“Not too severe, Walter. Saunders, you acknowledge, spoke and acted hastily and improperly at first, and he must have known that he had done so. Now the true moral courage would have been shown in his confessing that he was wrong, and expressing sorrow for it.”
“What! to a bargee!”
“Yes, to a bargee, Walter. The world might have called him mean or cowardly for such a confession, but he would have shown true moral courage and nobility for all that. To do what will give pain to others rather than incur the reproach of cowardice is really acting under the tyranny of a mean and slavish fear of man, though it may be a plucky thing in the eyes of the World.”
“Ah, well, auntie, that is certainly a new view of things to me; and I suppose, then, you would apply the same test to duelling,—affairs of honour, as they used to be called?”
“Most certainly so, Walter. The duellist is one of the worst of moral cowards.”
“Ah! but,” cried the other, “to fight a duel used to be considered a very plucky thing, and it really was so, auntie.”
“I don’t doubt it, Walter; but it was a very immoral thing also. Happily, public opinion has quite changed on the subject of duelling in our own country, and no doubt this has been owing indirectly to the spread of a truer religious tone amongst us. But what could be more monstrous than the prevailing feeling about duelling a few years ago, as I can well remember it in my young days. Why, duelling was at that time the highroad to a reputation for courage, and the man who refused to fight was frowned upon in good society, and in some places scouted from it. And—I say it with the deepest shame—my own sex greatly helped to keep up this feeling; for the man who had fought the most duels was, with the ladies of his own neighbourhood, for the most part, an object of special admiration and favour.
“And yet, what nobility or moral courage was there in the man who gave or accepted the challenge? Just think of what the consequences might be, and what the ground of the quarrel often was. A hasty word, or even a mere thoughtless breach of etiquette, would bring a challenge; and the person called out must not decline to meet his challenger, and give him ‘satisfaction,’ as it was called, in the shape of a pistol bullet, under pain of being cut by all his friends and acquaintances as a coward. So a man who was a husband and father would steal away from his home early in the morning, and go out to some lonely spot and meet the man whom he had offended, and be murdered in cold blood, and carried back a bleeding corpse to his miserable widow and fatherless children, just because he could not bear to be called a coward by the world. And to call this ‘satisfaction!’ The devil never palmed upon his poor deluded slaves a more transparent lie.
“Just think of two men, for instance, who had been friends for years, and in some unguarded moment had used intemperate language towards each other. Their companions tell them that this is a matter for giving and receiving satisfaction. So, in perfectly cold blood, with the most ceremonious politeness, the time and place of meeting are fixed by the seconds, who make all arrangements for their principals; and at the time appointed these two men stand face to face, with no malice, it may be, in either heart, feeling rather that there were faults on both sides, and at any rate no more wrong done or intended than a little mutual forbearance and concession might easily set right. And yet there they stand; at a given signal aim each at the other’s heart; and, if that aim is true, each is murdered by his brother, and hurried in a moment red-handed into the awful presence of his Maker and Judge. And this used to be called ‘satisfaction,’ and the man who refused to give it was branded as a coward. And such was the tyranny of this fashion which Satan had imposed upon thinking and immortal men, that rarely indeed was a man found who had the true moral courage to refuse to fight a duel when challenged to do so.”
“Ah then, auntie,” said her nephew, “you would give the laurels for moral courage to the man who declined to fight.”