The two brothers went home with feelings of great resentment against the ministry.  The course of the war had so far been unfortunate.  The loss of Boston, the surrender of Burgoyne, the evacuation of Philadelphia, and finally the entrance of France into the contest, constituted a combination of mishaps which certainly implied fault somewhere.  As usual, no one was willing to accept blame, and hot disputes, with injurious imputations, raged in Parliament.  There is here, happily, no necessity for apportioning the responsibility, except in the case of Lord Howe; and as to him, it is reasonably clear that all was done that could be up to the coming of the French, while it is incontestable that afterwards, with a force utterly inadequate, for which the Government was answerable, he had averted imminent disaster by most masterly management.  His words in the House of Commons were bitter.  “He had been deceived into his command, and he was deceived while he retained it.  Tired and disgusted, he had desired permission to resign it; and he would have returned as soon as he obtained leave, but he could not think of doing so while a superior enemy remained in American seas; that, as soon as that impediment was removed, he gladly embraced the first opportunity of returning to Europe.  Such, and the recollection of what he had suffered, were his motives for resigning the command, and such for declining any future service so long as the present ministry remained in office.”

In terms like these could officers holding seats in Parliament speak concerning the Government of the day.  It was a period in which not only did party feeling run high, but corruption was an almost avowed method of political management.  The navy itself was split into factions by political bias and personal jealousies, and there was a saying that “if a naval officer were to be roasted, another officer could always be found to turn the spit.”  The head of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich, was a man of much ability, but also of profligate character, as well public as private.  He doubtless wished the success of his department,—­under the terrible chances of war no chief can do otherwise, for the responsibility of failure must fall upon his own head; but through corrupt administration the strength of the navy, upon the outbreak of war, had been unequal to the work it had to do.  Some one must suffer for this remissness, and who more naturally than the commander of a distant station, who confessed himself “no politician”?  Hence, Howe certainly thought, the neglect with which he had been treated.  “It would not be prudent to trust the little reputation he had earned by forty years’ service, his personal honor and everything else he held dear, in the hands of men who have neither the ability to act on their own judgment, nor the integrity and good sense to follow the advice of others who might know more of the matter.”  A year later, it was roundly charged that the Channel Fleet had been brought