We acknowledge that there is one aspect of the practice of duelling, which somewhat perplexes the moralist: for it cannot be denied, or doubted, that duelling operates as a great preventive check to ruffian insolence and violence--as a potent auxiliary in preserving the necessary restraints and the courtesies of society. "It must be admitted," says Robertson, "that to this absurd custom we must ascribe, in some degree, the extraordinary gentleness and complaisance of modern manners, and that respectful attention of one man to another, which at present renders the social intercourse of life far more agreeable and decent than among the most civilised nations of antiquity." How many a viper-tongued slanderer's lips have been sealed by the dread of a bullet! How many an insolent inclination to personal violence has been checked--how many a truculent heart has sickened, before the prospect of a "leaden breakfast!" Take a single case, which is really embarrassing to the candid opponent of duelling; an insult offered, by either words or deeds, to the character or person of a lady whom one is bound to protect--an injury beyond all legal cognisance, and perpetrated by one occupying the station of a gentleman. To one who does not bow under the paramount influence of religion, the harassing question occurs,--What is to be done? Cases may be easily imagined in which it would be idle to say--"treat the offence and the offender with contempt--leave them to the contempt of society;" where such a course would only add to the poignancy of the wrong or insult, and invite aggravation and repetition. Let the outraged lady be imagined one's own wife, or daughter, or sister! Is the wrong to be perpetrated with impunity? asks the upholder of duelling. "What would you do," retorts his opponent; "will you deliberately take the life of the offender, and give him an opportunity of taking yours?[40] Is that your notion of _punishment_, or _satisfaction_? What will be the effect of an example such as this, upon society at large? Is every one to be at liberty to do the like?--thus deliberately to ignore the law of God and of man?" Duelling is, in truth, almost always the resource of the weak-minded, the vain, the vindictive, or the cowardly; and it is not right to ask society to be liberal in its allowances for the wrongdoings of its less worthy members. There are, nevertheless, cases in which persons have found themselves involved in duels under circumstances pregnant with extenuation in the eyes of even the hardest moralist, and such as warrant the executive, when the majesty of the law has been vindicated, and its authority recognised, in mitigating or remitting the punishment due to an acknowledged violation of the law.