[40] In one of Dr Johnson's various conversations with Boswell and others, on the subject of duelling, he said, "A man is sufficiently punished [for an injury] by being called out, and subjected to the risk that is in a duel. But," continues Boswell, "on my suggesting that the injured person is equally subjected to risk, he fairly owned he could not explain the rationality of duelling." It will be remembered that, in previous conversations, the Doctor had endeavoured to do so, by various unsatisfactory and sophistical reasons; and one of his arguments, recorded by Boswell, was quoted by the counsel of Mr Stuart, when tried for having shot in a duel Sir Alexander Boswell, the eldest son of Boswell!
[41] Townsend, vol. i. p. 170-171.
[42] Ibid., p. 154-5.
[43] Townsend, vol. i. p. 152.
[44] Ibid., p. 162.
[45] Ibid., p. 163.
[46] Regina v. Young. 8 Carr and Payne, 644.
[47] In opening the case against Lord Cardigan, at the bar of the House of Lords, the Attorney-General, (now Lord Campbell,) of course speaking from erroneous instructions, imputed to Lord Cardigan the utterance of a most unbecoming and offensive expression,—"Do you think I would condescend to fight with one of my own officers?" We are satisfied that no such language could have fallen from a British officer; and the evidence shows that it did not in point of fact.
[48] Vol. i. p. 210.
[49] It was called "the Waltham Black Act," as occasioned by the devastations committed near Waltham, in Hampshire, by persons disguised, and with blackened faces—"who seem" says Blackstone, "to have resembled the followers of Robert Hood, who in the reign of Richard I. committed such great outrages on the borders of England and Scotland."—4 Black. Com. 245.