peration, by a mere spectre of the imagination-by a public opinion which has no being? Are we not bound to teach them their mistake, if it be such-to wrest from their hands this mere pretence, if it be no more? 8. Withholding the public suffrage from duellists is the only method in which there is the least prospect of arresting the practice of duelling. We may reason, and ridicule, and lament, and remonstrate, and threaten, and legislate, and multiply penalties, and the evil will still progress. Environed by the subtilties of law, and shielded by the perverted patronage of men in office, regardless of your grief, and fearless of your indignation, they will laugh at your zeal and defy your efforts. There is no way to deal with these men but to make them feel their dependence on the people, and no way to effect this but to take the punishment of their crimes into our own hands. Our conscience must be the judge, and we must ourselves convict, and fine, and disgrace them at the polls. Here, and no where beside, will our voice be heard, and our will become law. 9. The evils justly to be apprehended from the continuance of duelling, call loudly upon us to awake in earnest to this subject, and apply with vigour the proposed remedy. It every year robs our country of men qualified, (this epidemic madness excepted,) for extensive usefulness. It cuts down our young men, and fills the land with widows and with orphans. The tax is too heavy; the victims offered to Moloch are too numerous. Might the evil, however, be confined to its present limits, it would be less intolerable; but we have no ground to indulge such a hope. In Europe, where duelling originated, the great inequality of rank has prevented usually the practice from descending to the common walks of life. It is there the unenvied privilege of great men to kill one another. But in our own country there is no such barrier. The genius of our government has inspired every man with a spirit of independence and self-importance-a spirit desirable, when duly regulated, but dreadful when perverted; and in young men, especially, very liable to be perverted. We are all honourable men; and if the laws of the land are insufficient to protect the reputation of one man, they are equally defective to all. If the military officer, the civil officer, and the lawyer, must take the protection of their reputation into their own hands, so may the merchant, the merchant's clerk, the gentleman, and the gentleman's son; so may the mechanic, the farmer, and the planter. And they not only may, but they will do it, if an end be not put to this lawless practice. The horrid evil will not be confined to cities; it will break out in the country. It will stalk through our towns, and desolate our villages. Let not these anticipations be deemed chimerical; they are legitimate inferences from the known principles of the human mind, and the peculiar situation of our country; and they are justified also by experience. The mad example of Charles V. and Francis I. king of France, descended like a mighty torrent from the highest elevations of rank, down to the humble vale of private life. Through all Europe the pulse of honour began to throb, and all orders of men caught the fever. The nobleman, and the nobleman's servant; the general, and the common soldier; the lawyer, the merchant, the tailor, and the hair-dresser, became suddenly inflated with the inspirations of honour. The forms of law were disregarded-every man became his own judge, his own protector and avenger, until in this crusade of honour, the earth smoked with the blood of its miserable inhabitants. "Much of the best blood in christendom was shed; many useful lives sacrificed, and, at some periods, war itself hath hardly been more destructive, than these private contests of honour*." In our own country, and by a similar infatuation, duelling is steadily progressing; the example of great men and rulers is sweeping all before it, and is bending its destroying course to the vale of common life. Several instances have come recently to my knowledge, of challenges given by those whom our grandfathers would have called boys, * Modern Europe. to adjust by weapons of death their hasty disputes. Already, and far remote from cities, does the vapour of honour begin to swell, with fancied importance, many a striplingleading him to threaten what as yet he has not courage to perform. This shows what effect the frequency of the crime, and the impunity attending it, is beginning to have upon youthful minds. The leaven has begun to operate; and if no stop be put to it, the time is not distant when every petty quarrel of hot-headed young men, must be adjusted by powder and ball. In the southern and western states such events are already frequent. The youth extensively are enrolled on the list of honour, and are bound to attack and defend according to its rules. Expertness in firing the pistol is a qualification of indispensable attainment, and the sabbath is often devoted to the most christian employment of learning to shoot expertly. The genius of our government favours, also, not only the descent of the practice, but it multiplies exceedingly, and to an unlimited extent, the occasions of duelling. Political disputes are the usual provocation. These display their influence through every grade of society. As our country populates, and increases in wealth, luxury, and vice; as parties multiply and become ardent, these controversies will naturally become more keen and vindictive, until duelling, in spite of us, will become a common alternative; until elections will turn often, not on the merits of the candidate, but on his superior skill in aiming the pistol to destroy his competitor. Already, in certain parts of the union, I have been assured that duelling is not an unknown expedient to secure an election, by removing out of the way a rival candidate. Indeed, in the city of New-York, and in a public paper, it has been declared that at a certain period there was a systematic scheme formed to take off, by duelling, certain leading characters, who were likely to impede the projects at that time in contemplation. The fact asserted is in itself by no means incredible-it is a natural consequence of duelling; just what might be expected-and the duels which took place about that time, and the characters engaged, clothe the subject with an air of high probability. Nor are the immediate effects of duelling the only consequences to be dreaded. The impunity attending the erime, the confidence reposed in duellists, and the honours bestowed upon them, contribute to diminish in the public mind, the guilt of crimes generally. There is a relationship in crimes which renders familiarity with one, a harbinger to familiarity with another. The wretch who has destroyed two or three fellow-creatures in a duel, will feel little compunction at any crime. Nor can the moral sensibilities of a people familiarized to murder in duels, and accustomed to look upon criminals of this description with confidence and respect, be preserved in full strength in reference to other crimes. Duelling, therefore, while it destroys directly its thousands, destroys by its depraving influence its tens of thousands. I would, therefore, again urge an immediate and vigorous exertion to suppress this evil, 10. From the consideration that the present is perhaps the only time. The practice of duelling is rapidly progressing-disseminating its infection, and deadening the public sensibility. The effect already is great and alarming. If not, why does the crime shrink before the stern justice of New-England, and rear its guilty head in New-York, and stalk with bolder front as you pass onward to the south? If the effect is not great, why this distinction in crimes of the same grade -why so alive to the guilt of robbery, assassination, and murder of one kind, and so dead to the guilt of duelling? If the effect of duelling upon the public mind is not great, why is it that murder can be committed in open day? the crime notorious, nay, detailed in the newspaper, and the murderer remain unmolested in his dwelling? Why does he not flee? Why is he not advertised? Why are not rewards offered by those authorized by the laws, and express es hastened in all directions, to arrest and bring to justice the guilty fugitive? Because no one is enough shocked at his crime to make these arrangements. Because, if such measures were taken, the public mind would awake from i D torpor duelling would become a disgraceful crime, and the criminal would be lost to himself and to his country. He could neither be Governor, nor Senator, nor Judge. He would be exiled from public favour, immured in a dungeon, transported to the gallows, and launched into eternity. If the prevalence of duelling has not, and to an awful degree, affected the public mind, why such a number of half-apologists for the crime; and how can we so patiently hear and candidly weigh, and almost admit their arguments? Could you hear, with equal patience, assassination justified, though (as it well might be) by arguments equally conclusive?Why is it, if this deadly evil has not already palsied the feelings of the community, that even the members of our churches have heretofore, with so little hesitation, voted for men of blood? Is christianity compatible with murder? Can you patronize the murderer by granting him your suffrage, and not become a partaker in his sin? Admit as the mildest, and as in general the true construction, that this has been done by christians ignorantly, not knowing often that those for whom they voted were duellists, or inconsiderately not realizing the enormity of the crime-why did they not know-why did they not consider? The reason is obvious "Vice is a monster of so frightful mein, We have sunk This is precisely our alarming state. through all these grades of moral degradation. We endure, we pity, we embrace murderers. And what will be next? A total apathy to crime. What is done, therefore, must be done quickly.-Let the maxims of duelling once break out, and spread in the country, and infect the rising generation; let the just abhorrence of the community be a little more effaced by the growing frequency of the crime, and we are undone. Theré is no place to make a stand. Our liberties are gone-our bands are brass, and our fetters iron-no man's life is safe |