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The Life of Nelson, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain by A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
page 103 of 497 (20%)

There were, however, some annoyances, which, joined to the lack of
appreciation for his eminent services to the interests of the nation
in the West Indies, must have keenly stung him. Without the slightest
necessity, except that laid upon him by his own public spirit, he had
fought and struggled, and endured three years of hot water to serve
the Government. He might have gone easy, as did the admiral and the
other captains; but instead of so doing he had destroyed the
contraband trade, and re-established the working of laws upon which
the prosperity and security of the kingdom were thought to depend. For
this he had received a perfunctory, formal acknowledgment, though none
apparently from the Admiralty, the head of his own service. But he
soon found that, if slow to thank, they were prompt to blame, and that
with no light hand nor disposition to make allowances. He had run his
head against various regulations of the bureaucracy; and this let him
know, with all the amenities of official censure, that if they could
not recognize what he had done well, they were perfectly clear-sighted
as to where he had gone wrong.

So far from appreciation, there seems even to have been a prejudice
against Nelson in high quarters, due not only to the discomposure felt
by the routine official, at the rude irregularities of the man who is
more concerned to do his work than nice about the formalities
surrounding it, but also to misrepresentation by the powerful
interests he had offended through his independent course in the West
Indies. After Hughes had gone home, Nelson, as senior officer on the
station, began to examine the modes of conducting government business,
and especially of making purchases. Conceiving that there were serious
irregularities in these, he suggested to the Civil Department of the
Navy, under whose cognizance the transactions fell, some alterations
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