“You have heard the charges made against you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What have you to say in defense?”
“Nothing, except in some sort what my fellow prisoner there has said. In a word, I may be, as Darwin says, remotely descended from a monkey, but I certainly must decline identity, or even relationship, to the wild beasts with which my good aunt has confounded me. But I did undertake to deliver a challenge from my friend Mr. Leonidas Force to that caitiff Angus Anglesea, and I did intend to be my friend’s second in the duel.”
“You admit all this?”
“I do.”
“Leonidas Force, come forward.”
The young midshipman stepped up and stood beside his friend, both facing the squire.
And then Mr. Force began, in the most earnest and solemn manner, to speak to them of the sin and evil of dueling; of the falsehood and insanity of calling such a crime an “affair of honor,” when, in truth, it was a matter of dishonor. The very highest concern of a true man of honor is to keep the law of God, which the duelist breaks; and to keep the law of the land, which the duelist breaks. The duelist may have many motives, but “honor” cannot be one of them! A bully will fight a duel, upon occasion, to prove himself a man of brute courage, and kill or be killed for so low a cause. A coward will fight a duel, because he is afraid to refuse, on account of what bullies might say of him, and kill, or be killed, from so mean a motive. A man maddened by wrongs, and raging with wrath, will fight a duel to be revenged upon his adversary, to slay or to be slain, and is eager to risk his own life, in the hope of taking his enemy’s. But no man ever fought a duel from any motive of pure honor. There is no honor in breaking the laws of the Lord, or the laws of the land, but rather dishonor.
“You, Leonidas Force,” said the squire, coming down from generalities to point his moral in a personality, and very gravely addressing his young relative, “you, in sending your challenge to Col. Anglesea to meet you in the duel, were inspired by the spirit of wrath and revenge. In your fierce anger you were not alone. Many shared that madness with you. Neither you nor they could help feeling a frenzy of indignation against the perpetrator of outrageous wrongs. But, though you could not help feeling this frenzy of anger, you could help sinning. You should have remembered the Word of God, ‘Be ye angry, but sin not.’ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ and, above all, the awful command, ‘Thou shalt do no murder.’ What! shall a man break these laws, and call it honor? An infidel may, perhaps; but even an infidel, who denies the Word of God, is amenable to the laws of the land, which equally forbid the illegal taking of human life; and even an infidel cannot fight a duel and truthfully call his crime ‘an affair of honor.’