rade, it strikes me, some day it may be urged that it was not
for the sake of blockade, but for the purpose of taking all the trade
into her own hands, that Great Britain excluded the Neutrals. Your
Lordship's wisdom will readily conceive all that Neutral Courts may
urge at this apparent injustice, and of might overcoming right."[117]
This shrewdly accurate forecast of a contention which was not to arise
till after his death is but one instance among many of Nelson's
clearness of judgment, in political as well as in military matters.

Nelson's services, upon this, his final departure from England, were
rather requested by the Government than by him volunteered--in the
ordinary sense of the word. He went willingly enough, doubtless, but
in obedience, proud and glad, to the summons, not only of the popular
cry, but of the Cabinet's wish. "I own I want much more rest," he
wrote to Elliot, immediately after joining the fleet off Cadiz; "but
it was thought right to desire me to come forth, and I obeyed." "I
expected to lay my weary bones quiet for the winter," he told another
friend in Naples, "but I ought, perhaps, to be proud of the general
call which has made me to go forth." The popularly received account,
therefore, derived from Lady Hamilton, of her controlling influence in
the matter, may be dismissed as being--if not apocryphal--merely one
side of the dealing by which he had to reconcile the claims of
patriotic duty with the appeals of the affections. As told by
Southey, her part in his decision was as follows: "When Blackwood had
left him, he wanted resolution to declare his wishes to Lady Hamilton
and his sisters, and endeavoured to drive away the thought. He had
done enough, he said: 'Let the man trudge it who has lost his budget!'
His countenance belied his lips; and as he was pacing one of the walks
in the garden, which he used to call the quarter-deck, Lady Hamilton
came up to him, and said she saw he was uneasy. He smiled, and said:
'No, he was as happy as possible; he was surrounded by his family, his
health was better since he had been on shore, and he would not give
sixpence to call the king his uncle.' She replied, that she did not
believe him, that she knew he was longing to get at the combined
fleets, that he considered them as his own property, that he would be
miserable if any man but himself did the business, and that he ought
to have them, as the price and reward of his two years' long watching,
and