THE ETHICS OF DUELLING 313 



as the one with which I am dealing, among gentlemen the error 

 used to be met directly, and in the fairest way possible, and the 

 gentleman insulted, and incapable of any other personal or 

 muscular appeal, used to call the offender out, who then had to 

 place his honour and future conduct in the hands of a friend, 

 which friend or second, exclusively and without the possibility 

 of an appeal from his principal, dictated to him what he should 

 do ; and where the second was a gentleman and a man of sense, 

 it was hardly possible to attain the use of weapons. 



I am speaking of the duel when governed by the true prin- 

 ciples of honour, and in the hands of men who knew how to 

 conduct it. Of course, there were many occasions in which its 

 interests fell into ignorant hands, who turned it into a vulgar 

 and often sanguinary brawl, or brought it into ridicule, in not 

 carrying it out in extreme circumstances, a outrance. No 

 man, no principal, should ever have been permitted to go out, 

 receive his adversary's shot, and fire in the air. The fact of his 

 firing in the air is an admission of his being in the wrong, and 

 therefore his second should have acknowledged his error, have 

 apologised for it, and not have let him appear on the ground. 

 On the other hand, by communion with the opposing second, 

 the friend of the man in the right, or the unjustly injured man, 

 ought in all instances to have made himself aware whether or 

 not the opponent intended the maintenance of the quarrel, or 

 personal mischief; and if he did not do so, he should have re- 

 fused to permit his principal to run the risk of butchering a 

 fellow-creature in what, in that case, must be considered as in 

 cold blood. Much of the mischief which, under the old code 

 of honour, took place, or indeed all of it, was through the 

 insufficiency of the seconds, and in their not treating their 

 principals as the merest possible ciphers in all action, after the 

 conduct of the affair had been assigned to them. 



To such an extent was I, as well as others, convinced of this, 

 that we in undertaking affairs of this sort invariably obtained a 

 pledge, that before we consented to move in it our principal 

 would solemnly bind himself to take no further part in the 



