“They defended,” said Mr. Adamson, “by nearly the same arguments as I have lately heard from you, both duels, such as you apply the name to, and these which were always very justly regarded as a kind of duel; since there is no essential difference between calling on your adversary to stand a pistol-shot or a poisonous blast. It was conducive, they contended, to the preservation of good manners, and of a high and delicate sense of honour in both sexes, that a man should be restrained from ungentlemanly behaviour, and from lightly taxing another with it, by the apprehension of personal danger; and that female purity should be guarded in like manner. ‘It is,’ they said, ‘a useful additional check against lying, for instance, and against rashly charging another with being a liar, to reflect on the probable consequence of being called on to face the sword or pistol, or the goblin cavern of Mount Peril. And it is but fair, that a woman also should recollect that levity of conduct, or wanton slander, may occasion her to be required to undergo a similar danger.’ There were not wanting many who reprobated this doctrine, and urged such arguments on the other side respecting the wickedness and the absurdity of the custom as we have lately heard from Mr. Jones. But they were urged with as little practical effect as they appear to have had among you. At length, several persons of the higher classes, and remarkable for correctness of life, refinement of manners, and cultivated understanding, formed themselves into an association and declared strenuous war against every kind of duel, including, as has been said, under that name the ordeal of the cavern, which they contended against on entirely new grounds.
“They did not confine themselves to such topics as had been before, again and again, urged without effect; but maintained that the practice tended to defeat the very end proposed, and to lower (instead of raising, as was pretended) the tone of manners in the society. ‘If,’ they said, ‘there were no such custom, then, any one, whether man or woman, who transgressed the rules which public opinion had sanctioned in the circle of society in which he or she moved, would at once be excluded from that circle. And the apprehension of this exclusion, of thus losing caste, and being sent to Coventry, which is the ultimate penalty that such a society can inflict for a breach of its rules, would be the best preventive of any violation of them,—the best preservative of the tone of the society, that it is possible to attain. If, under such a system, any one insulted another, he would be regarded as an ill-mannered brute, and excluded from good company: a woman who displayed levity of conduct would be at once excluded from reputable society: any one, man or woman, who should bring rash imputations against a neighbour, would be shunned as a slanderer: and so of the rest. But under the system of duelling, society offers an alternative; the only effect of which, as far as it operates, is unmixed evil. Instead of saying, absolutely, you must abstain from brutal insolence of demeanour, on pain of being excluded from our circle, it says, you must either abstain from insolence, or be ready to expose your life; instead of requiring a woman to abstain from levity of conduct, and defamatory language, on pain of forfeiting the countenance of respectable people, it proposes the alternative of either observing those rules, or the being prepared to encounter the ordeal; and the result is, that those who possess personal intrepidity will often be enabled to transgress with impunity those rules of good society, which the duelling system professes to enforce. Nay more; the system tends to invest with a certain degree of dignity, arising from our admiration of personal courage, such conduct as would otherwise excite only unmitigated abhorrence and contempt. An insolent man, for instance, if by his insolence he braved no danger but that of expulsion from good company, would be simply despised: but since he also, under the other system, braves the danger of death, he obtains some degree of honour for his intrepidity. And though some may be deterred from such conduct by the fear of a challenge, others, on the contrary, may be encouraged to it, by a desire of displaying valour; especially if they have reason to think, from what they know of the other party, that a challenge will not ensue, and that they shall enjoy their triumph unmolested.
“‘Moreover, the magnitude of the injuries which one person actually can do to another is infinitely enhanced by the system of duels, because every affront offered is thus made to carry with it an imputation on one’s personal courage, which can only be wiped out by the exposure of life. If, for instance, I am a man of uniform and scrupulous veracity, and some ill-mannered ruffian gives me the lie, then, supposing duels unknown, the attack recoils entirely on the assailant. He is incapable of proving his charge—my life refutes it,—and the only result is that he, not I, is set down as a liar, for having falsely called me a liar. But under the other system, I must go out and expose my life, or else I am disgraced—disgraced, not as a liar (for that imputation, perhaps, is disbelieved after all), but as a coward, for not daring to risk my life in defence of my honour. And thus a person, who otherwise might have been incapable of doing me any serious hurt at all, has it in his power to propose to me at his pleasure the alternative of hazard to my life and violence to my conscience, or ignominy. A venom is thus added to the sting of the most contemptible insect.
“‘So much,’ said they, ‘for the protection thus provided for us against injuries the most painful to the feelings! Great part of the disgrace attaching to the authors of such injuries is removed; the injuries are probably rather increased than diminished in frequency; and in the pain they inflict, they are undoubtedly aggravated tenfold.’ With regard to the supposed necessity for a person’s thus vindicating his own honour in certain cases, on the ground that the parties have no common authority to appeal to, this they flatly denied. The public opinion of the society they belong to, is that common authority. And that it is so, and is competent to decide effectually, is proved, they urged, by the very existence of duelling; for the duel itself is enforced by nothing else but public opinion. I am obliged, it is said, to challenge a man who has affronted me, because there is no authority to appeal to that will compel him to redress the injury. But what, then, compels him to accept the challenge? Nothing, but the knowledge that if he refused it, society would reject him as disgraced. Then, why should not society at once pronounce on him this sentence of disgrace for the affront itself, unless he makes a satisfactory submission? If he defies public opinion, and does not care for disgrace, he need not accept the challenge: if he does care for public opinion, then let the disgrace attach at once to the offering of the affront, instead of to the refusal of the challenge. It is manifest that those who have the power to propose the alternative, of either suffering disgrace or fighting, must have the power to discard the latter part of the alternative. Let society, therefore, but do its duty, and it is plain that it may, by a proper exertion of the power which it has, and which it actually exercises even now, restrain, and restrain much more effectually, without duelling, the very evils which duelling professes to remedy.
“As for the case of war between independent states, this,” observed Mr. Adamson, “by the way, is by no means a parallel to that of private duels. One nation does not send a challenge to another; because, as the parties really have no common authority to refer to, the aggressors would of course decline the challenge, and would prefer enjoying unmolested the fruits of their injustice. The nation, therefore, which considers itself aggrieved has no other remedy than, after complaining and demanding redress in vain, to declare war, levy troops, and commence hostilities against its opponents without waiting for their consent; and this procedure would be parallel to the case of duels only, if these were quite of a different character from what they are. If it were customary for a man who had received an affront to declare war against his neighbour, arm himself, and proceed to attack him without asking his consent, this would correspond to a war between two states. But a challenge is quite a different thing; it is an invitation which a man may either accept or decline, to meet at a time and place settled by mutual agreement, where the parties, by common consent, expose themselves to a certain specified risk. Generally, the challenge is both sent and accepted, not from motives of revenge, but from fear of public censure: but universally, the party challenged might refuse it if he were willing to brave public censure.
“So far, therefore, is a duel from being a mode of repelling injury, which a man is driven to resort to through the want of any common authority to appeal to, that, on the contrary, every duel actually rests on a tacit appeal to such an authority—viz. to public opinion; since no one could compel another to afford him the satisfaction sought except through the influence of the fear of disgrace, the other being at liberty to refuse the challenge if he dares to set public opinion at defiance. Every duel, therefore, whether actually taking place, or merely talked of and threatened, is itself a complete disproof of the plea on which duels are justified.”
CHAPTER V.
Female Honour.—Agreement among Women.—Penalty of Exclusion.—Law of Honour.—False Dignity.—New Penalty.—Compact against Duelling.—Ruffians and Calumniators.—Association against Duelling.—Court of Honour.—Abolition of Duelling.
“That public opinion, if rightly directed, is capable,” continued Mr. Adamson, “of completely affecting the desired object without the duel, even better than with it, which is what we of the present day are so happy as to know by experience, these reformers anticipated partly from the enforcement among ladies of the laws of female honour before that absurd ordeal had been instituted. Women moving in circles of good society had kept up its character, it was observed, at least as well before the ordeal came into use, and quite as well as men of a corresponding class maintained the laws of masculine honour; and this was effected simply by a tacit agreement among women of character not to associate with any woman who was known to have violated these rules. ‘If, therefore,’ said they, ‘ladies will return to this system, and gentlemen will adopt a corresponding one, the rules of good society, whatever they may be that it thinks fit to impose, will be enforced by the simple expedient of denouncing exclusion against the violators of them, absolutely, and without offering the alternative of a duel.’
“It was remarked, indeed, by some of you,” said Mr. Adamson, “that in Europe the ladies, and also some other classes of persons who are exempted from the liability to a duel, are apt to avail themselves of this exemption by a less scrupulous adherence to truth and to courtesy of language, or by throwing such aspersions on their neighbours as would involve in personal danger those not so privileged; and such instances of falsehood, insolence, and calumny were attributed by some of you to the absence of the salutary check of the duel.