money which was owing for goods purchased for the navy, he required the
original voucher, that he might examine whether those goods had been
really purchased at the market price; but to produce vouchers would not
have been convenient, and therefore was not the custom. Upon this
Nelson wrote to Sir Charles Middleton, then Comptroller of the Navy,
representing the abuses which were likely to be practised in this
manner. The answer which he received seemed to imply that the old
forms were thought sufficient; and thus, having no alternative, he was
compelled, with his eyes open, to submit to a practice originating in
fraudulent intentions. Soon afterwards two Antigua merchants informed
him that they were privy to great frauds which had been committed upon
government in various departments; at Antigua, to the amount of nearly
L500,000; at Lucie, L300,000; at Barbadoes, L250,000; at Jamaica,
upwards of a million. The informers were both shrewd sensible men of
business; they did not affect to be actuated by a sense of justice,
but required a percentage upon so much as government should actually
recover through their means. Nelson examined the books and papers
which they produced, and was convinced that government had been most
infamously plundered. Vouchers, he found, in that country, were no check
whatever: the principle was, that "a thing was always worth what it
would bring;" and the merchants were in the habit of signing vouchers
for each other, without even the appearance of looking at the articles.
These accounts he sent home to the different departments which had been
defrauded; but the peculators were too powerful, and they succeeded
not merely in impeding inquiry, but even in raising prejudices against
Nelson at the Board of Admiralty, which it was many years before he
could subdue.

Owing probably, to these prejudices, and the influence of the
peculators, he was treated, on his return to England, in a manner which