This brings me naturally to one of Nelson’s most striking characteristics. No man who rose to distinction in the Navy was ever guilty of so many barefaced acts of insubordination as he was. Happily for him and for us his disobedience or neglect of orders was always justified by victory. The genius for supreme command, which was far and away the strongest point in his character, manifested itself very early in his career. The event proved that he was the superior of every naval officer then afloat, whether admiral or midshipman, and he seemed instinctively to know it. When he was commanding the old _Agamemnon_ in the Mediterranean, at the time when it was in dispute whether Corsica should fall under the rule of France or Britain, he fought two French ships, the _Ça Ira_ and the _Sans Culottes_, for a whole day and beat them. The next day a sort of general action was fought, Admiral Hotham being in command of the British fleet. Nelson naturally wanted a fight to a finish, but the Admiral was content with the capture of two ships and the flight of the rest, and in reply to Nelson’s remonstrances he said: “We must be contented. We have done very well.” In a letter home on the subject of this action, Nelson penned a sentence which was at once prophetic in itself and closely characteristic of the writer. It was this: “I wish to be an Admiral and in command of the English fleet. I should very soon either do much or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures. Sure I am had I commanded on the 14th, that either the whole French fleet would have graced my triumph or I should have been in a confounded scrape.” That is Nelson’s mental portrait drawn by himself. No half measures would ever do for him, and in most of the letters that he sent home from his various scenes of action, whether they were written to his wife, his private friends, or the Lords of the Admiralty, we find the constant complaint, made with an insistence amounting almost to petulance, that when he saw complete triumph within his grasp his superiors either would not help him to secure it or forced him to be content with a mere temporary advantage. Under such circumstances it was only natural that such a man should now and then break loose. He saw quite plainly that there were confused councils at home, and timid tactics afloat. He saw also that under Napoleon the power of France was growing every day. The Board of Admiralty was apparently both corrupt and incompetent. The Mediterranean fleet had been so shamefully neglected that after Nelson had fought an action off Toulon even he was afraid to risk another without the certainty of victory because there was “not so much as a mast to be had east of Gibraltar,” and he could not possibly have re-fitted his ships. It was about this time that he said in one of his letters home: “I am acting, not only without the orders of my commander-in-chief, but in some measure contrary to him.”