CHAP. 14.J THE FIELD. 215 five and six feet high, and leave them perhaps to their childishness:---but the truth is that to many the zest of the concealment consists in the opportunity which it gives of covert licentiousness; of doing that in secret of which openly they would profess to be ashamed. Some men and some women who affect propriety when the face is shown, are glad of a few hours of concealed libertinism. It is a time in which principles are left to guard the citadel of virtue without the auxiliary of public opinion. And ill do they guard it! It is no equivocal indication of the slender power of a person's principles when they do not restrain him any longer than his misdeeds will produce exposure. She who is immodest at a masquerade, is modest nowhere. She may affect the language of delicacy and maintain external decorum, but she has no purity of mind. THE FIELD. If we proceed with the calculation of the benefits and mischiefs of field sports, in the merchant-like manner of debtor and creditor, the balance is presently found to be greatly against them. The advantages to him who rides after hounds and shoots pheasants, are— that he is amused, and possibly that his health is improved; some of the disadvantages are-that it is unpropitious to the influence of religion and the dispositions which religion induces; that it expends money and time which a man ought to be able to employ better; and that it inflicts gratuitous misery upon the inferior animals. The value of the pleasure cannot easily be computed; and as to health it may pass for nothing, for if a man is so little concerned for his health that he will not take exercise without dogs and guns, he has no reason to expect other men to concern themselves for it in remarking upon his actions. And then for the other side of the calculation.--That field sports have any tendency to make a man better, no one will pretend and no one who looks around him will doubt that their tendency is in the opposite direction. It is not necessary to show that every one who rides after the dogs is a worse man in the evening than he was in the morning: the influence of such things is to be sought in those with whom they are habitual. Is the character of the sportsman, then, distinguished by religious sensibility? No. By activity of benevolence? No. By intellectual exertion? No. By purity of manners? No. Sportsmen are not the persons who diffuse the light of Christianity, or endeavour to rectify the public morals, or to extend the empire of knowledge. Look again at the clerical sportsman. Is he usually as exemplary in the discharge of his functions as those who decline such diversions? His parishioners know that he is not. So, then, the religious and moral tendency of field sports is bad. It is not necessary to show how the ill effect is produced. It is sufficient that it actually is produced. As to the expenditure of time and money, I dare say we shall be told that a man has a right to employ both as he chooses. We have heretofore seen that he has no such right. Obligations apply just as truly to the mode of employing leisure and property, as to the use which a man may make of a pound of arsenic. The obligations are not indeed alike enforced in a court of justice: the misuser of arsenic is carried to prison, the misuser of time and money awaits as sure an inquiry at another tribunal. But no folly is more absurd than that of supposing we have a right to do whatever the law does not punish. Such is the state of man kind, so great is the amount of misery and degradation, and so great are the effects of money and active philanthropy in meliorating this condition of our species, that it is no light thing for a man to employ his time and 216 THE TURF. [ESSAY II. property upon vain and needless gratifications. It is no light thing to keep a pack of hounds and to spend days and weeks in riding after them. As to the torture which field sports inflict upon animals, it is wonderful to observe our inconsistencies. He who has, in the day, inflicted upon half a dozen animals almost as much torture as they are capable of sustaining, and who has wounded perhaps half a dozen more and left them to die of pain or starvation, gives in the evening a grave reproof to his child whom he sees amusing himself with picking off the wings of flies! The infliction of pain is not that which gives pleasure to the sportsman (this were ferocious depravity), but he voluntarily inflicts the pain in order to please himself. Yet this man sighs and moralizes over the cruelty of children! An appropriate device for a sportsman's dress, would be a pair of balances, of which one scale was laden with "virtue and humanity," and the other with "sport" the latter should be preponderating and lifting the other into the air. THE TURF is still worse, partly because it is a stronghold of gambling, and therefore an efficient cause of misery and wickedness. It is an amusement of almost unmingled evil. But upon whom is the evi. chargeable? Upon the fifty or one hundred persons only who bring horses and make bets? No. Every man participates who attends the course. The great attraction of many public spectacles, and of this among others, consists more in the company than in the ostensible object of amusement. Many go to a race-ground who cannot tell when they return what horse has been the victor. Every one, therefore, who is present, must take his share of the mischief and the responsibility. It is the same with respect to the gross and vulgar diversions of boxing, wrestling, and feats of running and riding. There is the same almost pure and unmingled evil,—the same popularity resulting from the concourses who attend, and by consequence, the participation and responsibility in those who do attend. The drunkenness, and the profaneness, and the debauchery, lie in part at the doors of those who are merely lookers on; and if these lookers on make pretensions to purity of character, their example is so much the more influential, and their responsibility tenfold increased. Defences of these gross amusements are ridiculous. One tells us of keeping up the national spirit, which is the same thing as to say that a human community is benefited by inducing into it the qualities of the bull-dog. Another expatiates upon invigorating the muscular strength of the poor, as if the English poor were under so little necessity to labour and to strengthen themselves by labour, that artificial means must be devised to increase their toil. The vicissitudes of folly are endless: the vulgar games of the present day may soon be displaced by others, the same in genus but differing in species. At the present moment, wrestling has become the point of in terest. A man is conveyed across the kingdom to try whether he can throw down another, and when he has done it, grave narratives of the feat are detailed in half the newspapers of the country! There is a grossness, a vulgarity, a want of mental elevation in these things, which might induce the man of intelligence to reprobate them even if the voice of morality were silent. They are remains of barbarism,-evidences that barbarism still maintains itself among us,-proofs that the higher qualities of our nature are not sufficiently dominant over the lower. These grossnesses will pass away, as the deadly conflicts of men with beasts are passed already. Our posterity will wonder at the barbarism CHAP. 15.] DUELLING. 217 of us their fathers, as we wonder at the barbarism of Rome. Let him then who loves intellectual elevation, advance beyond the present times, and anticipate, in the recreations which he encourages, that period when these diversions shall be regarded as indicating one of the intermediate stages between the ferociousness of mental darkness and the purity of mental light. These criticisms might be extended to many other species of amusement; and it is humiliating to discover that the conclusion will very frequently be the same, that the evil out balances the good, and that there are no grouds upon which a good man can justify a participation in them. In thus concluding, it is possible that the reader may imagine that we would exclude enjoyment from the world, and substitute a system of irreproachable austerity. He who thinks this is unacquainted with the nature and sources of our better enjoyments. It is an ordinary mistake to imagine that pleasure is great only when it is vivid or intemperate, as a child fancies it were more delightful to devour a pound of sugar at once than to eat an ounce daily in his food. It is happily and kindly provided that the greatest sum of enjoyment is that which is quietly and constantly induced. No men understand the nature of pleasure so well or possess it so much as those who find it within their own doors. If it were not that moral education is so bad, multitudes would seek enjoyment and find it here, who now fancy that they never partake of pleasure except in scenes of diversion. It is unquestionably true, that no community enjoys life more than that which excludes all these amusements from its sources of enjoyment. We use therefore the language, not of speculation but of experience, when we say, that none of them is in anv degree necessary to the happiness of life. CHAPTER XV. DUELLING. It is not to much purpose to show that this strange practice is in itself wrong, because no one denies it. Other grounds of defence are taken, although to be sure there is a plain absurdity in conceding that a thing is wrong in morals, and then trying to show that it is proper to practise it. Public notions exempt a clergyman from the "necessity" of fighting duels, and they exempt other men from the "necessity" of demanding satisfaction for a clergyman's insult. Now we ask the man of honour whether he would rather receive an insult from a military officer or from a clergyman. Which would give him the greater pain, and cause him the more concern and uneasiness? That from the military officer, certainly. But why? Because the officer's affront leads to a duel, and the clergyman's does not. So, then, it is preferable to receive an insult to which the "necessity" of fighting is not attached, than one to which it is attached. Why then attach the necessity to any man's affront? You say that demanding satisfaction is a remedy for the evil of an insult. But 218 DUELLING. [ESSAY II. we see that the evil, together with the remedy, is worse than the evil alone. Why then institute the remedy at all?—It is not indeed to be questioned that some insults may be forborne because it is known to what consequences they lead. But on the other hand, for what purpose does one man insult another? To give him pain: now we have just seen that the pain is so much the greater in consequence of the "necessity" of fighting, and therefore the motives to insult another are increased. A man who wishes to inflict pain upon another, can inflict it more intensely in consequence of the system of duelling. The truth is, that men fancy the system is useful because they do not perceive how public opinion has been violently turned out of its natural and its usual course. When a military man is guilty of an insult, public disapprobation falls but lightly upon him. It reserves its force to direct against the insulted party if he does not demand satisfaction. But when a clergyman is guilty of an insult, public disapprobation falls upon him with undivided force. The insulted party receives no censure. Now if you take away the custom of demanding satisfaction, what will be the result? Why, that public opinion will revert to its natural course; it will direct all its penalties to the offending party, and by consequence restrain him from offending. It will act towards all men as it now acts towards the clergy; and if a clergyman were frequently to be guilty of insults, his character would be destroyed. The reader will perhaps more distinctly perceive that the fancied utility of duelling in preventing insults results from this misdirection of public opinion, by this brief argument: An individual either fears public opinion or he does not. If he does not fear it, the custom of duelling cannot prevent him from insulting whomsoever he pleases; because public opinion is the only thing which makes men fight, and he does not regard it. If he does fear public opinion, then the most effectual way of restraining him from insulting others, is by directing that opinion against the act of insulting,-just as it is now directed in the case of the clergy.* Thus it is that we find-what he knows the perfection of Christian morality would expect that duelling, as it is immoral, so it is absurd. It appears to be forgotten that a duel is not more allowable to secure ourselves from censure or neglect, than any other violation of the moral law. If these motives constitute a justification of a duel, they constitute a justification of robbery or poisoning. To advocate duelling is not to defend one species of offence, but to assert the general right to violate the laws of God. If, as Dr. Johnson reasoned, the "notions which prevail" make fighting right, they can make any thing right. Nothing is wanted but to alter the "notions which prevail," and there is not a crime mentioned in the statute book that will not be lawful and honourable to-morrow. It is usual with those who do foolish and vicious things, or who do things from foolish or vicious motives, to invent some fiction by which to veil the evil or folly, and to give, it if possible, a creditable appearance. This has been done in the case of duelling. We hear a great deal about honour, and spirit, and courage, and other qualities equally pleasant, and as it respects the duellist, equally fictitious. The want of suffi cient honour, and spirit, and courage, is precisely the very reason why See West. Rev. No. 7, Art. 2. men fight. Pitt fought with Tierney; upon which Pitt's biographer writes "A mind like his, cast in no common mould, should have risen superior to a low and unworthy prejudice, the folly of which it must have perceived, and the wickedness of which it must have acknowledged. Could Mr. Pitt be led away by that false shame which subjects the decisions of reason to the control of fear, and renders the admonitions of conscience subservient to the powers of ridicule?" Low prejudice, folly, wickedness, false shame, and fear, are the motives which the complacent duellist dignifies with the titles of honour, spirit, courage. This, to be sure, is very politic: he would not be so silly as to call his motives by their right names. Others, of course, join in the chicanery. They reflect that they themselves may one day have a "meeting," and they wish to keep up the credit of a system which they are conscious they have not principle enough to reject. Put Christianity out of the question,-Would not even the philosophy of paganism have despised that littleness of principle which would not bear a man up in adhering to conduct which he knew to be right,—that littleness of principle which sacrifices the dictates of understanding to an unworthy fear?-When a good man, rather than conform to some vicious institution of the papacy, stood firm against the frowns and persecutions of the world, against obloquy and infamy, we say that his mental principles were great as well as good. If they were, the principles of the duellist are mean as well as vicious. He is afraid to be good and great. He knows the course which dignity and virtue prescribe, but he will not rise above those lower motives which prompt him to deviate from that course. It does not affect these conclusions to concede that he who is afraid to refuse a challenge may generally be a man of elevated mind. He may be such; but his refusal is an exception to his general character. It is an instance in which he impeaches his consistency in excellence. If it were consistent, if the whole mind had attained to the rightful stature of a Christian man, he would assuredly contemn in his practice the conduct which he disapproved in his heart. If you would show us a man of courage, bring forward him who will say, I will not fight. Suppose a gentleman who, upon the principles which Gifford says should have actuated Pitt and all great minds, had thus refused to fight, and pose him saying to his withdrawing friends-"I have acted with per fect deliberation: I know all the consequences of the course I have pursued: but I was persuaded that I should act most like a man of intellect as well as like a Christian by declining the meeting; and therefore I declined it. I feel and deplore the consequences, though I do not deprecate them. I am not fearful, as I have not been fearful; for I appeal to yourselves whether I have not encountered the more appalling alternative, whether it does not require a greater effort to do what I have done, and what I am at this moment doing, than to have met my opponent."-Such a man's magnanimity might not procure for him the companionship of his acquaintance, but it would do much more; it would obtain the suffrages of their judgments and their hearts. While they continued perhaps externally to neglect him, they would internally honour and admire. They would feel that his excellence was of an order to which they could make no pretensions; and they would feel, as they • Gifford's Life, vol. i, p. 268. sup |