This practice, whilst it powerfully supports, mainly rests on, that excessive over-valuation of character, which teaches that worldly credit is to be preserved at _any_ rate, and disgrace at _any_ rate to be avoided. The _unreasonableness_ of duelling has been often proved, and it has often been shewn to be criminal on various principles: sometimes it has been opposed on grounds hardly tenable; particularly when it has been considered as an indication of malice and revenge[77]. But it seems hardly to have been enough noticed in what chiefly consists its _essential_ guilt; that it is a deliberate preference of the favour of man, before the favour and approbation of God, _in articulo mortis_, in an instance, wherein our own life, and that of a fellow creature are at stake, and wherein we run the risk of rushing into the presence of our Maker in the very act of offending him. It would detain us too long, and it were somewhat beside our present purpose, to enumerate the mischievous consequences which result from this practice. They are many and great; and if regard be had merely to the temporal interests of men, and to the well being of society, they are but poorly counterbalanced by the plea, which must be admitted in its behalf by a candid observer of human nature, of a courtesy and refinement in our modern manners unknown to ancient times. But there is one observation which must not be omitted, and which seems to have been too much overlooked: In the judgment of that Religion which requires purity of heart, and of that Being to whom, as was before remarked, "thought is action," he cannot be esteemed innocent of this crime, who lives in a settled habitual determination to commit it, when circumstances shall call upon him so to do[78]. This is a consideration which places the crime of duelling on a different footing from almost any other; indeed there is perhaps NO other, which mankind habitually and deliberately resolve to practise whenever the temptation shall occur. It shews also that the crime of duelling is far more general in the higher classes than is commonly supposed, and that the whole sum of the guilt which the practice produces is great, beyond what has perhaps been ever conceived! It will be the writer's comfort to have solemnly suggested this consideration, to the consciences of those by whom this impious practice might be suppressed: If such there be, which he is strongly inclined to believe, their's is the crime, and their's the responsibility of suffering it to continue[79].