mprove their manners. Not a bit
of it. The quiet gentleman's enemies have aimed a blow at his
reputation. They are good shots--which unfortunately he is not--and now
they must aim another at his life; society 'allows it,' and society
'awards it.' The quiet gentleman makes his will, kisses his children,
shuts up his books, sighs, and 'goes out.' The quiet gentleman is
killed; a million men could not restore the life one man has taken.
Society is distressed beyond expression; so is the murderer, who is all
sorrow and tenderness for the departed. There is general weeping, and
great unavailing regret, and much commiseration for the widow: and then
a mock trial, and no end of speechifying, beautiful remorse on the part
of the survivor, lovelier tributes to the memory of deceased, a verdict
of not guilty, and a dismissal of the murderer and his accomplices into
the world, which is worthy of them as they are worthy of it. The picture
represents a common event of the time of George the Third. Let us
confess that, degenerate as we are, we have changed, in some respects,
for the better since those 'good old days!'"

"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
ju