proper subject. Dr. Chalmers entertained no such opinions, as those last mentioned. And, indeed, except in the particular on which we have ventured to animadvert, we have scarcely met with anything in the voluminous writings of this extraordinary man, with which we do not fully concur. And our discussion of this point, has not arisen from any desire to be found arraying our opinions and reasonings against one, with whom it would be the height of arrogance to compare ourselves, sed humanum est errare. The greatest men are liable to errors; and their mistakes may be of such a nature that unless corrected and refuted, they will do injury to the cause of truth; and the greater injury in proportion to the eminence of the writer from whom they have proceeded. No man was more ready to correct and retract his errors than Dr. Chalmers; of which some remarkable instances could be given.

Although the volume under review, is principally occupied with the discussion respecting our emotions, and their relation to the will; yet it contains some interesting matter on other subjects.

In the IX. chapter, we have a discriminating discussion "On the Phenomena of Anger and Gratitude, and the Moral Theory founded on them." The remarks of the venerable author on these points are intended to point out the defects of Dr. Adam Smith's "Theory of the Moral Sentiments." While he gives due praise to that distinguished writer for ingenuity and felicitous illustration, he shows very convincingly, the radical unsoundness of his popular theory. The reader will, we doubt not, be gratified with a short extract from this chapter.

"The controversy upon this subject is-whether it is the sympathy which originates our moral judgment, or our moral judgment which regulates and determines the sympathy. Dr. Smith conceived that the sympathy took the antecedency of our moral judgments; and this principle has been conceived by the great majority of our writers on morals, and we think justly conceived, to be erroneous. It is a theory exceedingly well illustrated by himself, and excedingly well appreciated by Dr. Thomas Brown. In spite of its fundamental error, the book is worthy of most attentive perusal—abounding, as it does, in the most felicitous illustrations of human life, and in shrewd and successful fetches among the mysteries of the human character.

"It is not because we sympathize with the resentment that we hold the action in question to be the proper and approved object of this feeling; but because we hold it to be the proper and approved object of resentment, that we sympathize. And we do so, not on the impulse of principles that are

originated by sympathy; but on the impulse of principles which, original in themselves, originate the sympathy that we feel. When we see an unoffending individual subjected in his person to the wanton insult of a blow, or in his property to the inroad of some ruthless depredation-we do not need to witness the resentment of his bosom, ere a like or a kindred feeling sha!! arise as by infection in our own; nor mentally to place ourselves in his situation, and thus to ascertain how we should feel aggrieved or affronted by the treatment that we see him to experience. The circumstance of not being the sufferer myself may give a greater authority to my judgment— because a judgment unwarped by the passions or the partialities of selfishness; but still it is a judgment that comes forth without that process of internal manufacture, of which Dr. Smith conceives it to be the resulting commodity. We judge as immediately and directly on a question of equity between one man and another, as we can on a question of equality between one line and another: And when that equity is violated, there is as instantaneous an emotion awakened in the heart of me the spectator, as there is in the heart of him the sufferer. With him it is anger. With me it is denominated indignation-the one being the resentment of him who simply feels, that he has been disturbed or encroached upon the enjoyment of that which he hath habitually regarded to be his own; the other a resentment felt on perceiving a like encroachment on that which might equitably or rightfully be regarded as his own."

The X. chapter on "Perfect and Imperfect Obligation," is properly a continuance of the same subject, and contains a number of original and discriminating remarks, worthy the attention of the reader.

ART. III.-Duelling-Code of Honour.

A duel is a combat with deadly weapons between two persons agreeably to previous arrangements. It differs from a boxing match because in it no weapons are used. It differs from a rencounter, because that is a sudden combat without pre-meditation. The boxing match and rencounter may be as immoral and as fatal in their consequences as the duel, but neither of them is a duel, neither of them, in our country at least, is regulated by the code of honour.

There have been four kinds of duels in the world. The first was where two hostile armies agreed to select each a champion to meet and fight. Thus David and Goliah fought. Thus Diomedes and Æneas fought. The combat between the Ho

ratii and Curatii, though not a duel, yet involved the same general principle. This kind of combat is not necessarily contrary to sound morality. No man esteems David's conduct, in the matter of Goliah, immoral. The motive to such combat may be the saving of much blood. Whether it will ever again be wise or lawful to resort to this mode of ending contests is a point on which three brief remarks only are offered. The first is that the question cannot arise in our country, the laws governing our armies by their whole scope forbidding it. Another remark is that the consent of the sovereign power would be necessary to give obligation to any contract for terminating hostilities in a given manner upon the issue of such a combat. Such consent can never in our country be given. The third remark is that the whole subject of such combats belongs to writers on the laws of war and not to moralists. Further remarks on the point are not therefore demanded in this essay.

The second kind of duel is not in use amongst us. It was introduced into the South of Europe by the Northern barbarians. It was a superstition. It was an ordeal. Without authority, and therefore presumptuously, and wickedly it pledged divine interposition to show, by the result, who was innocent and who was guilty. Such systematic folly and wickedness all civilized nations now reject. Yet the practice, without, for some time, losing much of its superstition, was engrafted on the chivalry, which at one time so much abounded among the barons and gentry of Europe.

Thus arose the third kind of duel. At first these duellists fought not for themselves, but for some humbler person, or for some fair lady. This system was legalized, and for ages constituted a part of the feudal system. The chief thing noticeable in it was the folly of its origin, and its criminal waste of human life. Although knights commonly fought in harness, and therefore were much protected, yet they became so skillful as frequently to give deadly wounds between the joints of the harness. Great multitudes thus perished.

The kind of duel practised in civilized nations in our day combines most of the evils of former systems. It is maintained to avenge personal and family insults. It cannot be shielded or palliated by the plea of such ignorance as prevailed in the dark ages. It can in no way be justified. "Thou shalt not

kill," is the plain command of the God that made us. No acumen can reconcile the letter of this prohibition with the destruction of human life in a duel. The law is clear. No exception is made in other parts of the divine code in favour of duelling, as there plainly is in favour of taking life in lawful war, in criminal punishments by judicial process, and in defending your dwelling against house-breakers. No man pretends ever to have found in the word of God such an exception. It is not there. The contrariety betwixt duelling and the law of God is manifest and remains in full and undiminished force. The statute is unrepealed. The practice is still maintained. Were the consciences of duellists firmly bound by any law of God. as such, they would be bound by this. Nor is this all. The modern duel includes in itself the guilt of suicide. Those, to whom these views can be of any service, will not maintain that man is possessed of the right of taking his own life at pleasure, or of wantonly exposing it to destruction. Nor can it be necessary to prove that he, who voluntarily and unbidden by God puts himself in a position where he is hit by the ball of another, is as truly criminal as if he had fired a pistol at his own body. All this is plain. An acquaintance with the first principles of morals must lead to such conclusions. Respecting many suicides there is room for hope that the fatal deed is not committed until reason is dethroned, and the delirium of a fevered brain holds the sceptre over the man. But no such soothing reflection can be indulged when a man voluntarily, in a duel, exposes his life to danger. He cannot be regarded as mad in any other sense than that the sorcery of sin has destroyed his moral sense respecting a great law of morality. His blood, if shed, is, in a fearful sense, on himself. Though he may from the first intend to fire his own weapon into the air, and may never aim it at any human bosom, yet if he exposes his own body to the fire of an antagonist in a duel, he incurs the guilt of suicide. He is in heart a self-murderer. If he dies in the duel, he dies a self-murderer. He has done what the law of nature and the word of God forbid. The great and peculiar heinousness of this crime consists in this, that the perpetrator of it may die in an act, which admits of neither reparation, nor repentance. Not only his present life, but his eternal well-being are put in criminal and awful jeopardy every time he goes on the field. If

there he falls, and there expires, we are compelled to remember the decision of Him who cannot lie: "No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." This is as true of a self-murderer as of any other murderer. Moreover, duelling is, in its very nature murderous. The weapons chosen are the weapons of death. The efforts of each are almost without exception for the destruction of his antagonist's life. The fact of a malignant animus is proven by all the circumstances attending duels, and especially by aiming a deadly weapon, with practised skill, at the person of the adversary, intending to banish him from this world. This aim is deliberate. Here is more than the guilt of manslaughter. Here is murderous intention and if life is taken, here is MURDER.

This is indeed strong but not rash language. Sir Matthew Hale says: "This is a plain case, and without any question. If one kill another in fight, even upon the provocation of him that is killed, this is murder." Judge Foster says: "Deliberate duelling, if death ensue, is, in the eye of the law, murder." Sir Edward Coke says: "Single combat between any of the king's subjects is strictly prohibited by the laws of the realm, and on this principle that in states governed by law, no man, in consequence of any injury whatever, ought to indulge the principle of private revenge." Blackstone, quoting from Coke, says: "Murder is when a person, of sound memory and discretion, uulawfully killeth any reasonable creature in being, and under the king's peace, with malice aforethought, either express or implied." The entire applicability of this definition to the crime. of killing in a duel will probably be granted by all, except so much as relates to malice aforethought. Even a part of this will not be denied, viz.: that if there be malice at all, it is malice aforethought. Is there malice at all? The forbidden act of shooting with intent to kill creates strong proof of malice. "This malice aforethought," says the authority just quoted, "is the grand criterion, which now distinguishes murder from other killing; and this malice prepense is not so properly spite or malevolence to the deceased in particular, as any evil design in general: the dictate of a wicked, depraved and malignant heart: and it may be either express or implied in law. Express malice is when one, with a sedate, deliberate mind and formed design, doth kill another, which formed design is evidenced by external