"When I deny your right to call upon me in the present instance, I also beg leave, most unequivocably, to deny your right to address an insulting letter to me, who am almost personally unknown to you, and unconscious of ever having given you the slightest offence. I must, therefore, request that you will withdraw the letter, as, without that, it will be impossible for me to enter into an explanation.
"I have the honour, etc.,
"M. O'Connell.
"B. D'Israeli, Esq."
To this Mr. D'Israeli replied that he could not withdraw the letter, but assured his correspondent that he did not intend that it should convey any personal insult. On the same day he wrote old Dan a long and scathing letter, which wound up thus—
"I expect to be a representative of the people before the Repeal of the Union. We shall meet at Philippi, and rest assured that, confident in a good cause, and in some energies which have been not altogether improved, I will seize the first opportunity of inflicting upon you a castigation which will make you at the same time remember and repent the insults that you have lavished upon
"Benjamin D'Israeli."
There was more letter writing, but it never came to a fight.
Willis says that he met Moore at Lady Blessington's, and, in the course of conversation, speaking of the "Liberator," he said—
"O'Connell would be irresistible were it not for the blots on his character—the contribution in Ireland for his support, and his refusal to give satisfaction to the man he is still coward enough to attack. They may say what they will of duelling; it is the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school, which made a man responsible for his words, was the better. Then, in O'Connell's case, he had not made his vow against duelling when Peel challenged him. He accepted the challenge, and Peel went to Dover, on his way to France, where they were to meet; O'Connell pleaded his wife's illness, and delayed till the law interfered. Some other Irish patriot, about the same time, refused a challenge on account of the illness of his daughter, and a Dublin wit made a good epigram on the two—
"'Some men, with a horror of slaughter,
Improve on the Scripture command;
And honour their wife and their daughter,
That their days may be long in the land.'"