_Secondly_, Why was not Captain Tuckett brought to the bar, to be asked his names, or identified by Mr Codd? There is no evidence that he was in attendance, or that he could have been met with, at the exact moment when his presence was required. It may have been that no order of the House had been obtained for his attendance, only because it had not been thought necessary--that no difficulty would arise which his attendance could solve; and in the absence of direct legal compulsion, Captain Tuckett may have felt it a point of honour not to volunteer himself as a witness against his brother duellist. We can also readily believe that the counsel for the prosecution were anxious to conduct a perfectly novel case--the first instance on record of an attempt to bring an abortive duel under the category of felony, with its alarming incidents and consequences--with unusual liberality, and not to exhibit anything like a vindictive pressure upon the accused. They also knew that Captain Tuckett was himself liable, at that very moment, to be placed in the same situation as Lord Cardigan, and that it would have been idle to call before the House of Lords a witness who would come armed with a right to decline answering any single question--possibly even that above suggested as to his name--which he believed might even _tend_ to criminate himself. It must also be borne in mind that the Attorney-General boldly avowed, before the House of Lords, that he regarded the act with which Lord Cardigan stood charged as one devoid of "any degree of moral turpitude," and that "a conviction would effect no discredit on the illustrious order to which he belonged." These observations, proceeding from an Attorney-General on a solemn official occasion, became, a few days afterwards, the subject of grave discussion and censure in the House of Lords. But even the excellent Earl of Mountcashel thus pointed at the practical hardship of Lord Cardigan's position,--"An officer in the army receives an affront. His brother officers expect he shall go out. If he do, he encounters the pains and penalties of the statute 1 Victoria c. 85; if he refuse, he is obnoxious to the contempt of his brother officers."[62] It was, certainly, not to be expected that an Attorney-General, entertaining and averring the views of duelling which he did--and having to deal with a nobleman bearing her Majesty's commission, who was placed in the dilemma indicated by Lord Mountcashel, and had fought his duel fairly, and unattended by fatal consequences--should have been as eagle-eyed a prosecutor as if he had had to deal with a man, gentle or simple, military or civil, who had shamefully provoked, and as disgracefully fought, a fatal duel.