"Let us also bear in mind the main cause of our improvement! It is due to the majesty of law, to state that, had she been less faithful, society would have grown more reckless. Public opinion and the law of the country have had a hard fight for the mastery, and had the latter given way but an inch, the former would have found us to-day in the hands and at the mercy of the bullies. Judges have never hesitated to declare that murder which juries by their verdicts have as perseveringly regarded as justifiable homicide. In vain have eloquent counsel risen to prove that the prisoner bore his antagonist no ill-will; that he did not 'wickedly and maliciously' challenge his victim to fight; that he had recourse to the sole means within his power to right himself with the world; that society would have branded him eternally for a coward had he held back; that he took up his weapon in self-defence precisely as a man levels his gun at the house-breaker or the midnight assassin;--the expounder of the law has still been proof against sophistry which, once accepted, must tend inevitably to social disorganization. The _deliberate resolution_ to kill a fellow-creature has nothing to do with self-defence. To destroy another in cold blood is murder in the sight of the law, and can assume no other aspect. But what availed it that the judge stood firm by the statute, when juries as pertinaciously backed the sentiment of the world and refused the law permission to take its course? It availed much. The unseemly conflict has been carried on until at length civilization has become shocked by the spectacle. The effect of the ever-recurring encounter is something worse than ridiculous. It has taken years to bring us to our senses, but we are rational at last. Public opinion exercises its good sense, and since it cannot bring the law into harmony with its desperate folly, deems it expedient to shape its own views in conformity with unbending law. To slay in a duel is to commit murder, though men do not hang for the crime. To be a murderer with benefit of clergy is but an odious and irksome privilege after all!