d keener insight than Keith, or because his
intuitions in the particular instance were more accurate, as they
possibly were. He defended his course on the ground, so frequently and
so erroneously taken, that his intentions were right. "I am so
confident," he wrote to the Admiralty, "of the uprightness of my
intentions for his Majesty's service, and for that of his Sicilian
Majesty, which I consider as the same, that, with all respect, I
submit myself to the judgment of my superiors." Four years later, in
1803, he used the following singular expressions concerning his
conduct at this period: "I paid more attention to another sovereign
than my own; therefore the King of Naples' gift of Bronte to me, if it
is not now settled to my advantage, and to be permanent, has cost me a
fortune, and a great deal of favour which I might have enjoyed, and
jealousy which I should have avoided. I repine not on those accounts.
I did my duty, to the Sicilifying my own conscience, and I am
easy."[89] "As I have often before risked my life for the good cause,"
he told his old friend the Duke of Clarence, "so I with cheerfulness
did my commission: for although a military tribunal may think me
criminal, the world will approve my conduct." With such convictions,
he might, if condemned, as he almost inevitably must have been, have
met his fate with the cheerfulness of a clear conscience; but no
military tribunal can possibly accept a man's conscience as the test
of obedience.

The Admiralty, who had sent Keith out knowing that St. Vincent, after
three arduous years, meant soon to retire, could not of course
acquiesce in Nelson's thus overriding the man they had chosen to be
his commander-in-chief. "Their Lordships do not, from any information
now before them, see sufficient reason to justify your having
disobeyed the orders you had received from your Commanding Officer, or
having left Minorca exposed to the risk of being attacked, without
having any naval force to protect it." To this measured rebuke was
added some common-sense counsel upon the pernicious practice of
jeopardizing the _personnel_ of a fleet, the peculiar trained force so
vitally necessary, and so hard to replace, in petty operations on
shore. "Although in operations on the sea-coast, it may frequently be
highly expedient to land a part of the seamen of the squadron, to
co-operate with and to assist the army, when the situation will admit
of their being immediately re-embarked, i