The conclusion is inevitable that the objection lay in personal record as bearing upon military efficiency.  The Administration, responsible for results, knew Rodney’s capacity, though its full extent was yet to be revealed; the question in their minds clearly must have been, “Can we depend upon its exertion, full, sustained, and disinterested?” Sandwich, despite the coldness with which he had received Rodney’s application,—­going so far as to refuse to support it actively,—­was apparently in a minority among his colleagues in believing that they could.  He declared in the House of Lords that, “When it was first proposed in the Council to employ Sir George, I, who knew him from a very young man, declared that Rodney once afloat would do his duty.”  Naval officers will recognize a familiar ring in these words, and will recall instances where high professional ability has been betrayed by personal foible.  Nor does Sandwich stand alone in offering a clue to the hesitation of the Government.  Rodney’s biographer and son-in-law quotes without reprobation the account of Mr. Richard Cumberland, who professed to have interested himself warmly for Rodney’s employment and to have secured the support of the Secretary for War, Lord George Germaine.  “The West India merchants had been alarmed, and clamoured against the appointment so generally and so decidedly as to occasion no small uneasiness in my friend and patron, Lord George, and drew from him something that resembled a remonstrance for the risk I had exposed him to.  But in the brilliancy of the capture of Langara’s squadron all was done away, and past alarms were only recollected to contrast the joy which this success diffused.”  The opposition of the commercial class in the West Indies might arise from an officer’s over-faithfulness to duty, as Nelson found to his cost; but it seems clear that in this case distrust rested upon personal observation, which raised doubts as to the singlemindedness of Rodney’s administration of a command.  Of the particulars of observation or experience from which the feeling sprang, we have no information; but St. Eustatius was destined to show that apprehension was not wholly unfounded.

A summons to active employment would at once have silenced Rodney’s creditors by the assurance of increase of means, both through regular income and probable prize-money; Admiralty neglect left him in fetters.  Lady Rodney returned to England to negotiate the means for his liberation; but the matter dragged, and in the end he owed his release to the friendly intervention of a French nobleman, the Marechal Biron, who volunteered in warm terms to make him an advance to the amount of L2,000.  This chivalrous offer was for some time declined; but finally conditions became so threatening, and his position so intolerable, that he accepted a loan of about a thousand louis.  “Nothing but a total inattention to the distressed state I was in,” he wrote to his wife, “could have prevailed upon me to have availed myself of his