ON DUELLING,

&c. &c.

CHAPTER I.

THERE is, perhaps, no delusion with which the father of lies has endeavoured to deceive mankind, from the fall of Adam to the present day, which has been so completely successful, as that whereby he has actually persuaded a large portion of the inhabitants of the most civilized nations upon earth, so far to confound wrong with right, and vice with virtue, as to believe that it is meritorious to obey the fantastical requirements of the law of honour, and highly disgraceful to do otherwise.

That to kill a fellow-creature in a duel, fought on account of the wrong you have either done or suffered, is a proof of honourable feeling; to refuse a duel, a mark of a dastardly spirit!

B

It is a severe reflection on human wisdom, and one of the extraordinary features of this delusion, that those very persons whom we should expect to be least affected by it, are most under its influence. The higher and educated classes of society, whose knowledge and information would protect them from being imposed upon by most other deceptions, are not only the greatest dupes of this, but they actually take it wholly to themselves, as a peculiar privilege, with which, they say, the illiterate and lower classes have nothing to do.

In all the ordinary transactions of life, mankind in general are guided either by reason or religion; but the duellist has the eyes of his understanding so effectually blinded, that he adopts a course alike repugnant to common sense, and opposed to the revealed will of God. And not content with yielding to the infatuation himself, he despises all who do not act according to his persuasion; treats them with contempt, and banishes them from society; and so complete is the power which the arch-fiend has acquired over the wills of men, by working upon their pride and vanity, that although there are multitudes of brave and sensible people, who are well convinced that duelling is at once absurd and impious, yet, from this fear of disgrace and banishment from society,

few can be found who have christian fortitude or mere animal courage enough, to stem the torrent of popular feeling in their own persons, or openly to endeavour to snatch another from its overwhelming force.

In general conversation, the subject is but seldom introduced, and never freely discussed; the bare mention of it is sufficient, for the time, to throw a damp upon the pleasure of social intercourse. No man, in a mixed company, would venture to declare his dissent from the practice, lest he should incur the imputation of cowardice; and so very strong is this feeling, that men have tacitly heard that praised which they knew to be wrong, and have thus allowed their silence to be construed into an assent to that which, in their hearts, they condemned.

The press also (the most powerful of all human engines,) has never vigorously applied its strength to this question. Whilst every other vice, however secretly practised, is openly attacked, this one, though openly practised, is not met in the same way. On most other subjects, volume after volume has been published, until every point of argument has been thoroughly sifted, and a new idea is rarely to be met with; upon 66 duelling" all is silence and obscurity. We have indeed some occasional and short observations in religious

works, which, like flashes of lightning on a stormy night, serve only to show, and not dispel, the darkness; but no pen, that I can discover, has in the present day been employed exclusively for the purpose of exposing this worst relic of the barbarism of feudal times.

The usual sources of information being thus shut, much ignorance of the real merits of the "law of honour," and its results, pervades all classes of society; and a blind obedience is yielded to it, as the necessary consequence of such ignorance. Custom has so reconciled a large portion of the world to the practice of duelling, that the impropriety of it is a matter scarcely, if ever, thought of, still less, seriously inquired into; and it might not, perhaps, be too much to say, that in the whole British army and navy there are not twenty officers who have ever heard, or read, any fair investigation of the matter; and that the mass of the British gentry are not better informed.

It is, indeed, a most extraordinary fact, that in a country like Great Britain, where men boast of freedom as their birthright, and watch with scrupulous jealousy the slightest attempt to infringe it, they should voluntarily subject themselves to the thraldom of one of the most arbitrary and inconsistent laws that ever the caprice of