During this stormy and anxious period, Nelson shared the feelings of his day and class.  It is noteworthy, however, that, in regarding the perils of the time, he was no mere panic-monger, but showed the same discriminating carefulness of observation that had distinguished him as captain of the “Boreas,” and had elicited the admiration of Mr. Rose.  Strenuous and even bigoted royalist as he always was, satisfied of the excellence of the British Constitution, and condemning utterly the proceedings of the more or less seditious societies then forming throughout the kingdom, he yet recognized the substantial grievances of the working-men, as evident in the district immediately under his eye.  The sympathetic qualities which made him, fortune’s own favorite in his profession, keenly alive to the hardships, neglect, and injustice undergone by the common seaman, now engaged him to set forth the sad lot of the ill-paid rural peasantry.  In his letters to the Duke of Clarence, he on the one hand strongly blames the weakness and timidity of the justices and country gentlemen, in their attitude towards the abettors of lawlessness; but, on the other, he dwells upon the sufferings of the poor, prepares a careful statement of their earnings and unavoidable expenses, and insists upon the necessity of the living wage.  The field laborers, he said, “do not want loyalty, many of their superiors, in many instances, might have imitated their conduct to advantage; but hunger is a sharp thorn, and they are not only in want of food sufficient, but of clothes and firing.”

Under the threatening outlook, he considers that every individual will soon “be called forth to show himself;” and for his own part, he writes on the 3d of November, he sees no way so proper as asking for a ship.  But, even at that late moment, neither Pitt nor his associates had abandoned the hope of peace, and this, as well as other applications of Nelson’s, received only a formal acknowledgment without encouragement.  Roused, however, by the Convention’s decree of November 19, which extended the succor of France to all people who should wish to recover their liberty, and charged the generals of the republic to make good the offer with the forces under their command, the ministry decided to abandon their guarded attitude; and their new resolution was confirmed by the reception, on the 28th of November, of deputations from British revolutionary societies at the bar of the Convention, on which occasion the president of the latter affected to draw a dividing line between the British government and the British nation.  On the 1st of December the militia was called out by proclamation, and Parliament summoned to meet on the 15th of the month.  On the latter day the Convention put forth another decree, announcing in the most explicit terms its purpose to overthrow all existing governments in countries where the Republican armies could penetrate.  Pitt now changed his front with an instantaneousness and absoluteness which gave the highest proof of his capacity as a leader of men.  It was not so much that war was then determined, as that the purpose was formed, once for all, to accept the challenge contained in the French decree, unless France would discontinue her avowed course of aggression.  Orders were immediately given to increase largely the number of ships of war in commission.