574 NOTES AND EVENTS OF THE MONTH. 



magistrates on the one side, and all the sessional Solons on the other, migh 

 be attended with inconveniences, deemed it his duty, as the commander" 

 in-chief of his own troops, to send off a gauntlet of defiance to the 

 comman-der-in-chief of the other forces, and invite him to mortal com- 

 bat just as two mighty men of valour were wont, in the days of chi- 

 valry, to call off their respective troops, and determine the issue by a 

 single tilt ! The unknightly result, so far as it goes, is matter of history. 

 Now, was not this a very droll attempt at jousting ? Had you and we, 

 dear reader, come to a misunderstanding, and been blockheads enough 

 to meditate a fracture of the king's peace, the worshipful challenger in 

 question would, as a magistrate, have had no compunctious visitings of 

 honour, or of conscience, to hold us both to bail, as attempting viola- 

 tions of the laws. Knowing the law, and admitting it to be just and 

 sacred, by dispensing the law as it exists, he would fix upon us, by his 

 judgment, the aspersion of aplanned infraction of it; and have putus, more- 

 over, to the expense and trouble of breaking the peace of his most 

 Christian Majesty King Louis Phillippe, or of Leopold I. of Belgium, 

 because we could not break King William's. But here we find a justice 

 of the peace, declaring in his own person, and by his own acts, that the 

 law is unjust, and unfit to be recognised by any gentleman of sensitive 

 feelings ! What an authority for the King's lieges ! If a person in the 

 commission of the peace may engage himself in the commission of war, 

 surely you and we, gentle reader, ought to be allowed a game of bullets with 

 impunity. Or is it to be inferred that men of law may be lawless in their 

 right? expounders to others of laws which themselves maycontemn,break, 

 abuse,and throwto the winds for dogs to bark at. We believe Mr. Rotch 

 to be a high-minded and most honourable man, and do not doubt that he 

 will crave permission to withdraw his name from the roll of magistrates and 

 vacate his seat as chairman for what an absurd thing would it be in the 

 eyes of the public, and how perplexing to his own feelings, were he called 

 upon, after this affair, to sentence some cuffing, gamesome, street brawler 

 to the tread-wheel, as a punishment, for breaking the king's peace ! 



Is THE DUELLO LAWFUL ? After all, it seems that Mr. Rotch may be 

 right. At the sittings in Banco at Westminister, the Lord Chief Justice 

 (Denman) lately pronounced the opinion of the court, upon a case, which 

 leaves the question of law as uncertain as ever. The Attorney- general 

 had obtained a rule calling on the defendant to shew cause why a criminal 

 information should not be filed against him, for having endeavoured to in- 

 cite the prosecutor to fight a duel ; and Sir William Follett having, on 

 the part of the defendant, shewn cause, by a detail of severe provocations, 

 the court were of opinion that " the rule ought to bemade absolute ; for, 

 however great the provocation, the door of a public court of Law [the 

 offensive words had been used to the prosecutor while standing at the 

 door of the Nisi Prius court at Exeter] was not the place where it should 

 be resented, or an explanation demanded in a tone of defiance. There 

 were other places where such a step should be taken!" Thus it would 

 appear, from the dictum of a Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, 

 giving voice to the concurrent opinion of the other judges, in conclave as- 

 sembled that it is competent to any person to provoke another to a duel, 



