owed, are mere reflections
(through sympathetic agencies) of feelings and opinions already
existing, and generally dispersed through society. Now, in Roman
society, the case was a mere subject for laughter; for there were no
feelings or opinions pointing to honour, personal honour as a principle
of action, nor, consequently, to wounded honour as a subject of
complaint. The Romans were not above duelling, but simply not up to that
level of civilisation.

_Finally_, with respect to the suggestion of a _Court of Honour_, much
might be said that my limits will not allow; but two suggestions I will
make. _First_, Recurring to a thing I have already said, I must repeat
that no justice would be shown unless (in a spirit very different from
that which usually prevails in society) the weight of public indignation
and the displeasure of the court were made to settle conspicuously upon
the AGGRESSOR; not upon the challenger, who is often the party suffering
under insufferable provocation (provocation which even the sternness of
penal law and the holiness of Christian faith allow for), but upon the
author of the original offence. _Secondly_, A much more searching
investigation must be made into the conduct of the SECONDS than is usual
in the unprofessional and careless inquisitions of the public into such
affairs. Often enough, the seconds hold the fate of their principals
entirely in their hands; and instances are not a few, within even my
limited knowledge, of cases where murder has been really committed, not
by the party who fired the fatal bullet, but by him who (having it in
his power to interfere without loss of honour to any party) has cruelly
thought fit--[and, in some instances, apparently for no purpose but
that of decorating himself with the name of an energetic man, and of
producing a public '_sensation_,' as it is called--a sanguinary
affair]--to goad on the tremulous sensibility of a mind distracted
between the sense of honour on the one hand, and the agonising claims of
a family on the other, into fatal extremities that might, by a slight
concession, have been avoided. I could mention several instances; but,
in some of these, I know the circumstances only by report. In one,
however, I had my information from parties who were personally connected
with the unhappy subject of the affair. The case was this:--A man of
distinguished merit, whom I shall not describe more particularly,
because it is no part of my purpose to