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16
Indirect Legislation
Satisfying
Expedient 3. Indulgence shewn to duelling.
I have elsewhere had occasion to shew
that the mischief produced by duelling,
is in comparison but small. is next to nothing.
Princ. of Legisl. Penal
law Part . . . . tit.
[But]
On the other hand poisoning and assassination,
are
as I have is also shewn among the most mischievous of crimes.
Now you But duelling is a sort of succedaneum to
those other practises. Look round, and where
you
see duelling prevails, you scarce ever see any
thing of the other two. At the expence of the very
small mischief of the one, a nation is insured
as it were, against the great mischief of the other.
Duelling is the great preservative
of
politeness good-breeding , &
thence of peace: the fear of being obliged to give or
to accept a challenge nips quarrels in the bud.
[It has been observed by way of throwing a stigma
on this practise that ] The Greeks and Romans
it has been observed knew of no such thing. True: and so much the
worse
were they for not
knowing it
was it for them. If they were strangers to duelling
knew not what it was to fight duelsthey knew perfectly well what it was to poison and assassinate
they were perfectly well acquainted with poisoning
and assassination. In
the as virtuous a period as
any of the Roman Commonwealth, the Consuls
being commissioned by the senate to make enquiry
after poisons, reported
made report of before their business was half done. During the
political dissentions that were continually raging
in the
cities little states of Greece, the business of one half
of the inhabitants
used of a town used to be
employ'd in laying
schemes to lye
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