Mr. Jeffrey said, it was not necessary for him to state, that the essence of all crime lay in the motive; and, after all they had heard, it could not be disputed that Mr. Stuart went to the ground without one atom of malice. They had been told, that a duel was an irrational, barbarous, and pernicious practice; and that he who took it upon himself to send or accept a challenge was guilty of murder. He did not mean to offer any apology for the practice. The evils of duelling were ever uppermost in our view; but this prevented us from noticing, that it had proved the corrective of greater immoralities. It was known by those versed in history, that it had superseded the practice of private assassinations. That a person might not kill another, unless in self-defence, without incurring the crime of murder, was contrary to the fact. It might be done in defence of personal property on a nocturnal assault: a soldier on sentry, or a constable to prevent a rescue, might justly kill. And if, in such circumstances, it is permissible, you place a man in a painful dilemma, if, when made by the libeller an outcast of society, exposed to daily insult, shrunk from by friends, and met with the blushes of relations, you deprive him of the only means of wiping away those stains, and vindicating his character to the world. The analogy of the law, the reason of the thing, and the feelings of all mankind are against you. In the short reign of Henry the Fourth of France, about four thousand persons were calculated to have fallen in single combat; while, in our own country, during one of the longest reigns, that of George the Third, only sixty or seventy were said to have fallen; a fact which showed, that the practice did not prevail to any alarming extent.