to the great detriment of the navigation and trade of his Majesty’s dominions.”  Verily, Hughes had his reward.  Here he was commended in express terms for doing that which he had been too prudent to do, for zeal which he had never shown, for maintaining a law which he had given orders not to maintain.  “I own I was surprised,” wrote Nelson, “that the commander-in-chief should be thanked for an act which he did not order, but which, if I understand the meaning of words, by his order of the 29th December, 1784, he ordered not to be.”  “To the end of the station,[11] his order of the 29th of December was never repealed, so that I always acted with a rod over me.”  How heavily the responsibility he assumed was felt by others, is clearly shown in another statement made by him.  “The Captains Collingwood were the only officers, with myself, who ever attempted to hinder the illicit trade with America; and I stood singly with respect to seizing, for the other officers were fearful of being brought into scrapes.”

Backed by the royal approval, and with his legal expenses guaranteed, Nelson’s course was now smooth.  He continued in all parts of the station to suppress the contraband trade, and his unpopularity, of course, also continued; but excitement necessarily subsided as it became clear that submission was unavoidable, and as men adapted themselves to the new conditions.  The whole procedure now looks somewhat barbarous and blundering, but in no essential principle differs from the methods of protection to which the world at present seems again tending.  It is not for us to throw stones at it.  The results, then, were completely successful, judged by the standards of the time.  “At this moment,” wrote Nelson some few months later, “there are nearly fifty sail employed in the trade between the Islands of St. Kitts, Nevis, and America, which are truly British built, owned, and navigated.  Had I been an idle spectator, my firm belief is that not a single vessel would have belonged to those islands in the foreign trade.”  His own action was further endorsed by the ministry, which now gave captains of ships-of-war much more extensive powers, thereby justifying his contention that it was within their office to enforce the Navigation Act.  Nor was this increased activity of the executive branch of the government the only result of Nelson’s persistence.  His sagacious study of the whole question, under the local conditions of the West Indies, led to his making several suggestions for more surely carrying out the spirit of the Law; and these were embodied the next year in a formal Act of the Legislature.