332 Notes of the Month on [SEPT. 



attack each other with their knives, and one of them is killed, the other 

 is hanged. Yet here we have more than the palliatives that are to make 

 the duel innocent. We have the equal danger, the violent passion, and 

 the coarser and more violent habits of life or profession, probably 

 drunkenness at the moment ; still, with all those palliatives, the butcher 

 is hanged. But if the butcher had written a cool note to his fellow 

 butcher, instead of rousing his passions by a curse or a blow ; if he had 

 appointed Hyde Park for the place of putting him to death, instead of 

 the site of Clare Market ; and had blown out his brains with a pistol, 

 instead of stabbing him to the heart with a knife, the butcher would 

 have figured as a well-bred person, who had done a well-bred deed; the 

 murder would have been an affair of honour, and the murderer would 

 have established a character in society as one " who had killed his 

 man." 



The argument, that society is kept in order by the fear of the pistol, is 

 nonsense, and is repelled by the fullest evidence that the most civilized 

 nations of the ancient world knew nothing of duelling ; that, in the most 

 intelligent and accomplished classes of modern life, a duel is the rarest 

 of possible occurrences ; that, among those classes of society which are 

 especially prohibited by custom, from this guilty mode of arbitrating 

 their differences (the clergy and the judges, for instance) we find no want 

 of mutual civility ; and that there are more duels concocted among the 

 vulgar and unmannered haunters of the coffee-house and the billiard- 

 table, than in all other society. 



It will even be universally found, that as duelling ceases to be the habi- 

 tual mode of deciding opinions, civilized manners become more habitual ; 

 and for the obvious reason, that where mutual concession has not the stigma 

 of mutual fear, it is the natural course of honest and educated minds. 

 If we are to be told that the cessation of duelling is the result of civiliza- 

 tion, the argument only shows, that duelling is contrary to the advance 

 of society. But the truth is, that until duelling has ceased to be the 

 habit of a country, mutual civility can make no progress. Ireland is 

 still, unhappily, the most duelling part of the empire. The conse- 

 quence results in its being the most uncivilized. The west and south of 

 Ireland are the most duelling parts of Ireland,. The consequence results 

 in those districts being the most uncivilized. A duelling regiment is 

 always notorious for general want of discipline, and for being unser- 

 viceable in the field. A regular duellist, in society, is generally a ruffian 

 in his manners, as he is always a scoundrel in his principles, if not noto- 

 riously a blackleg by profession. But the whole evil, as well as the 

 whole remedy, rests with the laws. So long as the refusal to go out at 

 a moment's notice, to kill or be killed, is considered by society an essen- 

 tial proof of personal timidity, so long will duelling continue to be the 

 shame and scourge of our community. But let the laws declare autho- 

 ritatively and steadily, that the reputation for intrepidity shall not 

 be suffered to turn upon a man's readiness to fire in the face of another 

 on the most trivial occasion of dispute ; and the practice will perish in a 

 twelvemonth, and, before the next twelvemonth is over, be wondered at 

 among the absurdities of times gone by. 



Let the laws declare distinctly, that every man who goes out to fight a 

 duel, is a murderer, that every message-bearer, second, &c., is an acces- 

 sory, and that they shall require nothing more than evidence of the 

 facts, to deliver the whole of those conspirators against human life to the 



