f redress; the latter, by conducting it. Now, I
presume, it will be thought hopeless to arraign Society at the bar of
any earthly court, or apply any censure or any investigation to its mode
of thinking.[16] To the _principals_, for the reasons given, it would be
unjust to apply them; and the inference is, that the _seconds_ are the
parties to whom their main agency should be directed--as the parties in
whose hands lies the practical control of the whole affair, and the
whole machinery of opportunities, (so easily improved by a wise
humanity)--for sparing bloodshed, for promoting reconciliation, for
making those overtures of accommodation and generous apology which the
brave are so ready to agree to, in atonement for hasty words, or rash
movements of passion, but which it is impossible for _them_ to
originate. In short, for impressing the utmost possible spirit of
humanising charity and forbearance upon a practice which, after all,
must for ever remain somewhat of an opprobrium to a Christian people;
but which, tried by the law of worldly wisdom, is the finest bequest of
chivalry; the most economic safety-valve for man's malice that man's wit
could devise; the most absolute safe-guard of the weak against the
brutal; and, finally, (once more to borrow the words of Burke,) in a
sense the fullest and most practical, 'the cheap defence of nations;'
not indeed against the hostility which besieges from _without_, but
against the far more operative nuisance of bad passions that vex and
molest the social intercourse of men by ineradicable impulses from
within.

[16] If it be asked by what title I represent Society as authorising
(nay, as necessitating) duels, I answer, that I do not allude to any
floating opinions of influential circles in society; for these are in
continual conflict, and it may be difficult even to guess in which
direction the preponderance would lie. I build upon two undeniable
results, to be anticipated in any regular case of duel, and supported by
one uniform course of precedent:--_First_, That, in a civil adjudication
of any such case, assuming only that it has been fairly conducted, and
agreeably to the old received usages of England, no other verdict is
ever given by a jury than one of acquittal. _Secondly_, That, before
military tribunals, the result is still stronger; for the party liable
to a challenge is not merely acquitted, as a matter of course, if he
accepts it with any issue whatsoever, but is p