certain right to independence of action.  At this time Nelson was practically unknown, and in refusing compliance with an order he took a risk that no other captain on the station would have assumed, as was shown by their failure a few months later to support their convictions in an analogous controversy, upon which Nelson had entered even before the Moutray business.  In both cases he staked all upon legal points, considered by him vital to the welfare of the navy and the country.  The spirit was identically the same that led him to swing his ship out of the line at Cape St. Vincent without waiting for signals.  After that day and the Nile he could afford to take liberties, and sometimes took them with less justification than in his early career.

When the Moutray question arose, Nelson was already engaged in a more far-reaching dispute, not only with his commander-in-chief, but with the colonial authorities and the popular sentiment of the West India Islands.  Like most men, great and small, he shared the prepossessions of his day and generation; differing, however, from others, in that he held his opinions as principles, from asserting which he was not to be deterred by the ill-will or dislike of those immediately about him.  Upon arriving in the West Indies he found nourishing a system of trade extremely beneficial to the islands, but which his education condemned as hurtful to Great Britain, as it certainly was contrary to then existing laws that had for a century previous regulated the commerce of the kingdom.  In 1784, a year only had elapsed since the United States had been formally recognized as independent, thereby becoming, in British estimation as well as in their own, a nation foreign to the British flag.  By the Navigation Laws, first established by Cromwell, but continued under the restored monarchy without serious modification until 1794, trade with the Colonies was reserved to vessels built in Great Britain or her dependencies, and manned in three-fourths part by British subjects.  The chief object and advantage of the law were conceived to be, not merely a monopoly of the trade,—­concerning the economical wisdom of which serious doubts began to be felt,—­but the fostering of the British merchant service as a nursery of seamen, upon whom, in time of war, the navy could draw.  The military strength of the Empire was thought to be involved in the enforcement of the Navigation Act.[9]

Before the United States declared their independence, they, as British colonies, enjoyed the privilege of trading with their fellow-colonists under what was then the common flag; and the nearness of the two regions contributed to the advantage of both in this traffic, in which the continental communities were the chief suppliers of many articles essential to the islands, notably provisions and lumber.  This mutual intercourse and dependence promoted a sympathy which was scarcely disguised in the West Indies during the War of Independence; indeed, Nelson wrote that