In the present constitution of society in this country--a Christian community--duelling is a practice environed with difficulties, whichever way it may be approached by its most discreet and resolute opponents. We must deal with men and things as they are, at the same time that we would make them what we think they ought to be. How many professing Christians--men of otherwise pure and virtuous lives--have gone out deliberately to take the life of an opponent, or expose or sacrifice their own!--solely, it may be, from a puerile notion that their _honour_ required the committing of the crime! "It is not one of the least evils of this system," it has been well observed, "that the word _honour_--which, rightly understood, denotes all that is truly noble and virtuous--should be prostituted as a pretext for gratifying the most malignant of human passions, _or as a cover for that moral cowardice--the fear of being thought afraid_." This is one of the chiefest roots of the poisonous tree: and can human laws kill it? We think they can. If the legislature were really intent upon annihilating duelling, its members would long ago have acted on the suggestion of Addison--that, "if every one who fought a duel were to stand in the pillory, it would quickly diminish the number of these imaginary men of honour, and put an end to so absurd a practice." If men will fight for a little stake, let them be made into little men, by enduring a degrading punishment; if for a great stake--that is to say, the gratification of malignant passions--let them be treated as great criminals, and die the felon's death, or live his life. Let justice be really blind in all such cases, her sword descending upon noble and ignoble of station alike.