stant, efficacious, and innocuous motive. For there is in civilized society a force which, when undisturbed by prejudices, is fully competent to produce, in the greatest degree, that object which the duel is vainly intended to produce; to which force also, be it observed, the duel owes all the efficacy which it can be supposed to possess; we mean, of course, the force of public opinion. It is the terror of general disapprobation which really creates whatever of refinement is to be found in our manners, not the terror of wounds or death, for these the offender can avoid if he pleases, but he can only avoid them by encountering the more dreadful punishment of ignominy, which few indeed can bring themselves to endure. Can it be doubted that if the punishment of ignominy fall at once upon the man who offers an insult (as, but for the practice of duelling, it most assuredly would fall), its efficacy would be far greater in repressing insults, than when it falls only (as it does under the duelling system) upon him who offers an insult and refuses to give satisfaction if required, and upon him who receives an insult and fails to demand satisfaction. All the instances in which rudeness is now restrained by the fear of a duel are so many proofs of the omnipotence of public opinion; for what else compels a man to the alternative of curbing his insolence, or exposing his life?

It may make this matter clearer to consider a hypothetical

case:

Suppose, then, two nations having both reached such a degree of refinement that the behaviour of a man who should call another a liar would be generally considered very offensive. Suppose further that the custom of duelling did not exist in the one and did exist in the other. If a man felt that he could endure ignominy, he might give the lie without restraint in either society. But if, which is the far more common case, he felt that he could not endure ignominy, then in the first society he must of necessity abstain from giving the lie, for there is nothing in such a society which can prevent the public disapprobation from falling upon him if he does not abstain, just as it falls in the actual state of society in England, upon all those whose offences are not punishable by duel. But in the second society, the man who does not encounter ignominy may nevertheless gratify the brutal insolence of his disposition provided he dares to encounter personal danger, he has even a great chance of escaping both ignominy and danger if he choose well the object of his attack. Therefore, as the efficacy of punishment is, cæteris paribus, in proportion to its certainty, it seems impossible to escape from the conclusion that there would be fewer instances of the lie given in the first society, than in the last. It is indeed difficult to

conceive how the character of a bully, in all its shades and degrees, would be an object of ambition to any one, in a country where the law is too strong to suffer actual assaults to be committed with impunity, where public opinion is powerful, and duelling not permitted; but, where duelling is in full vigour, it is very easy to understand that the bully may not only enjoy the delight of vulgar applause, but the advantages of real power.

This view of the subject appears to us to exhibit so distinctly, that the efficacy of duelling (abstracting from the mischiefs it produces directly) is nothing more than the weakened and diverted efficacy of public opinion, that at the risk of being tedious we shall repeat the argument over again in a general form, thus:

If a man fears not the disapprobation of the society in which he lives, the custom of duelling cannot prevent him from insulting whomsoever he pleases, for there is no process, save the public censure, by which he can be compelled to fight.

If a man does fear the disapprobation of the society in which he lives, he would be more effectually restrained from insulting others if that disapprobation were the direct and inevitable consequence of such a proceeding, than when it is only the remote and uncertain consequence.

The disapprobation of the society is only the remote and uncertain consequence of offering an insult under the system of duelling, for the offender may at his pleasure commute it into personal danger, and has some chance of escaping it without any commutation, and even throwing it upon the injured party.

If the system of duelling did not exist, the disapprobation of the society would be the direct and inevitable consequence of offering an insult; for it is necessarily admitted by our opponents, that an insult is a hurtful action, and we see that upon all those hurtful actions to which the duel is not applied, the disapprobation of the society does fall with undivided force; it falls too even upon those hurtful actions to which the duel is in general applied, when they are performed by a class of persons privileged from challenge. Thus if a churchman is guilty of a gross insult, the weight of the public censure falls with undivided force upon him, his character suffers severely, and by the frequent repetition of such conduct would be utterly destroyed-while that of the injured party is held in the same estimation as it was before the affront. It seems impossible to assign any reason why the same punishment should not fall upon every one who offends in the same way, if the public censure were not diverted from its proper object by the institution of the duel.

Let us imagine that a Chinese, who had been some time resident in this country, were thus to address an Englishman :

"I have not failed to remark, since I came to England, that many gross actions and expressions, which in my own country are common among all ranks, are here confined to the lowest orders, and I am informed that any person belonging to the superior classes of society, who should so far forget his good breeding as to be guilty of such actions or expressions, would immediately forfeit his right to be admitted into the company of his equals. Yet I was present some time ago at a party, where, in the heat of a dispute, one person gave another very plainly to understand, that he doubted the truth of an assertion which the latter had made. I could perceive by the altered countenance of the person so addressed, that a great breach of good manners had been committed, and indeed the cheerfulness of the whole company was in a great measure subdued, and notwithstanding the efforts made by the master of the house, was never effectually revived during the evening. Yet to my great astonishment, I have since found, that the culprit is received in the same houses, and treated with the same respect as before. This anomaly has puzzled me extremely, and I should be much obliged to you to explain it to me."

The difficulty of the Chinese would, as it appears to us, be most natural and reasonable, the Englishman would, indeed, be able to explain it by unfolding to him the system of duelling and its consequences, that is, by pointing out to him that the disapprobation which would naturally have fallen upon the offender, was diverted by this institution, and discharged upon the person who had failed to resent and to avenge the affront; in no other way would it be possible to account for so extravagant an aberration of public censure.

It has been said for duelling, as it has been said for prizefighting, and as it might be said, with equal force, for every other violation of good order, that if you close up this vent for the angry passions of mankind, another will soon be forced open, and that instead of duels you will have assassinations. To refute this supposition an appeal may be confidently made to actual experience. The two great nations of antiquity were unacquainted with this boasted institution, yet their history furnishes no ground whatever for supposing that they were addicted to the practice of private assassination. The duellist, however, will object to these examples as inadmissible for the purpose; for the Greeks and Romans, he will say, were such coarse and vulgar fellows, so insensible to the point of honour, that they suffered themselves to be called, rogue, thief, and

liar, without ever showing or even feeling the resentment which becomes a gentleman, but we must not thence infer, that in these more enlightened and refined times, when honour is dearer than life, and must not be sullied even by the breath of suspición, that the higher orders of society will consent to forego the privilege of mutual slaughter in some shape or other. To such a reasoner we hesitate not to reply, that if these ferocious and vindictive passions which can only be slaked in human blood, which can only be restrained from using the knife of the assassin, by being indulged with the pistol of the duellist, if these passions, we say, are to be considered as the characteristics of an enlightened and refined state of society, it becomes the duty of every friend to morality and good order to pray for the return of darkness and barbarism.

There is not, however, any necessity to refer to the history of remote times in order to prove this point, for there is actually existing before our eyes a body of men to whose irascible passions the safety valve of the duel has never been applied, who yet have never been accused of a propensity to assassination; and as this body of men is distinguished from the rest of the upper classes, rather by a greater than by a less degree of politeness, it furnishes at the same time a practical proof of the proposition which we have already demonstrated in another way, namely, the proposition that duelling tends rather to retard than to advance the refinement of manners. The body we speak of is, of course, the clergy of England as they now exist: whatever faults may have been laid to their charge, certainly neither a predilection for murder, nor a want of exterior propriety, is among the number. Now how does this happen? What possible reason can be assigned, why a churchman should not give vent to angry and contemptuous feelings, by angry and contemptuous gestures and expressions, as frequently as a layman: a man in holy orders is still a man, he does not change his nature with the colour of his coat; nor is there any ground for supposing that young gentlemen are moved to become candidates for ordination, because they feel that the acrid and caustic ingredients of human nature are wanting in their idiosyncrasy on the contrary it will not be disputed that people go into the church, as into any other profession, because they suppose that they have a fair prospect of advancing their fortunes in that direction. To us the reason is manifest. If a priest indulge in abusive epithets, or otherwise conduct himself offensively, he gains nothing but the momentary gratification of passion, with the certainty of a most severe retribution, Whereas a layman in the same circumstances not only assuages

his wrath, but acquires moreover the reputation of a certain reckless gallantry, which varnishes over and conceals from observation and from censure, the insolence and brutality of his conduct. It is of no avail to say, that society requires a more strict observation of decorum in the ministers of religion than in the rest of the community; for the question is not how much society requires, but how it can enforce what it does require. And if, when the effect of its censures is not impeded by the duel, it can enforce the greater degree of propriety, it seems no strained inference to conclude, that if the same advantage was afforded by the universal suppression of duelling, it would be able to enforce, by the same means, that less degree of propriety which is expected from the rest of the upper classes.

These are the reasons which have appeared to us conclusive of the question, so conclusive indeed, so much stronger than the imbecility of the subject seems to demand, that we have several times doubted, in the course of the discussion, whether we were not wasting efforts which ought rather to be directed against more plausible errors. But it is to be remembered, that however poorly the custom we are attacking may be fortified with reasons, it is fenced round on every side with a triple row of prejudices. And this must be our excuse to our readers (for we feel that some excuse may be expected) for having crushed with the force of argument a system, which when exposed to the light, crumbles into dust by the spontaneous operation of its

own rottenness.

ART. III.

Voyage d'un jeune Français en Angleterre et en Ecosse, pendant l'automne de 1823. Par A. Blanqui. 8vo. 1825.

THE HE book we are now going to notice is neither the work of a slanderer of our women, our institutions and our manners, like the famous performance of the Knight of the Hulks, alias the Chevalier Pillet; nor is it the production of an outrageous Anglomane, furious in defence of every thing English, for no other reason than because he misunderstands our language, and can misapply some misquoted passages from our poetry: but it is the genuine effusion of a genuine Frenchman, sufficiently inclined to libéralisme of all kinds, and equally disposed to regard with indulgence the barbarism of our customs, and with horror our treatment of his great idol Bonaparte. It is in short a publication, which will be looked upon in the French provinces, and among certain classes in the French capital itself, as an authority on the subject of England; and it is on this