MISCELLANY. [The following information and anecdote, communicated to us for publication by an obliging Correspondent, will, we doubt not, be highly gratifying to our readers, and we ardently wish it may inspire them with a determination, to go and do likewise. EDITORS.] ANTI-DUELLING ASSOCIATION. New-York, 8th Aug. 1809. AGREEABLY to public notice, a large number of respectable citizens met at the North Dutch Church, this day, to receive the report of a committee appointed at a former meeting, relative to the adoption of measures for the suppression of duelling. Hon. JOHN BROOME, Esq. in the Chair. Col. LEBBEUS LOOMIs, Secretary. The following plan was reported by the committee, and unanimously adopted, viz. "We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, viewing with alarm the increase of duelling; desirous of opposing to its further prevalence the strongest lawful resistance; and persuaded that a proper use of the Right of Suffrage, will have a powerful effect in discountenancing and banishing it; do hereby unite ourselves in an Association, to be called the ANTI-DUELLING ASSOCIATION OF NEW-YORK. And do, by our signatures hereunto annexed, solemnly pledge ourselves to each other, not to vote at any election for any man, whom, from current fame, or our own private conviction, we shall believe to have sent, accepted, or carried a challenge to fight a Duel, or acted as a Second or Surgeon therein, after the date hereof. VOL. II. New Series. of this meeting to be published. By order of the meeting, JOHN BROOME, Chairman, THE FOLLOWING IS THE ADDRESS. TO THE ELECTORS OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. A number of your fellow citizens solicit your attention to a subject of great and common interest. They address you not as adherents to any political or ecclesiastical party; as men who abhor that atheism which rejects the authority and government of God-as citizens who feel the importance of making the law respected; who know that the impunity of crime tends to destroy both public order and private happiness, with all the security of property, liberty, and life. As friends, brothers, fathers of families, to whom the social charities are sacred; and who can never hold cheap the blood of such as are united to them in the tenderest ties of amity, of nature, and of love. They call upon you to consider and resist the prevalence of a crime which strikes at you in all these relations; which has hitherto eluded but too successfully, the several ef. forts to suppress it; and which, emboldened by past impunity, threatens to leave nothing safe of all that is venerable in human life; the crime of duelling. They need not prove the absurdity and atrocity of a practice which cannot reckon among its advocates a single wise or good man, few, even of the aban doned, venture to apologise for it upon any other principle than this, that "it is a means, howev er bad, which the state of society renders necessary for the protection of person and character; and that if one should not resent an insult by calling out its author, or should decline a challenge, he would become an object of universal contempt, liable to the meanest affronts, and incapable of retaining his place among men of dignity and spirit. Briefly, that public opinion, which regulates private honor, is in favor of duelling, and compels one to sacrifice his reason, his conscience, and his wishes, to the respectability of his social standing." Thus the duellist, assuming it as a fact, that he is to be rewarded with the approbation of the community, flies to his weapons of death; sates his revenge with blood; and produces PUBLIC OPINION as the warrant for his murders. On the MORALITY of this doc. trine it would be superfluous to comment. There can be but one judgment pronounced upon it by all who recognize the distinction between right and wrong, as originating in a higher source than human custom. But if the allegation of fact is correct; if the duellist has rightly estimated the public opinion; if it is true that the American people look with satisfaction upon deeds which fill every virtuous breast with horror and dismay, then is our condition dreadful indeed. We cannot submit to such a libel upon the understanding and morals of this nation. Public opinion is merely the collective opinion of individuals. To be known, it must be expressed. And when, where, how has it been expressed in FAVOR OF DUELLING? Let the man be produced 1809.] Address to the Electors of the State of New York. who has, from principle, refused either to give or accept a chal. lenge, and has been pursued by public reprobation! The true expression of public opinion is to be sought in the religion of the land, in its laws, and in the conversation of its inhabitants. The religion of the land is decisive. That religion which is received by the people of the United States as of divine authority, and which has interdicted not only the matured act, but all incitements to the commission of it. The laws of the land are decisive. They speak death to the man who kills another in a duel. They speak degradation and infamy to every one who, in any manner, assists in a duel. But the laws are merciful. They will not allow of any avoidable risk of punishing the innocent. And the guilty, availing himself of their precaution, and of the facility of escape created by different jurisdictions, eludes their blow, and in the very act of shrinking from this expression of the public will, pleads PUBLIC OPINION in his own vindication! The private circle is decisive. Go through the state from house to house; number the patrons of duelling; and when you have found them one in a thousand of our independent electors, begin to speak of their opinion. Shall we, then, hear that our opinions collectively are in diametrical contradiction to your opinions separately? And that the public applauds a practice which every one who contributes to make up that public, a handful of the desperate excepted, pronounces to be senseless and wicked? Yet strong as 179 the facts are; full, peremptory, solemn, and habitual as are the expressions of public opinion against duelling, without one solitary expression in its favor, this baneful practice, the offspring of barbarous manners and bloody passions, is still fathered upon PUBLIC OPINION? And what is deeply alarming, gains rapidly upon our citizens; gains, in opposition to all the expostulations of reason, and all the sanctions of religion; in opposition to the rebuke of the law; to the testimony of the wise and good; to the protestations of common hu. manity; to the tears of the widow, and the sorrow of the orphan. Are we fathers? Are we brothers? Are we citizens? Are we men ? And shall we permit a crime, the reproach of our land, and the scourge of our peace, to stalk openly and impudently through our streets? Are we to tremble every hour of our lives, lest a brother or a son, on whom rest our fairest hopes, cross our threshold in the morning, to be brought back at noon, a victim to that Moloch-modern honor? And, as the sword passes through our souls, to be told, that we in. vited its point, and bribed the assassin, by our own complacen cy to his character ? But what shall be done? Reason has spoken, and she is disregarded. Religion has spoken and she is mocked. The laws have spoken, and they are defied. Humanity has spoken, and she is insulted. One This is unhappily true. measure, however still remains. A measure, simple, dignified, and probably more effectual than any which has been tried hitherto. It is in the elective franchise. The freemen of this state have only to refuse their countenance and their VOTE at the elections to every man who shall hereafter be engaged either as principal or accessory to any duel, or in any attempt to promote one. As the utmost art is used by of. fenders in this way to frustrate the law by rendering the requisite proof impossible, nothing more is necessary to cut them off from the benefit of their ill-gotten impunity, than to make current report, or one's private persuasion, by what means soever obtained, the ground of withholding one's vote. That the influence of such a determination, if generally adopt. ed and acted upon, would be very great, cannot admit of a doubt. The only plausible objections are the two following: 1. That a judgment founded upon presumptive proof, such as common rumor, or an article in the public prints, might condemn an innocent man: and 2. That the measure recommended may interfere with the freedom of elections. Upon the first objection it is sufficient to remark, that should the case even occur, that a can. didate for office should fail in his election from an unjust suspicion of his having been concerned in a duel, it would still be much better that an individual should be kept out of an office to which he has no right but the people's gift, than that an atrocious crime should go longer without caution. The injury, if any, would flow not from the vote, but from the suspicion which existed prior to it, and therefore could be no way occasioned by it. But such a case is so extreme ly improbable as not to be of any weight in the contemplation of a grand social reform. Among all those to whom a general and permanent suspicion has attach. ed on this subject, it would be difficult if not impossible to point out an instance of mistake. And should a mistake happen hereaf. ter, the person accused, knowing that the charge, if believed, is to shut him out from the people's honors, will not be slow in repelling it, and rescuing his character from unmerited odium. With regard to the second ob jection--Instead of the interfering with the rightof election, the expe dient proposed is founded upon the broadest and freest exercise of that right. It is the prerogative of every elector to give or to deny his vote to any candidate for any reason which to himself is satisfactory; no other reason than his own choice. He enjoys a control over his own vote which no man nor body of men may question. And as he may give or refuse it to whom-soever he pleases at the time of election, so he is at per. fect liberty to declare, before. hand, what causes shall govern him in its application. While the measure proposed does in no manner invade the freedom of election, it is recommended by the most forcible motives of public utility and virtue. The class of avowed duelists is too small to impoverish the councils or offices of the state by their absence. Nothing will be lost by leaving them out. The intended remedy against their inroads upon society, addresses itself to the very principle on which they profess to build their practice-a sense of honor. Close up the avenues to public confidence: let it be heard, and seen, and felt, that duelling and duelists are infamous-and their plea is gone. If after this, any of our citizens should persist in the practice-they will convict themselves in the face of heaven and earth, of fighting from the impulses of ferocious malignity and thirst of blood. The political power of the people will be arranged on the side of individual virtue, of domestic happiness, and of public morals. Many an unhappy man, who would otherwise be hurried away by notions of false honor, and and the dread of open scorn, will be preserved to himself, his family, and his country. The stream of public opinion, thus efficaciously turned against a crime of frequent occurrence and the blackest dye, will obliterate the reproach of our name, and prevent the accumulation of both guilt and sufferance. As no retrospect is designedwhat is past being considered as past-an opportunity will be given to those who may have been unwillingly drawn into duels, to declare themselves in the cause of their convictions of truth. Such, fellow citizens, are the sentiments which have given rise to the Anti-Duelling Association of New-York. You are earnestly entreated to join in a general and solemn resolution never to confide the interests of your families and your country to the hands of men, who, by future commission of the crime of duel ling, shall prove that they neither fear God nor regard man. Such a resolution will refute the slander that your opinions are really favorable to their folly and their violence. It will put away from you, as individuals, if faithfully kept, the guilt of blood. It will be as beneficial to the community as it will be consolatory to yourselves. It will speak to offenders in a tone which they will not dare to des pise. And if this magnanimous conduct will not furnish an example, no example is ever to be furnished in the course of human things, that the voice of the people is the voice of God !— By order of the meeting, JOHN BROOME, Chairman. LEBBEUS LOOMIS, Sect'y. New-York, Aug. 8, 1809. As a practical comment on the foregoing, the reader is requested to contemplate the sublime virtues of Christian forbearance, and forgiving insult, exemplified in the following anecdote of the brave, the celebrated MARSHAL TURRENNE. Ir was well known of this he ro, that his true heroism, (for such it really was,) was only to be equalled by his solid and man. ly piety, equally remote on the one hand, from the superstitions of his own age, and upon the other the indifference of ours. In a court of gallantry, and in times when the point of honor, (falsely so called) was preserved, in its full extravagance, the Mar shal was never known, either to fight a Duel, or to be engaged in an Intrigue. The grace, the dignity, with which he once released himself from an embarrassment of this nature, will at once give an exact idea of what he was, and be a sufficient answer to the favorite question of the defend |