Mr. Hubbard asked for the yeas and nays on the passage; which were ordered, when there appeared for the bill thirty-four, against it one, as follows:

Yeas. Messrs. Allen, Benton, Buchanan, Clay of Alabama, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Davis, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, Lumpkin, Lyon, McKean, Merrick, Mouton, Niles, Norvell, Prentiss, Roane, Robbins, Robinson, Ruggles, Smith of Connecticut, Smith of Indiana, Strange, Swift, Tipton, Trotter, Walker, Wall, White, Williams, Wright, and Young. -34. Nays. Mr. Sevier.1.

No. XII.

JUDGE PIRTLE ON DUELLING.

[From the Louisville (Ky.) Journal, March, 1849.]

JUDGE PIRTLE, in his late valedictory address to the graduating law class in this city, made some excellent and forcible remarks upon the important subject of duelling. He denounced the practice in the strongest language, as rude and coarse, and full of horrid crime. He defined the just office of a young man who might be called as the friend of another on any occasion of offended honor, and showed that oftentimes the blame of death rests on the imprudent course of him who stands in the office of a friend. He charged the young men to attend no man to the field who would persist in the wrong,—the wrong alone disgraced a man. He denounced the mode of battle sometimes practised, even in this age, with gun and pistol and knife, and the fight to the death, as unchivalrous, barbarous, and savage, having nothing but vengeance and murder in it, and unredeemed by a shade of honor, -such as true knighthood would scorn.

No. XIII.

DUELLING CUSTOMS.

CHAMBERS, in the Edinburgh Journal (1837), thus concludes an article with the above title:

"Although divines have preached, and moralists have railed, against

this bloody usage, it still prevails to a lesser or greater extent in every country in Europe, and is almost daily producing the most fatal results in America. There are evidently two reasons for its protracted existence. Public opinion is in an unhealthy state upon the subject; there is too ready a disposition to sneer at the man who would refuse to peril his life in a deadly conflict, no matter how unjustifiable the cause. The law, also, is miserably defective in reference to duelling, defective either in the letter or in the mode of its execution. We venture to predict, that if killing in a duel were visited with the usual capital punishment for murder, only in one instance, no more would be heard of the practice of duelling. But neither the people at large who compose the juries, nor the judicial executive, possess sufficient nerve to carry so effectual a mode of reform into operation. We have known of many murders committed in duels, but never heard of one instance of the murderer being carried to the gallows for his crime. In the midst of this stupid apathy on an evil of so hideous a nature, it is gratifying to find that more clear perceptions of the crime of killing in duel are beginning to be entertained in France, where private fighting has always been more general than elsewhere. In a trial of a person charged with killing another in a duel, before the criminal court of Paris, Monsieur Dupin, an eminent member of the legislature, maintained, in a speech of great force and eloquence, that the practice was not only immoral and Antichristian, but illegal, and that any one who slew another in a duel was guilty of murder. The adoption of these views by the judges of the court must necessarily be extremely beneficial in a country where the laws have been understood rather to favor than to punish these private assassinations. We should be glad to hear similar sentiments delivered in an English criminal court."

No. XIV.

THE SWORD-PLAYERS OF THE LAST CENTURY.

The 436th number of the Spectator contains an account of the challenge of James Miller, "master of the noble science of defence," to Timothy Buck, who claimed to possess equal skill, and to the combat which followed in the "Bear Garden, at Hockley in the Hole"; and were there not ample evidence to show that the scenes which Addison describes were frequent, we should almost incline to believe, that, for some of his incidents, he drew upon his imagination, so barbarous does the custom of men hacking one another with swords, for the mere amusement of themselves and others, appear to us.

The article from Chambers, written in 1835, which follows, will give the reader an idea of that diversion in the British Isles, as well as disclose the fact that noblemen and foreign ministers were voluntary, and interested witnesses of it. The change affords reason to hope that the barbarous practice to which this volume is specially devoted may disappear also. While the knowledge that "sword-players" were objects of admiration as late as Addison's time should teach our English brethren charity and moderation in their remarks about those who use bowieknives and shot-guns on the borders of American civilization.

"Those who are shocked by the descriptions of the gladiatorial scenes exhibited on so large a scale, and with circumstances of such monstrous barbarity, in ancient Rome, will be still more so when informed that practices similar in kind, if less remarkable in degree, were common in our own country till within the last hundred years. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a place of amusement called the Bear Garden at Hockley in the Hole, in or near London, was devoted to amusements of this description, which were not only resorted to by the lower population, but by noblemen, and occasionally even by the resident ambassadors. Men, styling themselves professors of the noble art of defence, and occasionally assuming the title of champion for particular English counties, were either stationary at that place of exhibition, where they defied all competitors, or went about the country, challenging particular towns to furnish them with an antagonist; a failure in which could only be expiated by a purse of gold to purchase their departure. The professors of this barbarous art were in many cases Irishmen; and that there was at least one eminent proficient who claimed Scotland for his place of birth is proved by a scarce old volume in which is chronicled the life of Donald Bane, a man who had originally been a soldier, but afterwards gained a subsistence by teaching the broadsword, and occasionally taking a purse by prize-fighting. On the days when there was to be a fight at Hockley, they used to advertise the circumstance, by parading the streets in fancy dresses, with swords drawn, colors flying, drums beating, and a few officials whose duty it was to disperse bills of the performance. The offensiveness of these promenades is alluded to in terms of bitter reprobation in a presentment of the grand jury of London in June, 1701; but they were not finally put down for full thirty years after that period.

"In 1725, one Figg entertained the public at an amphitheatre in the Oxford Road, where, on one occasion, Sutton, the champion of Kent, and a female of the same county, fought Stokes and his wife, for forty pounds, to be given to the male or female who gave most cuts with the sword, and twenty pounds for the most blows at quarter-staff, besides the collection in the box. Two years later appeared the following advertisement: 'In Islington Road, on Monday, the 17th of July

1727, will be performed a trial of skill by the following combatants. "We, Robert Barker and Mary Welsh, from Ireland, having often contaminated our swords with such antagonists as had the insolence to dispute our skill, do find ourselves once more necessitated to challenge, defy, and invite Mr. Stokes and his bold Amazonian virago to meet us on the stage, where we hope to give a satisfaction to the honorable lord of our nation who has laid a wager of twenty guineas on our heads. They that give the most cuts to have the whole money, and the benefit of the house; and if swords, daggers, quarter-staff, fury, rage, and resolution will prevail, our friends shall not meet with a disappointment." “We, James and Elizabeth Stokes, of the city of London, having already given an universal approbation by our agility of body, dexterous hands, and courageous hearts, need not perambulate on this occasion, but rather choose to exercise the sword to their sorrow, and corroborate the general opinion of the town, than to follow the custom of our repartee antagonists. This will be the last time of Mrs. Stokes's performing on the stage." There will be a door on purpose for the reception of the gentlemen, where coaches may drive up, and the company come in without being crowded. Attendance will be given at three, and the combatants mount at six precisely. They all fight in the same dresses as before.' In October, 1730, Mr. Figg fought his two hundred and seventy-first battle with a Mr. Holmes, whose wrist he cut to the bone. It does not appear, however, that these horrible exhibitions were ever attended with a mortal result: such an event would have probably put an end to them.

"At a somewhat later period, an Irish sword-player, named O'Bryan, who had beaten all the combatants at the Bear Garden, and various individuals in other parts of the kingdom, paid a visit to Edinburgh, where, according to his custom, he challenged the inhabitants to produce an antagonist, under the usual penalty. That a breach of the peace of this monstrous character was then tolerated, or such an exaction submitted to, in a populous and not unenlightened city, may well excite surprise; but if we only reflect on how much custom will reconcile us to, our wonder may in some measure cease. O'Bryan had been in the city for some weeks, daily parading through its streets to proclaim his challenge, when the Duke of Hamilton, then residing in Holyrood House, sent for Donald Bane, the teacher of the broadsword already mentioned, with the view of engaging him to take up the cause of the citizens. When Bane arrived at the palace, the Duke of Argyle happened to be present, and, as an old commander of the veteran swordsman, entered heartily into the project. Has he a drum?' said Bane. Yes,' answered Argyle, and a very clever, stout fellow he is, I assure you.' You may make yourself easy as to that,' replied Bane, for I have broken his drum already.' This was really the case; for meeting O'Bryan at the foot of the West Bow, where he was, in no very courteous terms, defying the whole of Scotland, the patriotic blood of the Caledonian had become excited, and he drove his foot through e one end of the drum and his fist through the other, as a first intima

tion of his acceptance of the challenge. An agreement, indeed, had already been made between O'Bryan and Bane to fight on that day week. It was nevertheless thought necessary that a reply to the challenge should be published, in fair, set terms, and in Latin verse; a fact which strikingly proves the interest taken in these sanguinary proceedings by persons of the better order.* Donald being now sixty-six years of age, some fears were entertained by his friends for his success in the encounter; and tradition represents his chief asking if he thought he were 'yauld enough' for O'Bryan. On this the veteran pulled out his claymore and inade it whistle in the air over his head, a sufficiently expressive test of his strength of arm. As he passed along the street, some of the by-standers said, 'Ah, Donald's failed; I doubt he 'll no do'; whereupon he leaped up to a lamp-iron far above the reach of ordinary men, hung by one hand for a moment, and, springing down, exclaimed, She'll do yet.' The stage was erected in St. Anne's Yards, at the back of the cavalry green attached to the palace; and the conflict, which lasted several hours, and was tried with a variety of weapons, terminated in a declaration of victory in favor of the native combatant, who, at the conclusion, found the boards covered with gold and silver, thrown there for him by the admiring spectators.

"These facts must be allowed to denote a remarkable change of manners in our island, for, though boxing is still occasionally practised, and sometimes with more fatal effects, it is obvious that a more barbarous and brutalized character is necessary to endure the sight of a fight with edged weapons, than one in which the hands only are employed. A lesson may be taken by persons in authority and by public writers from the history of British gladiatorship. Such exhibitions, it is evident, were regarded a century ago with much the same feelings which are now experienced in reference to boxing. Morality stamped it as an abominable vice, and such every authority and every public writer of the least elevation of character must have esteemed it. But the existence of the practice tended to avert due reprobation from it, and was the means of its prolongation. In the same way, boxing cannot now be defended for a moment, when considered with a reference to mo

* This answer was entitled, "Donaldi Bani famigerati ad Andreæ O'Bryan chartam provocatoriam Responsum," and commenced as follows:

"Ipse ego Donaldus Banus, forma albus et altus,

Non huic Andreæ thrasoni occurrere decro," &c.

It might be thus translated into English: "I, Donald Bane, fair-complexioned and tall, shall not fail to enter the lists with this bully Andrew. With Heaven's assistance, and as a friend to my country, I will go to meet him, who, unskilled in the art, daringly challenges me to the combat. In a short time, when we have entered upon the fight, brave men admitted to behold us will perhaps see that the pugilist O'Bryan is, as I believe, not so expert a master of the art of fencing. Whether he have a protection or a patron, my weapon will render him an idle capon."

† Yauld, agile, with vigor.