402 Notes of the Month ou [ APRIL, 
ple? The whole authority of law, morals, and religion, has been found 
searcely able to restrict duelling within bounds suitable to the peace of 
society ; and here comes, in full opposition to those efforts, the prime 
minister, the distributor of all power, the maker of bishops, the patron of 
judges, the originator of the whole moral action of the state, hurrying 
out, pistol in hand, with the impatience of an unfledged ensign, to show 
his readiness in imagining an affront. Is this example to be lost upon 
the army? ‘There is a whole code to prevent military men, from 
shooting each other. The officer who fights a superior is certain to be 
broke. The officer who fights an equal is liable to a court-martial. The 
regiment in which two or three of those rencontres take place, is sure 
to receive a stigma from head quarters, and either to have its promotion 
totally stopped, or to be sent to some West Indian island to learn the 
effects of insubordination. But now, every ensign can claim the sanc- 
tion of Field-martial the Duke of Wellington! The first officer who is 
brought to a court-martial for pistoling his brother officer, will be enti- 
tled to call the duke on his defence, and prove, from the record of the 
duel with Lord Winchelsea, the duke’s palpable opinion that any thing 
is ground enough for duelling. We look upon the whole transaction as 
weak, irrational, and violent; in every point of view mischievous, 
except in the one of developing more fully to us the character of the 
man with whom England has now todeal; into whose hands her par- 
liament is, at this hour, giving an influence unprecedented m history ; 
and by whose unlimited use of means, which, of themselves, inspire 
heady and dangerous thoughts, she is to be guided for the time to come. 
« On Monday, the 26th current, the business of the Justices of Peace 
Court, Falkirk, was suddenly interrupted by an accident, which at first 
sight had a very tragical appearance. The assembly-room, in which the 
monthly court is held, is likewise the place in which the members of the 
School of Arts have their meetings: and for their accommodation a tem- 
porary gallery had been erected at the north end of the room. Upon. 
Monday this gallery was crowded with. above 150 people, witnessing 
the proceedings of the court, when, in one moment, owing, it is sup- 
posed, to some of the props below giving way, the whole of the gallery 
fell to the ground, and brought along with it, of course, the mass of 
men, women, and children, who were stationed upon it. The crash was 
tremendous, as if the house had been shaken by an earthquake. The 
bar, or railing, which separated the spectators from the ministers of 
justice, was broken down, the clerk’s books and papers all scattered on 
the floor ; and so alarmed were some of the members of court, imagin-. 
ing, no doubt, that their judicial labours were at an end—that one of 
them is reported to have uttered an audible prayer.” 
Where are all the “ gens de protection,” as our travelled people say, 
that should have prevented this affair, and fifty others of the same 
calibre? Scarcely a month passes without the discovery, that some 
solid place of assemblage is as perilous as amine charged with gun- 
powder, and that a man is nowhere more unprotected than when he is 
under shelter. A theatre rises with the rapidity of a rocket ; in fact, the 
art of building, in this instance, is all reduced to the art of hurrying up 
one rotten wall upon the top of another rotten wall, and with the same 
rapidity it descends. It is a sort of steeple chace, and the hardier the 
exploit the more honour. Nothing is done unless there are half a dozen 
