Simple subscription to the above agreement, without regard of religious or political connexion, shall constitute membership in this Association.

"The subscribers shall be convened in general meeting, whenever the committee shall judge it necessary."

*000*

The committee also reported an Address to the Electors of this State, which was in like manner agreed to.

On motion,

Resolved, That a committee of twenty-one be appointed to procure subscriptions to the agreement now adopted, to fill up the blanks therein*, and to prepare a list of persons proper to compose the standing committee of the association: and report the same to a meeting of the subscribing electors as soon as possible.

Resolved, That the committee appointed, cause the proceedings of this meeting to be published.

By order of the Meeting,

JOHN BROOME, Chairman.

LEBBEUS LOOMIS, Secretary.

* The 1st blank has been filled by the Committee with fifty, and the 2d with fifteen.

The following is the Address.

TO THE ELECTORS OF THE STATE OF NEW-YORK

A number of your fellow-citizens solicit your attention to a subject of great and common interest. They address you not as adherents to any political or ecclesiastical party; but as men who abhor that atheism which rejects the authority and government of God-as citizens who feel the impor tance of making the law respected; and who know that the impunity of crime tends to destroy both public order and private happiness, with all the security of property, liberty, and life-as friends, brothers, fathers of families, to whom the social charities are sacred; and who can never hold cheap the blood of such as are united to them in the tenderest ties of amity, of nature, and of love. They call upon you to consider and resist the prevalence of a crime which strikes at you in all these relations; which has hitherto eluded, but too successfully, the several efforts to suppress it; and which, emboldened by past impunity, threatens to leave nothing safe of all that is venerable and valuable in human life-the crime of DUELLING.

They need not prove the absurdity and atrocity of a practice which cannot reckon among its advocates a single wise or good man. Few, even of the abandoned, venture to apologize for it upon any other principle than this, that " it is a means, however bad, which the state of society renders necessary for the protection of person and character; and that if one should not resent an insult by calling out its author, or should decline a challenge from another, he would become an object of universal contempt, liable to the meanest affronts, and incapable of retaining his place among men of diguity and spirit. Briefly, that PUBLIC OPINION, which regulates private honour, is in favour of Duelling, and compels one to sacrifice his reason, his conscience, and his wishes, to the respectability of his social standing."

Thus the duellist, assuming it as fact, that he is to be rewarded with the approbation of the community, flies to his weapons of death; sates his revenge with blood; and produces PUBLIC OPINION as the the warrant for his murders.

On the morality of this doctrine it would be superfluous to comment. There can be but one judgment pronounced upon it by all who recognize the distinction between right and wrong, as originating in a higher source than human custom. But if the allegation of fact is correct; if the duellist has rightly estimated the public opinion; if it is true that the American people look with satisfaction upon deeds which fill every virtuous mind with horror and dismay, then is our condition dreadful indeed.

We cannot submit to such a libel upon the understanding and the morals of this nation. Public opinion is merely the collective opinion of individuals. To be known, it must be expressed. And when, where, how, has it been expressed in favour of duelling? Let the man be produced who has, from principle, refused either to give or accept a challenge, and has been pursued by public reprobation!

The true expression of public opinion is to be sought in the religion of the land; in its laws; and in the conversation of its inhabitants.

The religion of the land is decisive; that religion which is received by the people of the United States as of divine authority, and which has interdicted not only the matured act, but all incitements to the commission of it.

The laws of the land are decisive. They speak death to the man who kills another in a duel. They speak degradation and infamy to every one who, in any manner, assists in a duel. But the laws are merciful.-They will not allow of any avoidable risk of punishing the innocent. And the guilty, availing himself of their precaution, and of the facility of escape created by different jurisdictions, eludes their blow, and in the very act of shrinking from this expression of the public will, pleads public opinion in his own vindication!

The private circle is decisive. Go through the State from house to house-number the patrons of duelling; and when you have found them one in a thousand of our independent electors, begin to speak of their opinion. Shall we, then, hear that our opinions collectively are in diametrical contradiction to our opinions separately? And that the public applauds a practice which every one who contributes to make up that public, a handful of the desperate excepted, pronounces to be senseless and wicked? Yet strong as the facts are; full, peremptory, solemn and habitual as are the expressions of public opinion against duelling, without one solitary expression in its favour, this baneful practice, the offspring of barbarous manners, and bloody passions, is still fathered upon public opinion! And, what is deeply alarming, gains rapidly among our citizens-gains, in opposition to all the expostulations of reason, and all the sanctions of religion; in opposition to the rebuke of the law; to the testimony of the wise and good; to the protestations of common humanity; to the tears of the widow, and the sorrows of the orphan; to the agonies of a father's bosom, and the yearnings of a mother's bowels; to all that is affecting in this world, and all that is tremendous in the world to come!

Are we fathers? Are we brothers? Are we citizens? Are we men? And shall we permit a crime, the reproach of our land and the scourge of our peace, to stalk openly and impudently through our streets? Are we to tremble every hour of our lives, lest a brother or a son, on whom rest our fairest hopes, cross our threshold in the morning to be brought back, at noon, a victim to that Moloch-modern honour; and as the sword passes through our souls, to be told, that we invited its point, and bribed the assassin, by our own complacency in his character?

But what shall be done? Reason has spoken, and she is disregarded. Religion has spoken, and she is mocked. The laws have spoken, and they are defied. Humanity has spoken, and she is insulted. This is unhappily true. One measure, however, still remains. A measure simple, digni

fied, and probably more effectual than any which has been tried hitherto. It is, in the elective franchise. The freemen of this state have only to refuse their countenance and their VOTE at the elections to every man who shall hereafter be engaged, either as principal or accessary, in a duel, or in any attempt to promote one. As the utmost art is used by offenders in this way to frustrate the law by rendering the requisite proof impossible, nothing more is necessary to cut them off from the benefit of their ill-gotten impunity, than to make current report, or one's private persuasion, by what means soever obtained, the ground of withholding one's

vote.

That the influence of such a determination, if generally adopted and acted upon, would be very great, cannot admit of a doubt. The only plausible objections are the two following:

1. That a Judgment founded upon presumptive proof, such as common rumour, or an article in the public prints, might condemn an innocent man; and

2. That the measure recommended may interfere with the freedom of elections.

Upon the first objection it is sufficient to remark, that should the case even occur, that a candidate for office should fail in his election from an unjust suspicion of his having been concerned in a duel, it would be still much better that an individual should be kept out of an office to which he has no right but the people's gift, than that an atrocious crime should go longer without coercion. The injury, if any, would flow, not from the vote, but from the suspicion which existed prior to it, and therefore could be no way occasioned by it.

But such a case is so extremely improbable, as not to be of any weight in the contemplation of a grand social reform. Among all those to whom a general and permanent suspicion has attached on this subject, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to point out an instance of mistake. And should a mistake happen hereafter, the person accused,