principle. Under a conviction of right he throughout life feared no
responsibility and shrank from no consequences. It is difficult for
the non-military mind to realize how great is the moral effort of
disobeying a superior, whose order on the one hand covers all
responsibility, and on the other entails the most serious personal and
professional injury, if violated without due cause; the burden of
proving which rests upon the junior. For the latter it is, justly and
necessarily, not enough that his own intentions or convictions were
honest: he has to show, not that he meant to do right, but that he
actually did right, in disobeying in the particular instance. Under no
less rigorous exactions can due military subordination be maintained.
The whole bent of advantage and life-long training, therefore, draws
in one direction, and is withstood by nothing, unless either strong
personal character supplies a motive, or established professional
standing permits a man to presume upon it, and to exercise a certain
right to independence of action. At this time Nelson was practically
unknown, and in refusing compliance with an order he took a risk that
no other captain on the station would have assumed, as was shown by
their failure a few months later to support their convictions in an
analogous controversy, upon which Nelson had entered even before the
Moutray business. In both cases he staked all upon legal points,
considered by him vital to the welfare of the navy and the country.
The spirit was identically the same that led him to swing his ship out
of the line at Cape St. Vincent without waiting for signals. After
that day and the Nile he could afford to take liberties, and sometimes
took them with less justification than in his early career.

When the Moutray question arose, Nelson was already engaged in a more
far-reaching dispute, not only with his commander-in-chief, but with
the colonial authorities and the popular sentiment of the West India