The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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This slander seemed to have been built upon some special knowledge of
me; for I had often spoken with horror of those who could marry persons
in a condition which obliged them to obedience--a case which had
happened repeatedly within my own knowledge; and I had spoken on this
ground, that the authority of a master might be _supposed_ to have been
interposed, whether it really were so or not in favour of his designs;
and thus a presumption, however false it might be, always remained that
his wooing had been, perhaps, not the wooing of perfect freedom, so
essential to the dignity of woman, and, therefore, essential to his own
dignity; but that perhaps, it had been favoured by circumstances, and by
opportunities created, if it had not even been favoured, by express
exertions of authority. The libeller, therefore, _did_ seem to have some
knowledge of my peculiar opinions: yet, in other points, either from
sincere ignorance or from affectation, and by way of turning aside
suspicion, he certainly manifested a non-acquaintance with facts
relating to me that must have been familiar enough to all within my
circle.

Let me pursue the case to its last stage. The reader will say, perhaps,
why complain of a paltry journal that assuredly never made any noise;
for I, the reader, never heard of it till now. No, that is very
possible; for the truth is, and odd enough it seems, this malicious
journal prospered so little, that, positively, at the seventh No. it
stopped. Laugh I did, and laugh I could not help but do, at this picture
of baffled malice: writers willing and ready to fire with poisoned
bullets, and yet perfectly unable to get an effective aim, from sheer
want of co-operation on the part of the public.

However, the case as it respected me, went farther than it did with
respect to the public. Would it be believed that human malice, with
respect to a man not even known by sight to his assailants, as was clear
from one part of their personalities, finally--that is to say, months
afterwards--adopted the following course:--The journal had sunk under
public scorn and neglect; neglect at first, but, perhaps, scorn at the
last; for, when the writers found that mere malice availed not to draw
public attention, they adopted the plan of baiting their hooks with
obscenity; and they published a paper, professing to be written by Lord
Byron, called, '_My Wedding Night_;' and very possible, from internal
evidence, to have been really written by him; and yet the combined
forces of Byron and obscenity failed to save them,--which is rather
remarkable. Having sunk, one might suppose the journal was at an end,
for good and evil; and, especially, that all, who had been molested by
it, or held up to ridicule, might now calculate on rest. By no means:
First of all they made inquiries about the localities of my residence,
and the town nearest to my own family. Nothing was effected unless they
carried the insult, addressed to my family, into the knowledge of that
family and its circle. My cottage in Grasmere was just 280 miles from
London, and eighteen miles from any town whatsoever. The nearest was
Kendal; a place of perhaps 16,000 inhabitants; and the nearest
therefore, at which there were any newspapers printed. There were two:
one denominated _The Gazette_; the other _The Chronicle_. The first was
Tory and Conservative; had been so from its foundation; and was,
besides, generous in its treatment of private character. My own
contributions to it I will mention hereafter. _The Chronicle_, on the
other hand, was a violent reforming journal, and conducted in a
partisan spirit. To this newspaper the article was addressed; by this
newspaper it was published; and by this it was carried into my own
'_next-door_' neighbourhood. Next-door neighbourhood? But that surely
must be the very best direction these libellers could give to their
malice; for there, at least, the falsehood of their malice must be
notorious. Why, yes: and in that which _was_ my neighbourhood, according
to the most literal interpretation of the term, a greater favour could
not have been done me, nor a more laughable humiliation for my
unprovoked enemies. Commentary or refutation there needed none; the
utter falsehood of the main allegations were so obvious to every man,
woman, and child, that, of necessity, it discredited even those parts
which might, for any thing known to my neighbours, have been true. Nay,
it was the means of procuring for me a generous expression of sympathy,
that would else have been wanting; for some gentlemen of the
neighbourhood, who were but slightly known to me, put the malignant
journal into the fire at a public reading-room. So far was well; but, on
the other hand, in Kendal, a town nearly twenty miles distant, of
necessity I was but imperfectly known; and though there was a pretty
general expression of disgust at the character of the publication, and
the wanton malignity which it bore upon its front, since, true or not
true, no shadow of a reason was pleaded for thus bringing forward
statements expressly to injure me, or to make me unhappy; yet there must
have been many, in so large a place, who had too little interest in the
question, or too limited means of inquiry, for ever ascertaining the
truth. Consequently, in _their_ minds, to this hour, my name, as one
previously known to them, and repeatedly before the town in connexion
with political or literary articles in their Conservative journal, must
have suffered.

But the main purpose, for which I have reported the circumstances of
these two cases, relates to the casuistry of duelling. Casuistry, as I
have already said, is the moral philosophy of _cases_--that is, of
anomalous combinations of circumstances--that, for any reason
whatsoever, do not fall, or do not seem to fall, under the general rules
of morality. As a general rule, it must, doubtless, be unlawful to
attempt another man's life, or to hazard your own. Very special
circumstances must concur to make out any case of exception; and even
then it is evident, that one of the parties must always be deeply in the
wrong. But it _does_ strike me, that the present casuistry of society
upon the question of duelling, is profoundly wrong, and wrong by
manifest injustice. Very little distinction is ever made, in practice,
by those who apply their judgments to such cases, between the man who,
upon principle, practises the most cautious self-restraint and
moderation in his daily demeanour, never under any circumstance offering
an insult, or any just occasion of quarrel, and resorting to duel only
under the most insufferable provocation, between this man, on the one
side, and the most wanton ruffian, on the other, who makes a common
practice of playing upon other men's feelings, whether in reliance upon
superior bodily strength, or upon the pacific disposition of
conscientious men, and fathers of families. Yet, surely, the difference
between them goes the whole extent of the interval between wrong and
right. Even the question, 'Who gave the challenge?' which _is_ sometimes
put, often merges virtually in the transcendant question, 'Who gave the
provocation?' For it is important to observe, in both the cases which I
have reported, that the _onus_ of offering the challenge was thrown upon
the unoffending party; and thus, in a legal sense, that party is made to
give the provocation who, in a moral sense, received it. But surely, if
even the law makes allowances for human infirmity, when provoked beyond
what it can endure,--we, in our brotherly judgments upon each other,
ought, _a fortiori_, to take into the equity of our considerations the
amount and quality of the offence. It will be objected that the law, so
far from allowing for, expressly refuses to allow for, sudden sallies of
anger or explosions of vindictive fury, unless in so far as they are
extempore, and before the reflecting judgment has had time to recover
itself. Any indication that the party had leisure for calm review, or
for a cool selection of means and contrivances in executing his
vindictive purposes, will be fatal to a claim of that nature. This is
true; but the nature of a printed libel is, continually to renew itself
as an insult. The subject of it reads this libel, perhaps, in solitude;
and, by a great exertion of self-command, resolves to bear it with
fortitude and in silence. Some days after, in a public room, he sees
strangers reading it also: he hears them scoffing and laughing loudly:
in the midst of all this, he sees himself pointed out to their notice by
some one of the party who happens to be acquainted with his person; and,
possibly, if the libel take that particular shape which excessive malice
is most likely to select, he will hear the name of some female relative,
dearer, it may be to him, and more sacred in his ears, than all this
world beside, bandied about with scorn and mockery by those who have not
the poor excuse of the original libellers, but are, in fact, adopting
the second-hand malignity of others. Such cases, with respect to libels
that are quickened into popularity by interesting circumstances, or by a
personal interest attached to any of the parties, or by wit, or by
extraordinary malice, or by scenical circumstances, or by circumstances
unusually ludicrous, are but too likely to occur; and, with every fresh
repetition, the keenness of the original provocation is renewed, and in
an accelerated ratio. Again, with reference to my own case, or to any
case resembling that, let it be granted that I was immoderately and
unreasonably transported by anger at the moment;--I thought so myself,
after a time, when the journal which published the libel sank under the
public neglect; but this was an after consideration; and, at the moment,
how heavy an aggravation was given to the stings of the malice, by the
deep dejection, from embarrassed circumstances and from disordered
health, which then possessed me; aggravations, perhaps, known to the
libellers as encouragements for proceeding at the time, and often enough
likely to exist in other men's cases. Now, in the case as it actually
occurred, it so happened that the malicious writers had, by the libel,
dishonoured themselves too deeply in the public opinion, to venture upon
coming forward, in their own persons, to avow their own work; but
suppose them to have done so (as, in fact, even in this case, they might
have done, had they not published their intention of driving a regular
trade in libel and in slander); suppose them insolently to beard you in
public haunts; to cross your path continually when in company with the
very female relative upon whom they had done their best to point the
finger of public scorn; and suppose them further, by the whole artillery
of contemptuous looks, words, gestures, and unrepressed laughter, to
republish, as it were, ratify, and publicly to apply, personally, their
own original libel, as often as chance or as opportunity (eagerly
improved) should throw you together in places of general resort; and
suppose, finally, that the central figure--nay, in their account, the
very butt throughout this entire drama of malice--should chance to be an
innocent, gentle-hearted, dejected, suffering woman, utterly unknown to
her persecutors, and selected as their martyr merely for her
relationship to yourself--suppose her, in short, to be your wife--a
lovely young woman sustained by womanly dignity, or else ready to sink
into the earth with shame, under the cruel and unmanly insults heaped
upon her, and having no protector upon earth but yourself: lay all this
together, and then say whether, in such a case, the most philosophic or
the most Christian patience might not excusably give way; whether flesh
and blood could do otherwise than give way, and seek redress for the
past, but, at all events, security for the future, in what, perhaps,
might be the sole course open to you--an appeal to arms. Let it not be
said that the case here proposed, by way of hypothesis, is an extreme
one: for the very argument has contemplated extreme cases: since, whilst
conceding that duelling is an unlawful and useless remedy for cases of
ordinary wrong, where there is no malice to resist a more conciliatory
mode of settlement, and where it is difficult to imagine any deliberate
insult except such as is palliated by intoxication--conceding this, I
have yet supposed it possible that cases may arise, with circumstances
of contumely and outrage, growing out of deep inexorable malice, which
cannot be redressed, _as things now are_, without an appeal to the _voye
de fait_. 'But this is so barbarous an expedient in days of high
civilisation.' Why, yes, it labours with the semi-barbarism of
chivalry: yet, on the other hand, this mention of chivalry reminds me
to say, that if this practice of duelling share the blame of chivalry,
one memorable praise there is, which also it may claim as common to them
both. It is a praise which I have often insisted on; and the very
sublime of prejudice I would challenge to deny it. Burke, in his
well-known apology for chivalry, thus expresses his sense of the
immeasurable benefits which it conferred upon society, as a
supplementary code of law, reaching those cases which the weakness of
municipal law was then unavailing to meet, and at a price so trivial in
bloodshed or violence--he calls it 'the cheap defence of nations.' Yes,
undoubtedly; and surely the same praise belongs incontestably to the law
of duelling. For one duel _in esse_, there are ten thousand, every day
of our lives, amid populous cities, _in posse_: one challenge is given,
a myriad are feared: one life (and usually the most worthless, by any
actual good rendered to society) is sacrificed, suppose triennially,
from a nation; _every_ life is endangered by certain modes of behaviour.
Hence, then, and at a cost inconceivably trifling, the peace of society
is maintained in cases which no law, no severity of police, ever could
effectually reach. Brutal strength would reign paramount in the walks of
public life; brutal intoxication would follow out its lawless impulses,
were it not for the fear which now is always in the rear--the fear of
being summoned to a strict summary account, liable to the most perilous
consequences. This is not open to denial: the actual basis upon which
reposes the security of us all, the peace of our wives and our
daughters, and our own immunity from the vilest degradations under their
eyes, is the necessity, known to every gentleman, of answering for his
outrages in a way which strips him of all unfair advantages, except one
(which is not often possessed), which places the weak upon a level with
the strong, and the quiet citizen upon a level with the military
adventurer, or the ruffian of the gambling-house. The fact, I say,
cannot be denied; neither can the low price be denied at which this 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 his own
implicitly, or by involution, rejects: since it would tell us to obey
the principle itself without reference to the apparent consequences. By
the bye, Paley has an express section of his work against the law of
honour as a valid rule of action; but, as Cicero says of Epicurus, it
matters little what he says; the question for us is _quam sibi
convenienter_, how far consistently with himself. Now, as Sir James
Mackintosh justly remarks, all that Paley says in refutation of the
principle of worldly honour is hollow and unmeaning. In fact, it is
merely one of the commonplaces adopted by satire, and no philosophy at
all. Honour, for instance, allows you, upon paying gambling debts, to
neglect or evade all others: honour, again, allows you to seduce a
married woman: and he would secretly insinuate that honour _enjoins_ all
this; but it is evident that honour simply forbears to forbid all this:
in other words, it is a very limited rule of action, not applying to one
case of conduct in fifty. It might as well be said, that Ecclesiastical
Courts sanction murder, because that crime lies out of their
jurisdiction.

_First_, then, let him remember that it is the principle at stake--viz.,
the recognition by a legal tribunal, as lawful or innocent of any
attempt to violate the laws, or to take the law into our own hands: this
it is and the mortal taint which is thus introduced into the public
morality of a Christian land, thus authentically introduced; thus sealed
and countersigned by judicial authority; the majesty of law actually
interfering to justify, with the solemnities of trial, a flagrant
violation of law; this it is, this only, and not the amount of injury
sustained by society, which gives value to the question. For, as to the
injury, I have already remarked, that a very trivial annual loss--one
life, perhaps, upon ten millions, and that life often as little
practically valuable as any amongst us--that pays our fine or ransom in
that account. And, in reality, there is one popular error made upon this
subject, when the question is raised about the institution of some
_Court of Honour_, or _Court of Appeal in cases of injury to the
feelings_, under the sanction of parliament, which satisfactorily
demonstrates the trivial amount of injury sustained: it is said on such
occasions that _de minimis non curat lex_--that the mischief, in fact,
is too narrow and limited for the regard of the legislature. And we may
be assured that, if the evil were ever to become an extensive one, the
notice of Parliament soon _would_ be attracted to the subject; and hence
we may derive a hint for an amended view of the policy adopted in past
ages. Princes not distinguished for their religious scruples, made it,
in different ages and places, a capital offence to engage in a duel:
whence it is inferred, falsely, that, in former times, a more public
homage was paid to Christian principle. But the fact is, that not the
anti-Christian character of the offence so much as its greater
frequency, and the consequent extension of a civil mischief was the
ruling consideration with the lawgiver. Among other causes for this
greater prevalence of duels, was the composition of armies, more often
brought together upon mercenary principles from a large variety of
different nations, whose peculiar usages, points of traditional honour,
and even the oddness of their several languages to the ear, formed a
perpetual occasion of insult and quarrel. Fluellen's affair with Pistol,
we may be sure, was no rare but a representative case.

_Secondly_, In confirmation of what I have said about duelling, as the
great conductor for carrying off the excess of angry irritation in
society, I will repeat what was said to me by a man of great ability and
distinguished powers, as well as opportunities for observation, in
reference to a provincial English town, and the cabals which prevailed
there. These cabals--some political, arising out of past electioneering
contests; some municipal, arising out of the corporation disputes; some
personal, arising out of family rivalships, or old traditionary
disputes--had led to various feuds that vexed the peace of the town in a
degree very considerably beyond the common experience of towns reaching
the same magnitude. How was this accounted for? The word _tradesman_ is,
more than even the term _middle class_, liable to great ambiguity of
meaning; for it includes a range so large as to take in some who tread
on the heels even of the highest aristocracy, and some at the other end,
who rank not at all higher than day-labourers or handicraftsmen. Now,
those who ranked with gentlemen, took the ordinary course of gentlemen
in righting themselves under personal insults; and the result was, that,
amongst _them_ or _their_ families, no feuds were subsisting of ancient
standing. No ill blood was nursed; no calumnies or conspicuous want of
charity prevailed. Not that they often fought duels: on the contrary, a
duel was a very rare event amongst the indigenous gentry of the place;
but it was sufficient to secure all the effects of duelling, that it was
known, with respect to this class, that, in the last resort, they were
ready to fight. Now, on the other hand, the lowest order of tradesmen
had _their_ method of terminating quarrels--the old English method of
their fathers--viz., by pugilistic contests. And _they_ also cherished
no malice against each other or amongst their families. 'But,' said my
informant, 'some of those who occupied the intermediate stations in this
hierarchy of trade, found themselves most awkwardly situated. So far
they shared in the refinements of modern society, that they disdained
the coarse mode of settling quarrels by their fists. On the other hand,
there was a special and peculiar reason pressing upon this class, which
restrained them from aspiring to the more aristocratic modes of
fighting. They were sensible of a ridicule, which everywhere attaches to
many of the less elevated or liberal modes of exercising trade in going
out to fight with sword and pistol. This ridicule was sharpened and made
more effectual, in _their_ case, from the circumstance of the Royal
Family and the court making this particular town a frequent place of
residence. Besides that apart from the ridicule, many of them depended
for a livelihood upon the patronage of royalty or of the nobility,
attached to their suite; and most of these patrons would have resented
their intrusion upon the privileged ground of the aristocracy in
conducting disputes of honour. What was the consequence? These persons,
having no natural outlet for their wounded sensibilities, being
absolutely debarred from _any_ mode of settling their disputes,
cherished inextinguishable feuds: their quarrels in fact had no natural
terminations; and the result was, a spirit of malice and most
unchristian want of charity, which could not hope for any final repose,
except in death.' Such was the report of my observing friend: the
particular town may be easily guessed at; and I have little doubt that
its condition continues as of old.

_Thirdly_, It is a very common allegation against duelling, that the
ancient Romans and Grecians never practised this mode of settling
disputes; and the inference is, of course, unfavourable, not to
Christianity, but to us as inconsistent disciples of our own religion;
and a second inference is, that the principle of personal honour, well
understood, cannot require this satisfaction for its wounds. For the
present I shall say nothing on the former head, but not for want of
something to say. With respect to the latter, it is a profound mistake,
founded on inacquaintance with the manners and the spirit of manners
prevalent amongst these imperfectly civilised nations. Honour was a
sense not developed in many of its modifications amongst either Greeks
or Romans. Cudgelling was at one time used as the remedy in cases of
outrageous libel and pasquinade. But it is a point very little to the
praise of either people, that no vindictive notice was taken of any
possible personalities, simply because the most hideous license had been
established for centuries in tongue license and unmanly Billingsgate.
This had been promoted by the example hourly ringing in their ears of
vernile scurrility. _Verna_--that is, the slave born in the family--had
each from the other one universal and proverbial character of
foul-mouthed eloquence, which heard from infancy, could not but furnish
a model almost unconsciously to those who had occasion publicly to
practise vituperative rhetoric. What they remembered of this vernile
licentiousness, constituted the staple of their talk in such situations.
And the horrible illustrations left even by the most accomplished and
literary of the Roman orators, of their shameless and womanly fluency in
this dialect of unlicensed abuse, are evidences, not to be resisted, of
such obtuseness, such coarseness of feeling, so utter a defect of all
the gentlemanly sensibilities, that no man, alive to the real state of
things amongst them, would ever think of pleading their example in any
other view than as an object of unmitigated disgust. At all events, the
long-established custom of deluging each other in the Forum, or even in
the Senate, with the foulest abuse, the precedent traditionally
delivered through centuries before the time of Caesar and Cicero, had so
robbed it of its sting, that, as a subject for patient endurance, or an
occasion for self conquest in mastering the feelings, it had no merit at
all. Anger, prompting an appeal to the cudgel, there might be, but sense
of wounded honour, requiring a reparation by appeal to arms, or a
washing away by blood, no such feeling could have been subdued or
overcome by a Roman, for none such existed. The feelings of wounded
honour on such occasions, it will be allowed, 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.

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