these passions they esteem themselves superior to other men ; style themselves "brave," "men of honour," and "gentlemen ;" and name others "cowards," "scoundrels,” and “rascals.” Is it possible, that, habitually entertaining these opinions, and habitually indulging these passions, they should not exercise them, peculiarly, on such an occasion?

I well know, that duellists profess themselves to be free from these passions in cases of this kind; and declare, that they proceed to these horrible rencounters with entire coolness and good nature. These professions, however, have not the most distant claim to credit. All men, who feel themselves exposed to the censures of mankind, endeavour to rebut them in the best manner in their power. Fair professions are the most obvious means of rebutting them. In the same manner the bully conceals his cowardice, and the hypocrite his irreligion; and both have as good claims to be believed, as the duellist. Cool, indeed, he may be in some instances; that is, not agitated by fear; but every thing in his situation, and in his conduct, proves, that he is angry, and revengeful.

6. Duellists take the utmost pains to prepare themselves for this dreadful employment.

In places, where duelling is generally practised, it has become a regular employment; and may be fairly considered as a branch of the regular education of children and youths, to acquire skill and adroitness in the art of destroying human life by this species of violence. Children, at a very early period, employ themselves daily, and yearly, through long periods of time, in shooting with pistols; and acquire skill by this practice, just as penmanship is acquired; with as much coolness, and with as much success. Men also, who have not received this education in early life, employ the sober years of maturer age in learning the same horrid art. To excel in it, is regarded by the adept himself, and his fellows, as an attainment of high distinction. To be able to split a ball upon the edge of a knife, or extinguish a candle, with a pistol ball, at the distance of the utmost goal of duelling, is, in the view of these men, to have arrived at glory, not a little resembling that of Turenne, or Marlborough.

In all this conduct is seen, with the slightest glance, a deliberate design, a cold-blooded system, of taking away the life of man with the hand of violence: a design, a system, begun in childhood, and cherished, cultivated, and perfected, through every succeeding period. What dupe of credulity can be so absolutely blind to the whole nature of evidence, as not to see, in this conduct, designs equally hostile against human life, more deliberate, and certainly not less guilty, than those of the professed assassin ? 7. The Duellist takes away the life of his neighbour without a Cause.

In this respect, the murderer in the appropriate sense, nay, the professed assassin, can, in many instances at least, more speciously justify himself, than the duellist. The murderer attacks his victim under the domination of furious passion; at the moment, when he has lost the possession of reason, and conscience, and the consequent government of himself; under the consciousness of a real and intense injury; or with the hope of delivering himself from a persecutor. Brutus expected to free his country from a Tyrant Charlotte Corde, to deliver hers from another. These, I acknowledge, are far from being solid or justifying reasons; yet they are specious. They are such, as, in the moment of provocation and bitterness, would have great weight, and go far, in the frenetic mind of a man violently in a passion, towards vindicating him to himself. But the duellist is roused to battle by a contemptuous look, a slight word, or some other wound, given to mere pride. All these and the like things are perfectly harmless, if passed by with serenity and self-possession. At the worst, they are mere expressions of the opinion, which the provoking person entertains of our character; an opinion, which, if we are faithful to ourselves, can do us no harm; and which usually merits nothing but disregard, contempt, or pity. This the duellist has ample time to investigate, and to know: for the very manner of executing his resentment postpones the execution beyond the ordinary period of violent passion. Every duellist must confess, unless he will acknowledge his whole life to be a paroxysm of rage, that the seasons, in which he acquires the skill of directing surely the weapons of death; in which he determines to become a professed duellist; in which he settles the principles, and learns the rules of his profession; in which he fixes in his mind the proper causes of a challenge, the proper motives for fighting, and the proper modes of conducting it; are not seasons of violence and provocation. He will confess that the time of his future life, independently of the little periods of actual combat, which he spends in avowedly professing his deliberate intention of acting as a duellist on every occasion, which he thinks a proper one, is not a time of agitation, wrath, and partial insanity.

Nor is the duellist more happy with respect to the Final Cause of his conduct, or the End, which he expects to accomplish by this species of controversy.

Reparation for an injury received is commonly alleged as this end. But the death of his Antagonist furnishes no such reparation. His neighbour's loss of life lessens in no manner, nor degree, any injury, which he has received from him; and cannot possibly restore to him lost property, or lost reputation. The fact, that he has challenged, and killed, a man, will make him neither richer, nor more honourable, nor more happy. He may, indeed, acquire honour in the opinion of a few men, as foolish, unprincipled, and abandoned, as himself. But the good opinion of these men VOL. III.

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is disgrace. In the view of every wise and good man he renders himself deeply shameful, and supremely guilty. He may, perhaps, enjoy what men of furious passions sometimes call happiness; viz. the fell pleasure, found by such men in revenge. That revenge is sweet to the taste of a bad man, I am not disposed to question. But it is bitter and dreadful in the end. Let the duellist remember, that God hath said, To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; that He has forbidden us to avenge ourselves; or to bear any grudge against our neighbour; subjoining this solemn and authoritative reason, Vengeance is mine, I will repay it. Let him read, and ponder, the parable of the Servant, who owed ten thousand talents; and when he finds that servant thrust into prison and delivered over to the tormentors, as his final and irrevocable doom; let him ask himself, What will become of him, who, instead of imprisoning his fellow-servant, puts him to a violent death, and sends him into eternity, with all his sins upon his head? Then let him further ask, whether the pleasure of revenge is sufficiently great to balance the immense hazard, which he incurs for the sake of this gratification?

In the mean time, a duel, allowing that it should terminate in the death of him who gave the provocation, alters not, in the least, the state of the supposed injury, nor of him who received it. If he has been charged with cowardice, and is really a coward; he will still remain so. If he is not; the charge will not make him a coward. If he has been charged with lying, and has really lied; he will still remain a liar; unless he becomes an honest man by repentance and reformation. If he has not lied; the charge can never seriously affect his reputation, nor persuade a single sober man to believe him a liar. Men, in this country at least, have usually little to fear from such charges as these. If they will be faithful to themselves; if they will exhibit the virtues, which are denied to them, on all such occasions, as call them into exercise, and renounce, or avoid, the opposite vices; the world, bad as it is, will almost always discern their true character; and will most generally do justice to it. Sometimes, I acknowledge, they may, even while they exercise a good degree of patience, smart under the lash of unmerited censure. These seasons, however, can rarely be of long continuance: and, while they last, will, to a wise man, in most cases, be eminently profitable, by teaching him to moderate the inordinate attachment, so commonly, so foolishly, and so dangerously indulged, to the applause of mankind. This is one, and in my view the chief, exercise of that love to the world, which the Scriptures declare to be incompatible with love to God. The effectual mortification of this attachment, strange as it may seem to the duellist, would yield him more serene, unmingled, and enduring pleasure, than all that, which has been found in all the gratifications, furnished by duelling since the beginning of time. Let the duellist also remember, that in this very act of attempting

to destroy his neighbour's life, he more grossly injures his own character, than ten thousand charges, such as those, which be thus furiously resents, could possibly do. In the view of every man of sober reflection, he brands upon his character the stamp of murder, the blackest mark of infamy which can be worn by

man.

But it will be replied to these observations by the duellist, that the anguish, which he suffers, is such, as he cannot possibly bear; and that there is no way, in which he can render life even supportable under such an imputation on his character, without taking the life of the slanderer. This plea has been often seriously made. I will therefore examine it.

In the First Place, The allegation, contained in it, is untrue. The anguish, complained of, might be easily supported, without the death of its Author. There are no words, which more frequently delude those, who use them, than can and cannot, possible and impossible. We often say, and believe, that we cannot do that, which we merely will not; and frequently pronounce that conduct to be impossible, which is only very disagreeable. The Apostles, and the Christian Martyrs of every age, were, in many instances, possessed of as much understanding and sensibility, and therefore understood the nature of the injuries, which they received, as well, at least, as the duellist in question; and felt them as deeply. they bore slanders more gross, more frequently repeated, more extensively believed, and continued through a much longer duration. They bore them, also, without repining, often without complaining, and always without sinking. Women, also, of extreme delicacy, and exquisite sensibility, have sustained, not with patience only, but with fortitude also, the most brutal accusations. Certainly a man, who boasts so much of his firmness of character, as a duellist always does, must be ashamed of possessing less hardihood, than women and Christians.

Yet

Secondly. This anguish, chiefly, is voluntarily created by himself. It is nothing but the pain of wounded pride: a passion more injurious to his peace, and more hostile to his moral character, than the slander, which he feels so deeply: a passion, which, if he were a wise and good man, he would use every hopeful exertion to mortify and subdue. Independently of the feelings, occasioned by this passion, the slander, of which he complains, would do him very little harm.

But he has been called a coward. So have thousands and millions of others, who regarded the imputation only with sport. But he has been called a liar. So have vast numbers of the best men who have ever lived; who, though not insensible of the slander, have nevertheless passed quietly on through life in much the same manner as if it had never been uttered. Were the duellist possessed of the same spirit: he would feel as little anguish

from this source as they felt. The whole difference between him and them, is created, both foolishly and sinfully, by his own pride.

Thirdly. The murderer, in the appropriate sense, can usually make the same plea in his own behalf; and with more force. It cannot be doubted, that in the hour of extreme provocation and abuse; such abuse, as awakens, for the first time, the dreadful purpose of murder; an agitation must be felt, and an anguish suffered, far more intense, than that, which is ordinarily experienced by the duellist. He has made it a part of his general system, and a deliberate purpose, to destroy human life. To a mind, thus prepared, no event of this nature can come wholly unlooked for; or be, as in the other case, a matter of mere and absolute surprise. A mind, thus circumstanced, can hardly suffer, in the same degree, from the very same provocation. But the provocations, usually given to the duellist, are injuries far inferior, in their degree, to those, which ordinarily excite in the human breast a purpose, so new to it, and so horrible, as murder. The Duellist has been disciplined to this object; and comes to it with the cool feelings of a veteran. The murderer is a raw adventurer, who has never seen this terrible object in a near view before. He is, therefore, urged to the conflict by extreme provocatives only; with intense agitation; and with an impelling anguish, sufficiently great to overcome his dread and horror.

Fourthly. The laws of the land provide, in the mean time, a reasonable reparation for all those injuries, which the wisdom of Legislators has thought it proper, or been able, to redress; and at least as ample reparation for him, as for his fellow-citizens. With this reparation he is bound to be contented, until the Legislature shall provide further redress. If he has a right to adjudicate his own cause, and redress his own injuries; every other citizen has the same right. But if this pretended right were to be universally exercised, government would be at an end. Anarchy, the real box of Pandora, would empty all its miseries upon mankind; and the nation be converted into a band of murderers. He, who, in this plainest of all cases, will not submit to the ordinances of man for the Lord's sake, will certainly receive the condemnation, which he has threatened.

Fifthly. There are innumerable other cases, in which greater injuries are done to mankind, than those which are done to the duellist, and in their nature far more distressing. Those who have suffered them, have therefore, according to this argument, a right to relieve themselves of their distress, by taking away the lives of those who have occasioned it. My neighbour, for example, has ejected me from my farm by an injurious lawsuit; and left me and my family beggars. He has accused me, as a merchant, of negligence, fraud, or bankruptcy; and by bringing my creditors suddenly upon me, has not only stripped me of my property, but precluded me from acquiring any more. He has negligently brought the