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
in the procedure, by which the senior naval officer would have more
control over the purchases than simply to certify that so much money
was wanted. The Comptroller of the Navy replied that the old forms
were sufficient,--"a circumstance which hurt me," wrote Nelson; while
all the civil functionaries resented his interference with their
methods, and seem to have received the tacit support, if not the
direct sympathy, of the Navy Board, as the Civil Department was then
called. His disposition to look into matters, however, had become
known, and the long struggle over the contraband trade had given him
in the islands a reputation for tenacity and success. It was probably
in dependence upon these that two merchants came to him, two months
before he left the station, and told him of the existence of very
extensive frauds, dating back several years, in which were implicated
both civil officials of the Navy and private parties on shore. It is
possible that the informants themselves had shared in some of these
transactions, and they certainly demanded in payment a part of the
sums recovered; but, as Nelson truly said, the question was not as to
their character, but how to stop the continuance of embezzlements
which had then amounted to over two millions sterling.

The reports made by him upon this subject rea