duty to the House or
to the country, if I did not, this instant, enter my protest against the
infamous system pursued (a system of which I can speak more freely, now
that the case is not my own), by which the names of respectable colonists
are libelled in dispatches sent to the Colonial Office, to be afterwards
published here, and by which any brand or stigma may be placed upon them
without their having any means of redress. If that system be continued,
some colonist will, by and by, or I am much mistaken, hire a black fellow
to horsewhip a lieutenant-governor.'[6]

In reply to a vote of censure by the House, he defended himself in a
letter to his constituents, of which the pith is in the final sentences:
'"But," I think I hear some one say, "after all, friend Howe, was not the
supposititious case, which you anticipated might occur, somewhat quaint
and eccentric and startling?" It was, because I wanted to startle, to
rouse, to flash the light of truth over every hideous feature of the
system. {86} The fire-bell startles at night; but if it rings not the
town may be burned; and wise men seldom vote him an incendiary who pulls
the rope, and who could not give the alarm and avert the calamity unless
he made a noise. The prophet's style was quaint and picturesque when he
compared the great king to a sheep-stealer; but the object was not to
insult the king, it was to make him think, to rouse him; to let him see
by the light of a poetic fancy the gulf to which he was descending, that
he might thereafter love mercy, walk humbly, and, controlling his
passions, keep untarnished the lustre of the Crown. David let other
men's wives alone after that flight of Nathan's imagination; and I will
venture to say that whenever, hereafter, our rulers desire to grille a
political opponent in an official dispatch, they will recall my homely
picture and borrow wisdom from the past.'[7]

Later in the year Lord Falkland was recalled, and appointed governor of
Bombay. Soon afterwards Howe wrote to a friend: 'Poor Falkland will not
soon forget Nova Scotia, where he learned more than ever he did at Court.
I ought to be grateful to him, for but for the passages of arms between
us, {87} there were some tricks of fence I had not known. Besides, I now
estimate at their true value some sneaking dogs that I should have been
caressing, for years to come, and lots of noble-hearted friends that only
the storms of life could have taught me adequately