Hawkins maintained that when divers rioters having forcibly taken possession of a house, afterwards killed the person whom they had ejected, as he was endeavouring in the night forcibly to regain possession and to fire the house, they were to be adjudged guilty of manslaughter only, _notwithstanding they did the fact in maintenance of deliberate injury_; perhaps, for this reason, _because the person slain was so much in fault himself_. The same legal authority further says, “Some have gone so far as to hold that the seconds of the person killed are also equally guilty, in respect to that countenance which they gave to their principals in the execution of their purpose, by accompanying them therein, and being ready to bear a part with them:” but, perhaps, the contrary opinion is the more plausible; for it seems too severe a construction to make a man, by such reasoning, the murderer of his friend, to whom he was so far from intending a mischief, that he was ready to hazard his own life in his quarrel. The highest authorities have strained the law to crush duelling without the aid of the legislature, and Hawkins says, that “it seems agreed, that whenever two persons in cold blood meet and fight on a precedent quarrel, and one of them is killed, the other is guilty of murder, and cannot help himself by alleging that he was first struck by the deceased.” Sir Edward Coke, in the case of Thomas, makes the following observation:—“As for direction to the jury, in cases of murder grounded upon former malice, it is very clear, and so it is adjudged in Plowden’s Commentaries, that if two men fall out, malice before is not anything material for the jury to inquire, but the subsequent matter, who began the affray; and if he be killed who offered the first wrong, yet it may be murder in the other who killed him, and the subsequent beginning not material.” It would be foreign to the nature of this work to enter more fully into the legal opinions entertained on this matter by the greatest authorities, but many instances are upon record, in which, upon the judge’s charge, the survivor in a duel has been found guilty of murder. Such was the case of Morgan for the murder of Egerton; but he subsequently was pardoned, and set at large. In the case of Richard Taverner a verdict of guilty of wilful murder was also found. The antagonist whom he had killed, was a man of the name of Bird, whose second, Hughes, was also killed. But many cases are on record, in which, notwithstanding the judge’s charge to the jury, a verdict of manslaughter was found.