The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2. Томас Де Квинси

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.