, because Nelson was in the general a man of far sounder judgment and keener insight than Keith, or because his intuitions in the particular instance were more accurate, as they possibly were.  He defended his course on the ground, so frequently and so erroneously taken, that his intentions were right.  “I am so confident,” he wrote to the Admiralty, “of the uprightness of my intentions for his Majesty’s service, and for that of his Sicilian Majesty, which I consider as the same, that, with all respect, I submit myself to the judgment of my superiors.”  Four years later, in 1803, he used the following singular expressions concerning his conduct at this period:  “I