TO GENERAL SIR WILLIAM HOWE.TO argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting.It is the prerogative of animals.And no man will envy you these honors, in which a savage only can be your rival and a bear your master.
As the generosity of this country rewarded your brother's services in the last war, with an elegant monument in Westminster Abbey, it is consistent that she should bestow some mark of distinction upon you.You certainly deserve her notice, and a conspicuous place in the catalogue of extraordinary persons.Yet it would be a pity to pass you from the world in state, and consign you to magnificent oblivion among the tombs, without telling the future beholder why.Judas is as much known as John, yet history ascribes their fame to very different actions.
Sir William has undoubtedly merited a monument; but of what kind, or with what inscription, where placed or how embellished, is a question that would puzzle all the heralds of St.James's in the profoundest mood of historical deliberation.We are at no loss, sir, to ascertain your real character, but somewhat perplexed how to perpetuate its identity, and preserve it uninjured from the transformations of time or mistake.A statuary may give a false expression to your bust, or decorate it with some equivocal emblems, by which you may happen to steal into reputation and impose upon the hereafter traditionary world.Ill nature or ridicule may conspire, or a variety of accidents combine to lessen, enlarge, or change Sir William's fame; and no doubt but he who has taken so much pains to be singular in his conduct, would choose to be just as singular in his exit, his monument and his epitaph.
The usual honors of the dead, to be sure, are not sufficiently sublime to escort a character like you to the republic of dust and ashes; for however men may differ in their ideas of grandeur or of government here, the grave is nevertheless a perfect republic.Death is not the monarch of the dead, but of the dying.The moment he obtains a conquest he loses a subject, and, like the foolish king you serve, will, in the end, war himself out of all his dominions.
As a proper preliminary towards the arrangement of your funeral honors, we readily admit of your new rank of knighthood.The title is perfectly in character, and is your own, more by merit than creation.There are knights of various orders, from the knight of the windmill to the knight of the post.The former is your patron for exploits, and the latter will assist you in settling your accounts.No honorary title could be more happily applied! The ingenuity is sublime! And your royal master has discovered more genius in fitting you therewith, than in generating the most finished figure for a button, or descanting on the properties of a button mould.
But how, sir, shall we dispose of you? The invention of a statuary is exhausted, and Sir William is yet unprovided with a monument.
America is anxious to bestow her funeral favors upon you, and wishes to do it in a manner that shall distinguish you from all the deceased heroes of the last war.The Egyptian method of embalming is not known to the present age, and hieroglyphical pageantry hath outlived the science of deciphering it.Some other method, therefore, must be thought of to immortalize the new knight of the windmill and post.Sir William, thanks to his stars, is not oppressed with very delicate ideas.He has no ambition of being wrapped up and handed about in myrrh, aloes and cassia.Less expensive odors will suffice; and it fortunately happens that the simple genius of America has discovered the art of preserving bodies, and embellishing them too, with much greater frugality than the ancients.In balmage, sir, of humble tar, you will be as secure as Pharaoh, and in a hieroglyphic of feathers, rival in finery all the mummies of Egypt.
As you have already made your exit from the moral world, and by numberless acts both of passionate and deliberate injustice engraved an "here lieth" on your deceased honor, it must be mere affectation in you to pretend concern at the humors or opinions of mankind respecting you.What remains of you may expire at any time.The sooner the better.For he who survives his reputation, lives out of despite of himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
Thus entombed and ornamented, I leave you to the inspection of the curious, and return to the history of your yet surviving actions.
The character of Sir William has undergone some extraordinary revolutions.since his arrival in America.It is now fixed and known; and we have nothing to hope from your candor or to fear from your capacity.Indolence and inability have too large a share in your composition, ever to suffer you to be anything more than the hero of little villainies and unfinished adventures.That, which to some persons appeared moderation in you at first, was not produced by any real virtue of your own, but by a contrast of passions, dividing and holding you in perpetual irresolution.One vice will frequently expel another, without the least merit in the man; as powers in contrary directions reduce each other to rest.
