The influence of example, which the conduct of the upper classes exercises on the lower orders, is sometimes reversed, and the false notions of right and honour, entertained by the vulgar, are too frequently adopted by their superiors, who from political purposes are anxious to court that popularity which a display of what is misnamed courage is sure to obtain among a rude people, who are unwilling, from false notions of pride, to raise themselves to the level of the civilization of their mother country. Fortunately, this absurd prejudice is gradually losing ground, although, if we may form an opinion by the public press, the bombastic style and the silly bragging of their writers will tend to retard most materially this desirable progress. The absurd fancy of seeking to alter the language of their ancestors, is a convincing proof of the folly of such pretensions to superiority, which a few accidental successes in war have carried to a pitch absolutely ridiculous. It is not easy for their legislators and their temporary rulers to oppose this bubbling and frothy torrent of popular vanity; nor indeed dare they stem its dangerous tide, which wafts them to power: and thus are they often under the painful necessity of appearing to sanction excesses which they sincerely condemn, and to use a style of exaggeration suited to the morbid temperament of their constituents. With us the degradation of the hustings is an occasional occurrence; in America every public man is hourly polling. There is a state of feverish anxiety perpetually raging, and duelling must be the inevitable result of such a fermentation, and will continue to prevail so long as brute force is considered a qualification. Several of the states, however, have endeavoured to check the practice: that of Massachusetts framed a law for that purpose in 1719, which was revived in 1784, and subsequently in 1805; by this enactment, any person fighting a duel was deprived of his political rights, and rendered ineligible to any public situation for twenty years, and the body of the deceased, when the meeting proved fatal, was appropriated to anatomical demonstration. Similar laws have been promulgated in Tennessee, New York, and other states. In Virginia public officers were called upon to take an oath never to fight a duel upon entering on their functions, and after this resolution duels became very rare. In New Orleans, the papers of 1834, and several recent publications, proposed the establishment of a court of honour, to decide upon any differences that might arise amongst its citizens; and in 1831 Mr. Livingston published his views on this important subject, relative to which a French writer, Dupont de Nemours, speaks in the following terms:--