he 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