In truth, with undaunted courage, with considerable talents both for war and for administration, and with a certain public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in the very worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent, malignant, greedy, faithless.

He conceived that the great services which he had performed at the time of the Revolution had not been adequately rewarded.

Every thing that was given to others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself.

A letter is still extant which he wrote to William about this time.

It is made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers.
The Admiral, with ironical professions of humility and loyalty, begins by asking permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his bashfulness would not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth.