The obliging information of Sir Arthur Bigge, of Viscount Cross, and of Sir Francis Knollys, has enabled the writer accurately to state such facts of Court organization as are legitimate matters of interest to Her Majesty's subjects.
The Monro-Fawcett duel turned the Prince Consort's attention, as representing the Crown, to duelling, the abolition of which must begin with the army. Courts of Honour suggested as successful abroad. Why distrusted by English opinion. Views of the Duke and others. Hence the Court first occupied with army reforms to good results. Contrast between military resources 1837-97. Special attention of Court to military education. Old and new schools of officers compared. Duke of Wellington as Commander contrasted with his latest successors. Growth of rifle volunteers; special influences in military education, _e.g._ Edward Hamley. Military democracy. Why necessarily imperfect.
So plausible a case may theoretically be made out for the duel as a social institution that it is not surprising the custom should have died hard in a combatant nation like the English. The ordeal by arms furnishes a simple if barbaric mode of settling personal differences without the scandal and the weariness of law; in an age whose boast is freedom of speech not less than of thought, whose bane is the degeneration of that chartered liberty into the unlicensed malignity and curiosity of small-talk, there always will be ill-conditioned persons whom only fear of the horsewhip, the rapier, or the pistol, can teach to discipline their tongue; all these things have been said in favour of the duel as a mode of social discipline. In practice, however, it was never found that the fear of a challenge ensured social discretion of tongue, or a higher standard of personal courtesy. When these combats were not farcical, as the duel has generally become in France, where it still survives, they proved the instruments of the professional homicide, who, trained to artistic murder, went about society, seeking a feud with those whom he or his patrons desired to be put out of the way. Stung to the quick by the brutalities of O'Connell, Sir Robert Peel, during the early forties demanded, as the story runs, the satisfaction which was not then an anachronism. The great Irishman replied that yielding to the expostulations of his wife, he must forego the pleasure of the encounter for which he was 'spoiling.' A second invitation was declined on the ground that the entreaties of his offspring had subdued the spirit of the warrior. Hence the point in Theodore Hook's epigram published in the _John Bull_ of the period:--