right." Now-a-days
nobody believes that skill with a pistol is going to be specially
bestowed by the Almighty, without diligent practice at a mark.
Accordingly, the idea of a divine interposition has long ago dropped out
of the question, and duelling is exclusively in the hands of the devil
and his human votaries,--is a purely brutal absurdity. But in England,
so long was this bloody, superstitious humbug kept up, that any hardened
scoundrel who was a good hand at his weapon might, down to the year
1819, absolutely have committed murder under the protection of English
law. Two years before that date, a country "rough" named Abraham
Thornton, murdered his sweetheart, Mary Ashford, but by deficiency of
proof was acquitted on trial. There was however a moral conviction that
Thornton had killed the girl, and her brother, a mere lad, caused an
appeal to be entered according to the English statute, and Thornton was
again arraigned before the King's Bench. In the mean time his counsel
had looked up the obsolete proceedings about "assize of battle," and
when Thornton was placed at the bar he threw down his glove upon the
floor according to the ancient forms, and challenged his accuser to
mortal combat. In reply, the appellant, Ashford, set forth facts so
clearly showing Thornton's guilt as to constitute (as he alleged,)
cause for exemption from the combat, and for condemnation of the
prisoner. The court, taken by surprise, spent five months in studying on
the matter. At last it decided that the fighting man had the law of
England on his side, admitted his demand, and further, found that the
matters alleged for exemption from combat were not sufficient. On this,
poor William Ashford, who was but a boy, declined the combat by reason
of his youth, and the prisoner was discharged, and walked in triumph out
of court, the innocent blood still unavenged upon his hands. The old
fogies of Parliament were startled at finding themselves actually
permitting the practice of barbarisms abolished by the Greek emperor,
Michael Palaeologus, in 1259, and by the good King Louis IX of France in
1270; and two years afterwards, in 1819, the legal duel or "assize of
battle" was by law abolished in England. It had been legal there for
five centuries and a half, having been introduced by statute in 1261.

Before that time, the ordeals by fire and by water were the regular
legal ones in England. These were known even to the Anglo Saxon law,
being mentio