Dr. Wood said, he had accompanied Sir Alexander to the field; he did not see any pistols fired; he had instructed the other surgeon, that they ought to turn their backs and not see the firing, but that as soon as they heard the report they should turn, and run to the spot as speedily as possible. The pistols were fired in quick succession: on going to the spot, they found Sir Alexander wounded in the shoulder; they extracted two pieces of bone; the first was extracted by himself, and the other by Mr. Liston: he accompanied Sir Alexander to Balmuto House, and attended him till three the next day; when he died. In the carriage, on the way to the ground, Sir Alexander expressed his decided opinion, that Mr. Stuart could have done nothing else but call him out. He also declared his intention to fire in the air, and on getting out of the carriage he said, “Now, gentlemen, observe that it is my fixed resolution to fire in the air.”
Mr. Liston, surgeon, said that Mr. Stuart called upon him on the morning of the 26th of March, and requested him to go to the country with him; and, when on the Fife side, he informed him he was to fight a duel with Sir Alexander Boswell. He said he had no malice against Sir Alexander, and if he had the misfortune to hit him, he wished it might be on the great toe, as a gentleman in England had done lately on a similar occasion.
A letter from Sir Alexander Boswell to Robert Maconochie, Esq. dated the 24th of March, was put in, containing the following passage:—“Last night, on my arrival, I received a letter from Lord Rosslyn, that he wished me to appoint an hour as early as possible, that he might make a communication to me; this, I suppose, is in reference to some of these squibs. I do not know who the offended party may be; but even if it should be Mr. James Stuart himself, I shall give him a meeting. In order, however, to obviate many of those circumstances which follow such transactions, I mean that the meeting shall take place on the Continent, say Calais; and I wish to put your friendship so far to the test, as to request you to be my friend on this occasion. If I had deemed it expedient to meet my man here, John Douglas would have gone out with me; but if I should be the successful shot, I should not like the after proceedings of our courts of law, and therefore wish to pass beyond their jurisdiction. I know nothing of particulars yet, but write in prudent anticipation. I know this is perhaps the greatest favour that can be asked of any man; but by this arrangement you will be implicated in less trouble, and you won’t mind a trip to France. If my wish is acceded to, I would propose the meeting to take place about fifteen days hence, as I wish to make a slight arrangement respecting my estate, and legalise it by going to kirk and market.”—After a number of witnesses had been examined, who all bore testimony to Mr. Stuart’s high character for goodness of temper, kindness of disposition, and honourable and upright conduct.
The Lord Advocate said, that the charge of murder, according to law, having been fully proved, the next question was, what defence had been set up in behalf of the prisoner. The law knew of no other ground of exculpation, unless a justification founded on self-defence; but there were no circumstances to warrant such an argument in the present case.
Mr. Jeffrey said, it was not necessary for him to state, that the essence of all crime lay in the motive; and, after all they had heard, it could not be disputed that Mr. Stuart went to the ground without one atom of malice. They had been told, that a duel was an irrational, barbarous, and pernicious practice; and that he who took it upon himself to send or accept a challenge was guilty of murder. He did not mean to offer any apology for the practice. The evils of duelling were ever uppermost in our view; but this prevented us from noticing, that it had proved the corrective of greater immoralities. It was known by those versed in history, that it had superseded the practice of private assassinations. That a person might not kill another, unless in self-defence, without incurring the crime of murder, was contrary to the fact. It might be done in defence of personal property on a nocturnal assault: a soldier on sentry, or a constable to prevent a rescue, might justly kill. And if, in such circumstances, it is permissible, you place a man in a painful dilemma, if, when made by the libeller an outcast of society, exposed to daily insult, shrunk from by friends, and met with the blushes of relations, you deprive him of the only means of wiping away those stains, and vindicating his character to the world. The analogy of the law, the reason of the thing, and the feelings of all mankind are against you. In the short reign of Henry the Fourth of France, about four thousand persons were calculated to have fallen in single combat; while, in our own country, during one of the longest reigns, that of George the Third, only sixty or seventy were said to have fallen; a fact which showed, that the practice did not prevail to any alarming extent.
The Lord Justice Clerk then proceeded to detail the evidence, and to illustrate the law as it bore on the case in question. It was, he said, his bounden duty to state to them what the law of Scotland was, in relation to such an unfortunate affair as had come before them that day: but instead of stating the law in his own words, he would rather lay it before them in the words of the best authors on criminal law, and the first to whom he would refer was Sir George Mackenzie, who had laid it down as clear and decided law, that killing in a duel was murder, and quoted several cases in support of this opinion. The next author to whom he would refer the jury was Mr. Baron Hume, the standard authority on criminal law in Scotland. From the quotations read by the Lord Justice Clerk, it was clear that Mr. Hume completely coincided with Sir George Mackenzie as to the ancient practice: Mr. Hume states, that in later times, some juries had taken upon them to deliver verdicts of not guilty in such cases; but he clearly states, that such decisions were not in conformity to the strict law of Scotland. Mr. Burnet, also a valuable author, expressed himself much to the same effect with the other authors. The law, therefore, on such matters, he considered to be quite settled. The indictment charged Mr. Stuart with malice, but there was not even an attempt to substantiate that part of it. On the contrary, it appeared that he was utterly ignorant who the author of the calumnies was, before he saw the papers in Glasgow. The jury would also keep in view the nature of the offers made by Mr. Stuart, his conduct in the field, as well as after the sad event; the contrition he expressed for the fatal blow, and the total absence of all vindictive feelings on his part. In the whole course of his practice he never had heard higher, or more distinct and discriminate praise bestowed on any character; and, in good taste, the evidence on this part of the case consisted of gentlemen, who were opponents to the prisoner in politics. He lamented, and the public groaned under, the lamentable licentiousness of the press: he hoped it would cease.
The jury, after a few minutes’ consultation, without leaving the box, returned an unanimous verdict of “Not Guilty.” The Lord Justice Clerk, then turning to Mr. Stuart, congratulated him on the favourable result.
BETWEEN THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.
May 2, 1822.
On Thursday, the 2nd of May, the following statement appeared in the evening papers:—“We are authorised to state, that a meeting took place this morning between the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Buckingham, accompanied by Lord Lyndock and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, in consequence of words uttered by the former at the Bedford County Meeting. Both parties fired together at the distance of twelve paces, on a word given, but without effect; when the Duke of Buckingham, observing that the Duke of Bedford fired into the air, advanced to his Grace, and remarking, that for that reason the thing could go no further, said, ‘My Lord Duke, you are the last man I wish to quarrel with; but you must be aware, that a public man’s life is not worth preserving unless with honour.’ Upon which the Duke of Bedford declared, ‘upon his honour, that he meant no personal offence to the Duke of Buckingham, nor to impute to him any bad or corrupt motive whatever.’ The parties then shook hands, and the whole business was terminated most satisfactorily.”
The following are the words used by the Duke of Bedford at the County Meeting:—“He would now advert to another transaction which he was almost ashamed to mention: he alluded to a great borough proprietor, now a noble duke, whose services, and the services of whose adherents in parliament, had been purchased by Government by conferring high offices on those adherents. It was an odious thing to mention these circumstances, but he introduced them for the purpose of asking whether, if a reform had been effected, such transactions could possibly happen? The noble duke’s family and connections were, of course, sent back to their constituents, when they accepted of place; because, when a member of the House took office, he must return to his constituents, to know whether they would re-elect him. But how were the individuals in question sent back? They were not sent back to the people of England; they were not sent back to those who were free to choose or to reject them: no, they were sent back to the borough proprietor, to their own patron, to the person who had engaged in the corrupt traffic; who had, in fact, made the bargain with Ministers. He would again ask, could such a circumstance possibly occur, if a reform were effected in the Commons’ House?”