day expose me, I should be worse off than with a quaking fit."!!

There can be no virtue in hazarding life, where there is no sense of its value: he only is the courageous man, who feeling the importance of life, as it regards the present and a future state, is not afraid, in a good and honourablé cause, to expose himself to the perils of death. The scandalous practice of single combat, or avenging personal affronts by duel, cannot make a virtuous claim to such principles, and therefore has no right to the honourable name of courage: it was unknown to the heroes of Greece and Rome, and takes its origin from times of ignorance and barbarity.

Even among the northern nations which tolerated the use of duels, they urged in apology for them, that the corruption and vice of the nation were beyond the controul of other

other remedies, and branded the practice, of even what their law allowed, with the name of impiety.*

That a custom so nearly allied to assassination should have been suffered to prevail in a country of civilized manners, is matter of astonishment, regret, and degradation; and if the subject were less serious, we might add of ridicule also.

3.

The laws of our country are surely sufficient both in quantity and quality to give every reasonable satisfaction to him, who will make it appear that he has been injured. by another, in his honour, his person, his property, his character, his profession:† for affiots

* Incerti sumus de judicio Dei, et multos audivimus per pugnam sine justâ causâ suam causam perdere. Sed propter consuetudinem gentis nostræ Longobardorum legem impiam vetare non possumus.

The law provides a remedy for every wrong.

WOOD's Institutes.

affronts therefore beneath the notice of those laws, or not within their capacity of discri mination, does the duellist demand the savage recompense of human blood!

Let the military man, who apologizes, that the situation he holds, is accompanied by the occasional necessity of duelling, reconcile, if he can, as a man of genuine honour and truth, the practice of duelling, with the solemn oath he has taken of allegiance to the King, his laws, and government! Let all those who hold rank or departments under the crown, make the same application to themselves, and if they pretend to honour, let them take heed to be strictly clear of perjury! With the Romans, no man was permitted to pass through the temple of honour, till he had gone through the temple of virtue! among the advocates of duelling

are

* Vir bonus est quis?

Qui consulta patrum, qui leges juraque servat.

Oderunt peccare boni virtutis honore.

are principally found, the idle, the dissipated, the debauchee, the gambler, the seducer, and the adulterer!

Honourable men, like these, are for the greater part, at once the patrons and the victims of the pistol; out of which there escapes something so wonderfully magnetic, that in

the very action, confers honour on him who had no pretensions to it before, while by a kind of re-action it conveys a pectoral, that charmingly repairs the broken texture of honour in another. This is called honour, this is called satisfaction, and “a thistle is hence a sallad in an ass's mouth.":

The following story, told by Mr. Seward in his anecdotes, places duelling in a truly ridiculous light: "General Guise going over one campaign to Flanders, observed a young raw officer who was in the same vessel with him, and with his usual humanity told him, that he would take care of him, and conduct him

him to Antwerp, where they were both going, which he accordingly did, and then took leave of him. The young fellow was soon told by some arch rogues, whom he happened to fall in with, that he must signalize himself by fighting some man of known courage, or else he would soon be despised in the regiment. The young man said, he knew no one but Colonel Guise, and he had received great obligations from him. It was all one for that, they said, in these cases; the Colonel was the fittest man in the world, as every body knew his bravery. Soon afterward, up comes the young officer to Colonel Guise, as he was walking up and down in the coffee-house, and began in a hesitating manner to tell him how much obliged he had been to him, and how sensible he was of his obligations. Sir," replied Colonel Guise, "I have done my duty by you, and no more." "But, Colonel," added the young officer faltering, "I am told that I must fight some gentleman of known courage, and who has killed

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