At Length, One Of Them, With A Supercilious Air, Asked The
Other's Name.
"I never tell my name, (said he) but
in a whisper." "You may have very good reasons for keeping it
secret," replied the first.
"I will tell you," (resumed the
other): with these words he rose; and going round to him,
pronounced, loud enough to be heard by the whole company, "Je
m'appelle Pierre Paysan; et vous etes un impertinent." "My name
is Peter Peasant, and you are an impertinent fellow." So saying,
he walked out: the interrogator followed him into the street,
where they justled, drew their swords, and engaged. He who asked
the question was run through the body; but his relations were so
powerful, that the victor was obliged to fly his country, was
tried and condemned in his absence; his goods were confiscated;
his wife broke her heart; his children were reduced to beggary;
and he himself is now starving in exile. In England we have not
yet adopted all the implacability of the punctilio. A gentleman
may be insulted even with a blow, and survive, after having once
hazarded his life against the aggressor. The laws of honour in
our country do not oblige him either to slay the person from whom
he received the injury, or even to fight to the last drop of his
own blood. One finds no examples of duels among the Romans, who
were certainly as brave and as delicate in their notions of
honour as the French. Cornelius Nepos tells us, that a famous
Athenian general, having a dispute with his colleague, who was of
Sparta, a man of a fiery disposition, this last lifted up his
cane to strike him. Had this happened to a French petit maitre,
death must have ensued: but mark what followed - The Athenian, far
from resenting the outrage, in what is now called a gentlemanlike
manner, said, "Do, strike if you please; but hear me." He never
dreamed of cutting the Lacedemonian's throat; but bore with his
passionate temper, as the infirmity of a friend who had a
thousand good qualities to overbalance that defect.
I need not expatiate upon the folly and the mischief which are
countenanced and promoted by the modern practice of duelling. I
need not give examples of friends who have murdered each other,
in obedience to this savage custom, even while their hearts were
melting with mutual tenderness; nor will I particularize the
instances which I myself know, of whole families ruined, of women
and children made widows and orphans, of parents deprived of only
sons, and of valuable lives lost to the community, by duels,
which had been produced by one unguarded expression, uttered
without intention of offence, in the heat of dispute and
altercation. I shall not insist upon the hardship of a worthy
man's being obliged to devote himself to death, because it is his
misfortune to be insulted by a brute, a bully, a drunkard, or a
madman: neither will I enlarge upon this side of the absurdity,
which indeed amounts to a contradiction in terms; I mean the
dilemma to which a gentleman in the army is reduced, when he
receives an affront: if he does not challenge and fight his
antagonist, he is broke with infamy by a court-martial; if he
fights and kills him, he is tried by the civil power, convicted
of murder, and, if the royal mercy does not interpose, he is
infallibly hanged: all this, exclusive of the risque of his own
life in the duel, and his conscience being burthened with the
blood of a man, whom perhaps he has sacrificed to a false
punctilio, even contrary to his own judgment. These are
reflections which I know your own good sense will suggest, but I
will make bold to propose a remedy for this gigantic evil, which
seems to gain ground everyday: let a court be instituted for
taking cognizance of all breaches of honour, with power to punish
by fine, pillory, sentence of infamy, outlawry, and exile, by
virtue of an act of parliament made for this purpose; and all
persons insulted, shall have recourse to this tribunal: let every
man who seeks personal reparation with sword, pistol, or other
instrument of death, be declared infamous, and banished the
kingdom: let every man, convicted of having used a sword or
pistol, or other mortal weapon, against another, either in duel
or rencountre, occasioned by any previous quarrel, be subject to
the same penalties: if any man is killed in a duel, let his body
be hanged upon a public gibbet, for a certain time, and then
given to the surgeons: let his antagonist be hanged as a
murderer, and dissected also; and some mark of infamy be set on
the memory of both. I apprehend such regulations would put an
effectual stop to the practice of duelling, which nothing but
the fear of infamy can support; for I am persuaded, that no
being, capable of reflection, would prosecute the trade of
assassination at the risque of his own life, if this hazard
was at the same time reinforced by the certain prospect of
infamy and ruin. Every person of sentiment would in that case
allow, that an officer, who in a duel robs a deserving woman
of her husband, a number of children of their father, a family
of its support, and the community of a fellow-citizen, has as
little merit to plead from exposing his own person, as a
highwayman, or housebreaker, who every day risques his life
to rob or plunder that which is not of half the importance
to society. I think it was from the Buccaneers of America,
that the English have learned to abolish one solecism in
the practice of duelling: those adventurers decided their
personal quarrels with pistols; and this improvement
has been adopted in Great Britain with good success; though
in France, and other parts of the continent, it is looked
upon as a proof of their barbarity.
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