other distinguished officers, were pronounced Whigs, whom it was thought the Administration would be willing to destroy.  Keppel evidently feared an intention to ruin him by the command of the Channel Fleet, and the public discussion of the Courts-Martial which followed his indecisive action with D’Orvilliers, in July, 1778, assumed a decided and rancorous party tone.  His accuser then was his third-in-command, Vice-Admiral Palliser, who had left his place on the Admiralty Board to take this position in the fleet; and popular outcry charged him with having betrayed his chief in the battle.  So far was professional feeling moved that twelve prominent admirals,—­not all of whom were Whigs,—­with Hawke at their head, presented to the King a memorial, deprecating “particularly the mischief and scandal of permitting men, who are at once in high office and subordinate military command, previous to their making recriminating accusations against their commander-in-chief, to attempt to corrupt the public judgment by the publication of libels on their officers in a common newspaper, thereby exciting mutiny in your Majesty’s Navy,” etc.  The words italicized show that this was aimed at Palliser; and at Sandwich, who inferentially had “permitted” his action, and ultimately rewarded him with the Governorship of Greenwich Hospital.

In this demoralized condition of professional sentiment the Admiralty could no longer command the services of the best men.  Howe came home in disgust from America.  Keppel threw up the command of the Channel Fleet, and Barrington subsequently refused it on the expressed ground of self-distrust, underlying which was real distrust of the ministry.  He would serve as second, but not as first.  Byron, after relieving Howe in New York, went to the West Indies, there made a failure, and so came home in the summer of 1779.  The Channel squadron fell into the hands of men respectable, indeed, but in no way eminent, and advanced in years, whose tenures of office were comparatively short.  Hardy was sixty-three, Geary seventy; and on both Hawke, who was friendly to them, passed the comment that they were “too easy.”  The first had allowed “the discipline of the fleet to come to nothing,” and he feared the same for the other.  Not until the fall of the ministry, consequent upon Cornwallis’s surrender, was the post filled by a distinguished name, when Howe took the command in 1782.

The Administration was thus forced back upon Rodney; fortunately for itself, for, as far as history has since revealed, there was no other man then in the service, and of suitable rank, exactly fitted to do the work he did.  Samuel Hood alone, then an unproved captain, and practically in voluntary retirement, could have equalled and surpassed him.  Howe, like Rodney, was an accomplished tactician, and in conception far in advance of the standards of the day.  In his place he did admirable service, which has been too little appreciated, and he was fortunate