According to the law of England, as already stated, a death caused by duelling, though in the "fairest" possible manner, is clearly murder, to all intents and purposes whatsoever. In the year 1846, the majority of the Criminal Law Commissioners suggested a change in this law, recommending that, where two persons agree to fight, and a contest ensues, and one of them is killed, the homicide should be extenuated. The reasons on which this suggestion was founded appear to us of a very unsatisfactory nature; and one of the Commissioners--the late Mr Starkie--altogether dissented from the views of his brethren, embodying his reasons in an able and convincing protest or counter-statement. "Whilst," he observes, at its close, "as it seems to me, little good could be expected from the proposed alteration, it might be productive of much harm in a _moral_ point of view. It would be understood to manifest an alteration in the opinion of the Legislature as to the heinousness of the crime of homicide, and of course tend to diminish the efficacy of the law against it." We entirely concur in the following remarks of Mr Townsend, in one of the best expressed passages in his book:-- "Founded on the law of God, the law of the land should remain clear and stringent, that whoever kills in a deliberate duel commits murder. The sanctity of human life would be impaired were this denunciation lessened, and the forfeit, for expediency's sake, commuted. The very good to be obtained by the compromise with 'codes of honour' would be temporary; for arguments of hardship, as the consequences of conviction, and appeals to compassion against a _gentleman_ being adjudged guilty of felony, and transported--it might be for life--would equally tickle the ears of credulous jurors, and be listened to with as much avidity as the present topic of capital punishment. Let the law maintain its own independent straightforward path--_irretortis oculis_--and, be the fluctuations in fashionable feeling what they may, continue, in its austere regard for life, unchanged and unchangeable."[41] Thus stands the matter: the Legislature not having ventured to interfere with the law, which must be administered with rigorous faithfulness by those to whom that severe and responsible duty has been entrusted, God forbid that there should ever be coquetting with an oath on these occasions!