When we trust life, and liberty, and property, in the hands of men, we desire some pledge of their fidelity. But what pledge can the duellist give? His religious principle is nothing-his moral principle is nothing. His honour is your only security. But is this sufficient? Are the temptations of power so feeble; is the public and private interest so inseparable; are the opportunities of fraud so few, that amid the projects of ambition, the cravings of avarice, and the conflicts of party, there is no need of conscience to guarantee the integrity of rulers? The law of honour, were its maxims obeyed perfectly, would afford no security. "It is "a system of rules constructed by people of fashion, and "calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another, "and for no other purpose*." It is the guardian of honourable men only. The public good is out of the questionright and wrong are terms unknown in this code. Its sole object is to enable unprincipled men to live together with politeness and good humour-Men, whom neither the laws of their country nor the retributions of eternity can restrain from acts of mutual outrage; who, by the expectation of instant death, by the pistol at the breast only, are restrained from unchristian provocation, and drilled into good behaviour. It is for the interest of this noble portion of the human race that honour legislates. But for you, the common people, the ignoble vulgar, it has no concern.

Hence the honour of a duelling legislator does not restrain him in the least from innumerable crimes, which affect most sensibly the peace of society. He may contemn the Saviour of men, and hate and oppose the religion of his country. He may be a Julian in bitterness, and by swearing cause the earth to mourn.-In passion a whirlwind-in cruelty to tenants, to servants and to his family, a tiger. He may be a gambler, a prodigal, a fornicator, an adulterer, a drunkard, a murderer, and not violate the laws of honour. Nay, honour not only tolerates, but in many instances it is the direct and only temptation to crime.

What has torn yonder wretches from the embraces of

their wives and their children, and hurried them to the field of blood-to the confines of hell? Look! what nerves those arms, rising to sport with life and heaven? It is honour-the pledge of patriotism-the evidence of rectitude! Ah, it is done! The blood streams. The victim welters on the ground. And see, the victor savage running from the field, and hasting to the embraces of his country, to offer his services, and to pledge his honour, that your lives and your rights shall be safe in his hand! Nor is this the only case where honour becomes the temptation to crime; it operates in all cases where the maxims of this infernal combination have attached disgrace to the performance of duty, and honour to the perpetration of iniquity. And beside the crimes which honour tolerates, and the scarcely inferior number which it enjoins, there are a variety of cases where it will not restrain from treacheries confessedly dishonourable.

What security can a mere man of honour give that he will not betray your interest, in every case where it can be done without detection? What shall secure you when the price of perfidy is so high as to compensate for the disgrace of an honourable sale*? What, where attachment to the public good would sacrifice popularity? For in this case the more tender his regard to reputation and dread of disgrace, the more certainly will he abandon the public good and pursue his private interest. What also, when he may follow a multitude to do evil, and annihilating his disgrace by dividing it with many? What, when his reputation is already gone, before his term of service or his ability to do mischief expires? What, in those numberless cases where imagined ingratitude on the part of the people shall impel wounded pride to an honourable revenge? What, where the disgrace of poverty, as often happens, is more dreaded than the disgrace of a dishonest act?

* A prime minister of England, after much experience, said that every man had his price, and applied to men who have no fear of God before them-who have no pledge of rectitude but "What will the world think of me?" I doubt not at all the justice of his opinion.

It is said, I know, that a man's principles and his private character are nothing to us. If his ability be adequate, and his politics correct, and his public conduct as yet irreproachable, this is sufficient. But are you prepared to be the dupes of such wild absurdity? According to this sentiment, a man may set his mouth against the heavens-he may be a drunkard in the intervals of official duty, a prodigal, a tyrant, a mere savage in his family; and still be trumpeted by unprincipled politicians and electioneering handbills, as the great champion of liberty, the very Atlas on whose shoulders rests the destiny of his country.

But what is a man's political creed-what is his past conformity to your wishes, when his profligate private life demonstrates that he is prepared to betray you the first moment he shall find it for his interest? Dispense, with moral principle and private virtue, and all is gone. You can find no substitute; honour is a cobweb, and patriotism an empty name, in the hour of trial. The single circumstance that neither the interest nor the reputation of the duellist will come in competition with your interest, is your only security that, if able, he will not sport with your liberties as wantonly as he has sported, or is prepared to sport, with the life of his neighbour.

Admit that there are instances in which men destitute of principle have acted with integrity in public stations; can you tell me how many thousands have betrayed their trust for want of it? These are exempt cases. The persons did not happen to be tempted. But do you desire no better pledge of rectitude than the mere absence of temptation ?— Will you confide in thieves and swindlers to legislate, because two in a thousand, though utterly unprincipled, have found it for their interest not to cheat you?

It is in trying emergencies, when the price of perfidy is high, and temptation imperious, that unprincipled men are weighed in the balance and found wanting. And will you appoint cowards or traitors to command your armies, because they might auswer in time of peace? Or intrust your B

lives to quacks in medicine, because, under slight indispo sitions, they might suffice to administer herb-drink?

Why does this lingering confidence in the duellist still survive the extinction of moral principle? One crime of equal magnitude in any other case, would decide his fate for ever. The failing merchant, convicted of dishonesty, is recorded a knave; the receipt of a bribe is irrevocable infamy; perjury cancels for ever all confidence; the thief solicits in vain the public suffrage; the highway robber can find none to exercise charity, none to palliate his crime; and the common murderer, might he live, would be doomed to linger out a life of disgusting infamy. But the duellist, who, in cold blood, or with bitter malice and burning rage, murders his neighbour, can find enough to exercise charity and palliate his crime; a whole state, a whole nation to testify by their votes that they consider it nothing.

But, alas! the duellist, frail man, is overcome by tempta tion. He has peculiar sensibilities, habits of education, and modes of thinking, which in this one case lead him astray, without inferring at all a general deficiency of principle, religious or moral.

In plain language, because the duellist is educated a duellist, the crime of wilful murder in him is very small, and is consistent with religious and moral principle. If men, then, are only educated to thieving, assassination, and robbery-if, by habit and false reasoning, they are so familiarized to crime as to rob, and steal, and destroy life without much consciousness of guilt, then, indeed, they are very honest men, and are fit to superintend the affairs of the nation.

But were it admitted, did we even know that some one duellist was in fact a man of principle, and overcome by stress of temptation only, would it be proper to confide in him as a legislator? Would you, had his crime been common murder, an act of robbery or perjury, though you knew he had been surprised or thrust into it by powerful temptation? Would it not manifest him, if not unprincipled, at least too feeble and flexible to stand before the nu

merous and powerful temptations to which his situation would expose him. A coward may be an honest man, but certainly a coward should not be intrusted with the command of armies. Beside this lightly passing over crimes of the deepest dye, I may even say this rewarding them with the profits and honours of the state, confounds in the public mind the distinctions between virtue and vice, and weakens that abhorrence of crime which is the guardian of public morality. Elevate swindlers to office, and who shall guarantee the integrity of the common people? Elevate adulterers, and who punish incontinence? Elevate murderers, and who will be the avengers of blood?

But, waving all moral considerations, what security have we that the duellist will not, if intrusted with our liberties, desert us in the hour of danger? What security can we have, when it is in the power of every factious rival who can shoot strait, to compel him to the field; and by destroying his life, to derange, perhaps to annihilate, our government? What if Washington, in the crisis of our fate, had fallen in a duel? What, if our Governor, our Senators, our Judges, were so infatuated with the madness of honour, that in the moment of peril they could give us no security of their constancy, but that no person would tempt them to hazard their lives and jeopardy their country?

4. The system of duelling is a system of absolute despotism, tending directly and powerfully to the destruction of civil liberty.

A free government is a government of laws, made by the people for the protection of life, property, and reputa tion. A despotic government is where life and all its blessings are subject to the caprice of an individual. Those maxims and practices, therefore, which remove life, reputation, &c. from under the protection of law, and subject them to the caprice of an individual, are the very essence of despotism.-Nor is it material whether this is done by open violence, or by the application of unlawful motives, which as effectually answer the purpose, Every man