I shall conclude this part of the discussion with the following summary remarks.

Duelling is eminently absurd, because the reasons, which create the centest, are generally trivial. These are almost always trifling affronts, which a magnanimous man would disdain to regard. A brave and meritorious officer in the British army was lately killed in a duel, which arose out of the fighting of two dogs.

As an adjustment of disputes, it is supremely absurd. If the parties possess equal skill, innocence and crime are placed on the same level; and their interests are decided by a game of hazard. A die would better terminate the controversy; because the chances would be the same, and the danger and death would be avoid

ed.

If the parties possess unequal skill, the concerns of both are committed to the decision of one; deeply interested; perfectly selfish; enraged; and precluded by the very plan of adjustment from doing that, which which is right, unless in doing it, he will consent to suffer an incomprehensible evil. To avoid this evil he is by the laws of the controversy, justified in doing to, his antagonist all the future injustice in his power. Never was there a more improper judge; nor a more improper situation for judging. To add to the folly, the very mode of decision involves new evils; so that the injustice already done can never be redressed; but by doing other and greater injustice.**

*This, however, is beyond a doubt the real fate of the fubject. Duel lifts profefs to fight on equal terms: and make much parade of adjufling the combat fo as to accord with these terms. But all this is mere profeffion. Most of those, who defign to become duellifts, apply themselves with great afiduity to booting with pistols at a mark placed at the utmoft ufual fighting diance. In this manner they prove, that they intend to avail themselves of their fuperior feill, thus laboriously acquired, to decide the combat againf their antagonists. It makes not the least difference, whether the advantage confifts in better arms, a better pofition, an earlier fire, or a more skillful hand. In each cafe the advantage lies in the greater probability which it furnifbes one of the combatants of fuccefs in the duel. Superior fill enfures this probability and is therefore, according to the profeffions of duellifts an unfair and iniquitous advantage.

Finally, it is infinite folly, as in every duel, each party puts his soul, and his eternity, into extreme hazard, voluntarily; and rushes before the bar of God, stained with the guilt of suicide, and with the design of shedding violently the blood of his fellow men.

The guilt of duelling involves a train of the most solemn considerations. An understanding, benumbed by the torpor of the lethargy, only would fail to discern them; a heart of flint to feel them; and a conscience vanquished, bound and trodden under foot, to regard them with horror.

Duelling is a violation of the laws of man. Submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, is equally a precept of reason and revelation. The government of every country is the indispensable source of protection, peace, safety, and happiness, to its inhabitants; and the only means of transmitting these blessings, together with education, knowledge, and religion, to their children. It is therefore a good, which cannot be estimated. But without obedience to its laws, no government can continue a moment. He, therefore, who violates them, contributes voluntarily to the destruction of the government itself, and of all the blessings which it secures.

The laws of every civilized country forbid duelling, and forbid it in its various stages by denouncing against it severe and dreadful penalties; thus proving, that the wise and good men of every such country have with one voice, regarded it, as an injury of no common magnitude. The duellist, therefore, openly and of system, attacks the laws, and the peace, and the happiness, of his country; loosens the bonds of socicty; and makes an open war on his fellow-citizens, and their posterity.

At the same time, he takes the decision of his own controversies out of the hands of the public, and constitutes himself his own judge, and avenger. His arm he makes the umpire of all his concerns; and in

solently requires his countrymen to submit their in terest, when connected with his own, to the adjudication of his passions. Claiming, and sharing, all the blessings of civilized society, he arogates, also, the savage independence of wild and brutal nature; wrests the sword of justice from the hand of the magistrate, and wields it, as the weapon of an assassin. To him government is annihilated. Laws and trials, judges and juries, vanish before him. Arms are his laws and a party his judge; his only trial is a battle, and his hall a field of blood.

All his countrymen have the same rights which he has. Should they claim to exercise those which he claims, what would be the consequence? Every controversy, every concern, of man would be terminated by the sword and pistol. Civil war; war, waged by friends and neighbours, by father, sons, and brothers; war, of that dreadful kind, which the Romans denominated a tumult; would spread through every country: a war, in which all the fierce passions of man would be let loose; and wrath and malice, revenge and phrenzy, would change the world into a dungeon, filled with maniacs, who had broken their chains, and glutted their rage with each other's misery. Thus duelling universally adopted, would ruin every country, destroy all the peace and safety, and blast every hope, of mankind. Who but a fiend would willingly contribute to this devastation?

The guilt, begun in the violation of the laws of man, is finished in the violation of the laws of God. This awful Being who gave us existence, and preserves it, who is every where, and sees every thing; who made, and rules the universe; who will judge and reward, both angels and men; and before whom, every work, with every secret thing shall be brought into judgment; with his own voice proclaimed to this bloody world, from Mount Sinai, Thou shalt not kill.' The command, as I explained it the last season in this place,

forbids killing absolutely. No exception, as I then observed, can be lawfully made to the precept, except those, which the Lawgiver has himself made. These I further observed, are limited to killing beasts, when necessary for food, or plainly noxious; and putting men to death by the sword of public justice, or in self defence; whether private or public. This being the only ground of justifiable war. As these are the sole exceptions, it is clear that duelling is an open violation of this law of God.

The guilt of duelling in this view is manifold; and in all its varieties is sufficiently dreadful to alarm any man, whose conscience is susceptible of alarm, and whose mind is not too stupid to discern, that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

If the duellist is a mere creature of solitude, in whose life or death, happiness or misery, no human being is particularly interested; if no bosom will glow with his prosperity, or bleed with his sufferings; if no mourner will follow his hearse, and no eye drop a tear over his grave; still he is a man. As a man, he owes ten thousand duties to his fellow men; and these are all commanded by his God. His labors, his example,' his prayers, are daily due to the neighbor, the stranger, the poor, and the public. He cannot withdraw them without sin. The eternal Being, whose wisdom and justice have sanctioned all these claims, will exact the forfeiture at his hands; and inquire of the wicked and slothful servant, why, in open defiance of his known pleasure he has thus shrunk from his duty, and buried his talent in the grave.

Is he a son? Who licensed him in rebellion against the fifth command of the decalogue, to pierce his parents hearts with agony, and to bring down their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave? Why did he not live to honor his father and his mother; to obey, to comfort, to delight, and to support them in their declining years; and to give them a rich reward for all their

toil, expense, and suffering, in his birth and education, by a dutiful, discreet, and amiable life, the only reward which they ask? Why did he shroud the morning of their happiness in midnight; and cause their rising hopes to set in blood? Why did he raise up before their anguished eyes the spectre of a son, slain in the enormous perpetration of sin; escaping from a troubled grave; or coming from the region of departed spirits, to haunt their course through declining life, to alarm their sleep, and chill their waking moments, with the despairing, agonizing cry,.

"Death! tis a melancholy day.
"To those that have no God."

Is he a Husband? He has broken the marriage vow; the oath of God. He has forsaken the wife of his youth. He has refused to furnish her sustenance; to share her joys; to sooth her sorrows; to watch. her sick bed; and to provide for his children, and hers, the means of living here, and the means of living forever. He has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel Where, in the fatal, guilty moment, when he resolved to cast away his life, were his tenderness to the partner of his bosom; the yearnings of his bowels towards the offspring of his loins; his sense of duty; his remembrance of God? In every character, as a dependant creature, as a sinful man, his eternal life and death were suspended on his forgiveness of his enemies. He who alone can forgive sins, and save sinners, has said, If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly father forgive you. He has gone farther. He has forbidden man even to ask pardon of God, unless with a forgiving spirit to his fellow men. In vain can the duellist pretend to a forgiving temper. If he felt the spirit of the cross, could he possibly for an affront, an offence lighter than air, shed the blood of his neighbor. Could he plunge the friends of the sufferer into an abyss of