s consent should have been awaited. "The English
seldom get much by negotiation except the being laughed at, which we
have been; and I don't like it. Had we taken, which in my opinion we
ought to have done, the men-of-war and convoy, worth at least
L300,000, how much better we could have negotiated:--given the Bey
L50,000, he would have been glad to have put up with the insult
offered to his dignity;" and he plainly intimates his dissatisfaction
with Linzee. This irresponsible and irreflective outburst was,
however, only an instance of the impatience his enterprising,
energetic spirit always felt when debarred from prompt action, whether
by good or bad reasons; for almost on the same day he expresses the
sounder judgment: "Had we latterly attempted to take them I am sure
the Bey would have declared against us, and done our trade some
damage." No advantage could have accrued from the seizure of the
French vessels, at all proportioned to the inconvenience of having the
hostility of Tunis, flanking as it did the trade routes to the Levant.
The British had then quite enough on their hands, without detaching an
additional force from the north coast of the Mediterranean, to support
a gratuitous quarrel on the south. As a matter of mere policy it would
have been ill-judged.

Nelson, however, did not as yet at all realize the wideness of the
impending struggle, for it was in these very letters that he expressed
a wish to exchange to the West Indies. "You know," he writes to his
old friend Locker, "that Pole is gone to the West Indies. I have not
seen him since his order, but I know it was a thing he dreaded. Had I
been at Toulon I should have been a candidate for that service, for I
think our sea war is over in these seas." Perhaps his intrinsic merit
would have retrieved even such a mistake as we can now see this would
have been, and he would there have come sooner into contact with Sir
John Jervis--to whom, if to any one, the name of patron to Nelson may
be applied--for Jervis then had the West India command; but it is
difficult to imagine Nelson's career apart from the incidents of his
Mediterranean service. The Mediterranean seems inseparable from his
name, and he in the end felt himself identified with it beyond all
other waters.

His longing for action, which prompted the desire for the West Indies,
was quickly gratified, for orders were received from Hood, by Linzee,
to detach him from the latter's command. The admiral