The History of Duelling. Vol. 2 (of 2)

by J. G. Millingen

But the sentiments and principles on the subject of duelling, avowed and acted upon in the progress of this trial, will be of far more importance in their consequences than the issue of the trial itself. An opportunity, in fact, is about to be afforded your Lordships of adding yet another benefit to the many which England has already experienced at your hands—an opportunity of stamping your past exertions in the cause of truth, religion, and civilisation, with the seals of sincerity and consistency: nay, words still stronger befit the occasion; and I fear not to say, that your Lordships stand at this moment in a situation of great responsibility, in which the eyes of the nation are fixed upon you, anxiously expecting that you will embrace this favourable occasion to interpose the shield of your influence between society and that systematic violation of its laws which has so long and so unhappily prevailed amongst us. It is on the question, therefore, of duelling, that I would now respectfully engage your Lordships’ attention.

Every one will admit the absurdity of the bathos from the lance to the pistol,—from the grave and noble auto da fe which the combat of the chivalrous ages exhibited in its solemn appeal to God, as the witness and the judge of right and wrong, to the modern system, resorted to on the most trivial as well as the most important occasions, and as striking a proof of the degenerate faithlessness of the present, as the ancient custom, of which it is the distorted image, is of the simple faith and piety of the olden time.

The argument for the defence of duelling, as at present constituted, is short, simple, and intelligible. The ‘vantage-ground of principle is conceded at once; but the world, it is contended, could not go on without it. There are points where human legislation must stop, where unwritten must take the place of written laws; society cannot be kept in check except by fear of personal consequences attendant on the violation of those unwritten laws: the system of duelling affords that check; expediency, therefore, requires the toleration of duelling.

Now, were the edifice of society founded on the shifting and variable sands of human folly and weakness, such reasoning might pass current: but if, as we believe and know, its foundations are laid deep below the waves of time and change, on the eternal and immutable rock of divine strength and wisdom, it becomes our duty to test that reasoning by the revealed will of God; and if we find it ring false (as even its advocates confess it does), then, in the confidence that the expediency consists in the resolution of human wisdom and will into the wisdom and will of God, boldly to repudiate the perversion of the doctrine usually promulgated under its name, in this as well as in every other instance, as alike sinful and cowardly in its principle, short-sighted in its views, and destructive in its operation. The Bible is the only standard of right and wrong; and we read there, “Thou shalt not do evil that good may come of it.” The defence, therefore, of duelling on the ground of expediency falls to the ground; and no other defence is set up for it.

But the truth is, that society, so far from courting or needing the support of duelling, abhors and disowns a system which strikes at the very foundation of social order. Duelling is the mere foster-child of public opinion—the public opinion, moreover, not of the nation at large, but of a class, on whose sentiments and practices any opinion expressed by your Lordships, its brightest ornaments, must necessarily possess incalculable influence. It is this influence which we implore you to exercise on the present occasion.

It is not in the indulgence of malice or revenge that the essential iniquity of duelling consists. Many a man has fought a duel with perfect innocence as regards those points. Few, I believe, take their stations in the field with the deliberate intention of “killing, maiming, or doing some grievous bodily injury” to their antagonist, as imputed to the noble Earl now summoned to your Lordships’ bar for trial. Far from it. Few but would refuse a challenge, were it not for the disgrace with which such a refusal stamps the character. It has been often and truly said, that it requires more courage to refuse than to accept a challenge. It requires much for a single man to do so; but for the husband and the father, whose prospects for life may be blasted, and his wife and children reduced to beggary and wretchedness, in consequence of his refusal, the trial must be one of bitterness indeed. It is not, I repeat, in malice or revenge that the evil of the system lies. Nor need I insist upon the violation of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” No one will dispute, at least no man who ever saw his antagonist fall in a duel, but will remember the blow with which conscience knocked at his heart in that moment of anguish,—the distinctness with which for days and years afterwards he heard the still calm voice of God whispering in the silence of his heart’s wilderness, “Where is thy brother Abel?” The evil lies deeper still. It consists in a total oblivion of that vital principle, of natural religion in the first instance, but far more emphatically so of Christianity,—a principle which every man who fights a duel, challenger or challenged, consciously or unconsciously violates,—a principle written in letters of light in the book of inspiration, in the following heart-stirring words, “Ye are not your OWN, for ye are bought with a price; wherefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Life, then, is not a man’s own property to peril at his pleasure, any more than it is his own to dismiss by suicide; and, till this principle be recognised, not as involved in the mere question of duelling, but in its full uncompromising extent, a man can never be thoroughly depended upon in the full confidence of his proving, under all circumstances, and without mental reservation, loyal to his Sovereign, faithful to his God, and true to his country.

This, my Lords, is an age of recurrence to first principles, a period unexampled in the annals of the world. The shackles of ages are falling off, and the human intellect is rising up, unconscious of its strength, and likely, in pure ignorance how to restrain and economize that strength, to rend asunder the bones, the muscles, the ligaments which are alike its prison, and the necessary instruments of its energy and activity; in other words, to burst through and destroy the whole framework of society. To preserve that framework, to discipline that awakening strength, and to direct it to those high and noble purposes, which, from the elevation on which we now stand, we may see opening out before us in long vistas, as it were, of untrodden enterprise in the map of God’s providence, education must be resorted to; not that spurious education which draws its theory and its practice alike from the dust it studiously looks down upon, whose wisdom is of the earth, earthy—but that which God intended when he distinguished man from the beasts that perish, by creating him with his face erect to heaven, in the image of his Maker. If society is to be preserved, it must be Christianized. Your Lordships have acknowledged this great truth by your exertions to preserve the Christian principle in education. England owes you much for all you have done, for all you are still doing in this great cause. But it would be mockery to hold forth the decalogue with one hand, and with the other a charter of legitimation to that spurious offspring of human vice and folly, which, involving as it does a direct transgression not of one only, but of almost every law in the decalogue, virtually annuls it. And this charter your Lordships sign—the good that you have done your inconsistency may undo—if in the remotest degree you indirectly sanction the system in question.

The expediency of enacting prohibitory laws against duelling, such as exist in some foreign countries, must necessarily be left to the wisdom of the united Houses to determine; it would probably be decided in the negative, and perhaps rightly so. But a far more efficient remedy is in your Lordships’ own hands, as the highest court of honour in the kingdom,—the capital of the column of English nobility,—the sun, as it were, whose lustre and the spots that obscure its disk are alike reflected by that class of society in which the evil complained of has hitherto chiefly prevailed. Your influence on the “public opinion” of this class is immense. Let your Lordships simply declare duelling to be disgraceful, and it becomes so.

We, therefore,—for I speak but as one of a vast body who hold that Christianity and true Conservatism are synonymous,—we, who in these days of storm and tempest look to your Lordships as the sheet-anchor on which the preservation of the state depends,—we who, respecting your wisdom, and honouring your manly daring in the vindication and assertion of truth and duty, deeply believe, however, and know with unalterable conviction, that it is God’s blessing, and His only, which has hitherto maintained, or can hereafter maintain, you in your posts and in your usefulness; and who watch over you therefore with the jealousy of love, lest in aught, through inadvertence, you come short of your high and holy vocation. We call upon your Lordships, therefore, in the name of God and man, as you would be consistent with yourselves, as you hope God’s blessing to rest on your labours for your country’s good, to accompany the verdict you pronounce on the solemn occasion about to engage your attention with the fearless unqualified expression of your united abhorrence of the unhallowed system of duelling.

I have the honour, &c.