THE JURISPRUDENCE OF LAWLESSNESS and the injured person is relegated to a civil action for damages. What consolation does such a remedy bring to outraged husband or innocent girl victim, or her family, for a happy hearthstone desolated and a precious life blasted forever? " The jingling of the guinea " never did and never will " help the hurt that honor feels." What surprise is it, then, that one so deeply injured should himself seek redress when the law gives him none? Such crimes should be made felonies at law and their perpetrators should be clad in stripes. The humiliation of a public trial should be spared the victims. Such trials, both civil and criminal, should be had in camera, and whatever evidence is reduced to writing should be put under seal and kept under seal until it shall no longer be neces sary to keep it, when it should be destroyed. When an appeal to the law can be made without real or supposed loss of dignity and with reasonable certainty that a penalty commensurate with the crime will be in flicted, these three lawless laws will cease to have effect and the number of bloody murders in these United States will visibly decrease. God speed- the day when this shall be! It is customary nowadays to say that the duel belongs to a barbarous age that is past, and that the code duello is obsolete. It is true that the formal duel, with sec onds and surgeons and all the punctilio of diplomatic procedure, is no longer in vogue in this country, but a much more dangerous and deadly form of it, the street duel, is still too much the fashion and gives no sign of decadence. In the old days of the ceremonial duel the laws of most, if not all, of the states provided that the sur vivor of a fatal duel should be guilty of murder and punished with death. In those good old days a learned judge, full of years and honors, in his charge to the jury in a case under a such statute, said to them: "Gentlemen of the jury, the law provides that any man who kills another in a duel is guilty of murder and shall suffer death, and
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I so charge you; but, gentlemen of the jury, the evidence in this case shows that this duel was as fair as any duel ever fought between two gallant gentlemen on Missis sippi's sacred soil, so famed for glorious affairs of honor." It is needless to say that the jury promptly acquitted the accused. It is hardly a debatable question that the code duello did save more lives than it cost. I once had a published copy of it in my library and appealed to it more than once with the result of avoiding bloodshed in every instance. LAWS V and VI apply to both forms of the duel. The formal duel has become so rare that, for our purpose,' it may be re garded as a negligible quantity. But the street duel is so deadly, both to participants and bystanders, so utterly destructive of all peace and good order, that some means should be found instantly to suppress it. It is true that it gradually disappears before the slow march of civilization; but it is our duty, as lawyers, to speed this unwelcome parting guest. When death occurs, the charge of murder or manslaughter is most frequently met by what has come to be known as the hip-pocket plea of self-de fense. It is proved by the prisoner that the deceased reached for his hip-pocket as if to draw a pistol, when the prisoner managed to draw first and shot the deceased in selfdefense. The deceased is not in a position to deny the statement; and, although the killing is almost always murder cr man slaughter under the law, the jury finds that it was a fair fight, in which each combatant had an equal show, and promptly renders a verdict of "Not guilty"; and the accused receives an ovation of congratulations from his friends and admirers, and returns to the bosom of his family, not a criminal, but something of a hero. So very common are occurrences of this kind in some jurisdictions that the law of manslaughter has become practically obsolete. The question of a remedy here is most difficult. The plea of self-defense is always
