rsue even such as
me into the obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolutionary
tribunals. Neither sex, nor age, nor the sanctuary of the tomb, is
sacred to them. They have so determined a hatred to all privileged
orders, that they deny even to the departed the sad immunities of the
grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to
their malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the
living. If all revolutionists were not proof against all caution, I
should recommend it to their consideration, that no persons were ever
known in history, either sacred or profane, to vex the sepulchre, and by
their sorceries to call up the prophetic dead, with any other event than
the prediction of their own disastrous fate.--"Leave me, oh, leave me to
repose!"

In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me and
my mortuary pension: He cannot readily comprehend the transaction he
condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain, the
production of no intrigue, the result of no compromise, the effect of no
solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately
or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long
known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the
heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity and
sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had executed that design. I
was entirely out of the way of serving or of hurting any statesman or
any party, when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into
effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have acted
as became them. When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have
considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the
revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is
equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me,
indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no
circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was
no fault in the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were pleased, in
acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant of the public, to assuage
the sorrows of a desolate old man.

It would ill become me to boast of anything. It would as ill become me,
thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life spent with
unexampled toil in the service of my country. Since the total body of my