Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/534

514 514 DUEL the Restoration abounds in duels. Passing on to the reign of Queen Anne, we find the subject frequently discussed in the Tutler and the Spectator, and Addison points in his happiest way the moral to a contemporary duel between Mr Thornhill and Sir Cholmeley Dering. &quot; I come not,&quot; says Spinomont to King Pharamond, &quot; I come not to implore your pardon, I come to relate my sorrow, a sorrow too great for human life to support. Know that this morning I have killed in a duel the man whom of all men living I love best.&quot; No reader of Esmond can forget Thackeray s description of the doubly fatal duel between the duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohua, which is historical, or the no less life-like though fictitious duel between Lord Mohun and Lord Castlewood. Throughout the reigns of the Georges they are frequent, Richardson expresses his opinion on the subject in six voluminous letters to the Literary Repositor. Sheridan, like Farquhar in a previous generation, not only dramatized a duel, but fought two himself. Byron thus commemorates the bloodless duel between Tom Moore and Lord Jeffrey : Can none remember that eventful day, That ever glorious almost fatal fray, &quot;When Little s leadless pistols met the eye, And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by ? As we approach our own times they become rarer in fiction. Thackeray, indeed, who represents an older generation, and the worse side of aristocratical society, abounds in duels. His royal highness the late lamented commander-in-chief had the greatest respect for Major Macmurdo, as a man who had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintance with the greatest prudence and skill ; and Rawdon Crawley s duelling pistols, &quot; the same which I shot Captain Marker,&quot; have become a household word. Dickens, on the other hand, who depicts contemporary English life, and mostly in the middle classes, in all his numerous works has only three ; and George Eliot never once refers to a duel. Tennyson, using a poet s privilege, has laid the scene of a duel in the year of the Crimean war, but he echoes the spirit of the times when he stigmatizes &quot; the Christless code that must have life for a blow.&quot; To pass from fiction to fact, a list of the celebrated public men who in the last century have fought duels will suffice to show the magnitude of the evil : Fox, Pitt, William Pulteney and Lord Hervey, Canning and Lord Castlereagh, the duke of York, the duke of Richmond, Wilkes, Sir Francis Burdett, Grattan, Daniel O Connell. For particulars we must refer the reader to the respective names. The year 1808 is memorable in the annals of duelling in England. Major Campbell was sentenced to death and executed for killing Captain Boyd in a duel. In this case it is true that there was a suspicion of foul play ; but in the case of Lieutenant BlundeLl, who was killed in a duel in 1813, though all had been conducted with perfect fair ness, the surviving principal and the seconds were all convicted of murder and sentenced to death, and, although the royal pardon was obtained, they were all cashiered. The next important date is the year 1843, when public attention was painfully called to the subject by a duel in which Colonel Fawcett was shot by his brother-in-law Lieutenant Monro. The survivor, whose career was thereby blasted, had, it was well known, gone out most reluctantly, in obedience to the then prevailing military code. A full account of the steps taken by the late Prince Consort, and of the correspondence which passed between him and the duke of Wellington, will be found in the Life of the Prince by Theodore Martin. The duko, unfortunately, was not an unprejudiced counsellor. Not only had he been out him self, but, in writing to Lord Londonderry on the occasion of the duel between the marquis and Ensign Battier in 1824, he had gone so far as to state that he considered the pro bability of the Hussars having to fight a duel or two a matter of no consequence. But though the proposal of the prince to establish courts of honour met with no favour, yet it led to an important amendment of the articles of war (April 1844). The 98th of the articles now in force ordains that &quot; every person who shall fight or promote a duel, oi 1 take any steps thereto, or who shall not do his best to prevent a duel, shall, if an officer, be cashiered or suffer such other penalty as a general court-martial may award.&quot; By the same articles, to accept or to receive apologies for wrong or insult given or received is declared suitable to the character of honourable men. The effect has been that duels, which had already been banished from civil society, have been no less discredited in the English army. In thj German army, on the contrary, the institution survives in full force, and is recognized by law. A full account of the courts of honour to regulate disputes and duels among German officers will be found in The Armed Strength of the German Empire. Any formal discussion of the morality of duelling is, in England at least, happily superfluous. No fashionable vice has been so unanimously condemned both by moralists and divines, and in tracing its history we are reminded of the words of Tacitus, &quot; in civitate nostra et vetabitur semper et retinebitur.&quot; Some, however, of the problems moral and social which it suggests may be shortly noticed. That duelling flourished so long in England the law is perhaps as much to blame as society. It was doubtless from the fact that duels were at first a form of legal procedure that English law has refused to take cognizance of private duels. A duel in the eye of the law differs nothing from an ordinary murder. Our greatest legal authorities, from the time of Elizabeth downwards, such as Coke, Bacon, and Hale, have all distinctly affirmed this interpretation of the law. But here as elsewhere the severity of the penalty defeated its own object. The public conscience revolted against a Draconian code which made no distinction between wilful murder and a deadly combat, wherein each party consented to his own death or submitted to the risk of it. No jury could be found to convict when conviction involved in the same penalty a Fox or a Pitt and a Turpin or a Brown- rigg. Such, however, was the conservatism of English publicists that Bentham was the first to point out clearly this defect of the law, and propose a remedy. In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in 1789, Bentham discusses the subject with his usual boldness and logical precision. In his exposition of the absurdity of duelling considered as a branch of penal justice, and its inefficiency as a punishment, he only restates in a clearer form the arguments of Paley. So far there is nothing novel in his treatment of the subject. But he soon parts company with the Christian moralist and proceeds to show that duelling does, however rudely and imperfectly, correct and repress a real social evil. &quot; It entirely effaces a blot which an insult imprints upon the honour. Vulgar moralists, by condemning public opinion upon this point, only confirm the fact.&quot; He then points out the true remedy for the evil. It is to extend the same legal protection to offences against honour as to offences against the person. The legal satisfactions which he suggests are some of them extremely grotesque. Thus for an insult to a woman, the man is to be dressed in a woman s clothes, and the retort to be inflicted by the hand of a woman. But the principle indicated is a sound one, that in offences against honour the punishment must be analogous to the injury. Doubt less, if Bentham were now alive, he would allow that the necessity for such a scheme of legislation had in a great measure passed away. That duels have since become extinct is no doubt principally owing to social changes, but it may