ellington. "The question for me now to decide is this: Is a
gentleman who happens to be the King's Minister to submit to be insulted
by any gentleman who thinks proper to attribute to him disgraceful or
criminal motives for his conduct as an individual? I cannot {81} doubt
of the decision which I ought to make on this question. Your Lordship is
alone responsible for the consequences." This was, of course, a
challenge to Lord Winchilsea to withdraw his accusation or to fight a
duel forthwith.

Now, to the cool, philosophic mind, at least in later times, it might
well seem obvious that whether Lord Winchilsea's charge against the Duke
of Wellington was just or unjust, its justice or injustice could not in
any way be made clear by the discharge of bullets from the pistols of the
challenger and the challenged. The cool, philosophic observer of a later
time might wonder also how the Duke's sense of public responsibility
could allow him to peril a life which he must have known to be of the
highest value to his country, for the sake of taking part in a combat
with an antagonist whose personal opinion of the Duke and of the Duke's
conduct could not be of the slightest importance to the vast majority of
the Duke's countrymen. But the Duke of Wellington was not in any case a
cool, philosophic observer, and he lived at a time when the established
or tolerated code of what was called personal honor seemed to have
nothing to do either with Christian morals, with political expediency, or
with ordinary common-sense. Wellington accepted without question the
dictates of the supposed code of honor, and he sent his challenge. Lord
Winchilsea, it will be seen, did not intend to stand by his gross and
preposterous charge against the Duke, but he did not think that the code
of honor allowed him to say so like a man, and tender an apology like
what we should now call a gentleman, without first subjecting himself to
the fire of his wrongfully accused antagonist. So the Duke and the Earl
went out with their seconds and met at Wimbledon. The victor of Waterloo
was not destined to kill or be killed in this absurd contest. When the
parties to the duel were placed on the ground and the word was given.
Lord Winchilsea reserved his fire, the bullet from the Duke's pistol
passed him without doing any harm, and Lord Winchilsea then discharged
his pistol in the air, and authorized his second to make known his
retraction of his {82} charge agai