his vast
result is obtained. And it is evident that, on the principle of
expediency, adopted as the basis of morality by Paley, the justification
of duelling is complete: for the greatest sum of immediate happiness is
produced at the least possible sacrifice.[15] But there are many men of
high moral principle, and yet not professing to rest upon Christianity,
who reject this prudential basis of ethics as the death of all morality.
And these men hold, that the social recognition of any one out of the
three following dangerous and immoral principles, viz.--_1st_, That a
man may lawfully sport with his own life; _2dly_, That he may lawfully
sport with the life of another; _3dly_, That he may lawfully seek his
redress for a social wrong, by any other channel than the law tribunals
of the land: that the recognition of these, or any of them, by the
jurisprudence of a nation, is a mortal wound to the very key-stone upon
which the whole vast arch of morality reposes. Well, in candour, I must
admit that, by justifying, in courts of judicature, through the verdicts
of juries, that mode of personal redress and self-vindication, to heal
and prevent which was one of the original motives for gathering into
social communities, and setting up an empire of public law as paramount
to all private exercise of power, a fatal wound is given to the sanctity
of moral right, of the public conscience, and of law in its elementary
field. So much I admit; but I say also, that the case arises out of a
great dilemma, with difficulties on both sides; and that, in all
_practical_ applications of philosophy, amongst materials so imperfect
as men, just as in all attempts to realize the rigour of mathematical
laws amongst earthly mechanics, inevitably there will arise such
dilemmas and cases of opprobrium to the reflecting intellect. However,
in conclusion, I shall say four things, which I request my opponent,
whoever he may be, to consider; for they are things which certainly
ought to have weight; and some important errors have arisen by
neglecting them.

[15] Neither would it be open to Paley to plead that the final or
remotest consequences must be taken into the calculation; and that one
of these would be the weakening of all moral sanctions, and thus,
indirectly, an injury to morality, which might more than compensate the
immediate benefit to social peace and security; for this mode of arguing
the case would bring us back to the very principle which