To begin with the preachers. Does it not, we ask, perplex all our ideas of morality to call the act of killing a man who has fired at me, and who has agreed to let me fire at him, a murder? Has it anything in common with stealing to his bed at the dead of night, and stabbing him in his sleep? Try to shake hands with one murderer (if he must be so called), and then with the other; do you not feel a difference? Can you doubt for a moment which man you would rather be, whose feelings you would rather have, whose remorse you would rather bear? To legislators we have more to say. In the first place, they have provided no practical remedy for the wrongs which are now attempted to be redressed, or at least checked, by duels. If a fellow picks my pocket of an old handkerchief, I have him transported without much trouble; but if I am held up to the scorn and ridicule of my friends, provided the artist be skilful in his profession, provided he can “Spargere voces Ambiguas,” and play off “all the cruel language of the eye,” I am, even in theory, without redress. Nay, he may venture to go much further, if he have legal knowledge enough to remember all the nice distinctions which have been made on the subject. For instance, he must not say I am a highwayman, but may affirm with impunity that I am worse than a highwayman; and he may load me with the epithets of “scoundrel, rascal, villain, knave, miscreant, liar, and fool,”[9] as long as he pleases; unless I can show that some actual loss in money, or money’s worth, has accrued to me from his defamation. So that if my character stands so high, or his character so low, that nobody believes him, he goes unpunished. But we will suppose his rage to be so excessive as not to be confined within these ample bounds—we will suppose that after carefully noting down the words in my pocket-book, and calling upon the bystanders to con them over often enough to fix them firmly in their memory until the next assizes, I go to my attorney, and he enters an action against the slanderer. In due time, I obtain a sight of the pleadings, and find that I hold myself up as a person of the highest character, and impute the ill-conduct of the defendant to his great envy of “my happy state and condition.” Then the slanderous words are _set out_, as the lawyers call it, with so much verbiage, that they appear quite ludicrous even to myself. At length we come into court. My counsel affect great gravity, which does not impose on a single individual; states my case to the jury, the counsel for the defence laughing judiciously at every part of his address which is likely to produce any effect. The jury, who do not remember that an advocate may be paid for laughing as well as for talking, are, (unconsciously, perhaps,) more influenced by the smiling face than the oration. The witnesses are next examined, and another