ant of the
reasons which dictated Villeneuve's course, and that it was not
accordant but contrary to his orders, it was natural to suppose that
there was some further object indicated by the position now taken, and
that that object was the Mediterranean. Moreover, so large a body of
commissioned ships--nearly forty--as were now assembled, could not
fail to tax severely the resources of a port like Cadiz, and distress
would tend to drive them out soon. Thirty thousand able-bodied men are
a heavy additional load on the markets of a small city, blockaded by
sea, and with primitive communications by land. Upon this rested
Nelson's principal hope of obliging them to come forth, if Napoleon
himself did not compel them. Their position, he wrote the Secretary
for War soon after he joined the fleet, seemed to favor an attack by
rockets; "but I think we have a better chance of forcing them out by
want of provisions: it is said hunger will break through stone
walls,--ours is only a wall of wood." "It is said that there is a
great scarcity of provisions in Cadiz." He then mentioned that the
allies were endeavoring to meet this difficulty by sending neutral
vessels, loaded with food-stuffs, from French ports to all the small
harbors on either side of Cadiz, whence the stores carried by them
could be transferred by coasting-boats,--a process which ships were
powerless to stop. Collingwood, therefore, had seized the neutrals,
and sent them into Gibraltar, a step which Nelson had approved and
continued. For it he then demanded the authority of his government.
"Should it be thought proper to allow the enemy's fleet to be
victualled, I request that I may be informed as soon as possible."

In connection with this subject Nelson made an allusion to a policy
with which Castlereagh, the minister he was addressing, was afterwards
identified,--that of the celebrated Orders in Council of 1807, and the
license system connected with it. This is one of the few intimations
we have of the wide range of subjects upon which he conversed with
members of the Cabinet while in England; and it is interesting, not
only as showing how far back those measures originated, but also as
illustrating his own prophetic intuition of the construction which
would be placed upon such proceedings. "I can have nothing, as an
Admiral, to say upon the propriety of granting licences; but from what
your Lordship told me of the intention of Ministers respecting the
neutral t