Now-a-days, seconds rarely provoke each other. Justice and urbanity should be their guides; and, in the event of seconds differing, it is always advisable to call in an arbiter, who should in general be selected from amongst experienced and elderly military men.
It is of great importance that seconds should insist on a simultaneous fire. A duellist makes the following calculation:--If I fire first, and kill or severely wound my antagonist, I am rid of him: if I have been unfortunate in the selection of arms, my antagonist very probably, from motives of generosity, will not return the fire; for when a man knows that he is safe, and that his fire, if it missed, would only expose him to further danger, he will frequently be inclined to terminate the affair; while, at the same time, a generous and brave man feels a natural repugnance in firing at a defenceless person, and will therefore feel disposed to fire in the air, or, what is more conclusive, give up his pistol to his second, and he experiences a sense of gratification in so doing, whether he is the aggressor or the offended party. But although these generous sentiments, or these prudential motives, may induce a principal not to return a fire if his antagonist has fired before the signal, the latter becomes a criminal, and the seconds are in duty bound to prosecute him; since it has been already stated, that, if one of the parties fire before the appointed signal, his adversary has the unquestionable right to take a deliberate aim and blow his brains out. In such cases of dishonourable breach of the stipulated arrangements, it would be desirable that the jury should be guided by an established code, whether the treacherous combatant was successful or not in the perfidious attempt to assassinate his opponent.
The duties of a second are of such vital importance, that a celebrated fencing-master used frequently to say, “It is not the sword or the pistol that kills, but the seconds.”
With the safeguard of these precautionary regulations, although duelling is alike inconsistent with humanity and reason, there are many French writers who still advocate its necessity; such is Jules Janin, who speaks of it in the following terms: “The man is lost in the world of cravens, who has not the heart to risk his life; for then, cowards, who are numberless, affect courage at his expense. The man is lost in this world, in which opinion is everything, who will not seek to obtain a good opinion at the sword’s point. The man is lost in this world of hypocrites and calumniators, who will not demand reparation sword in hand for the calumnies and the malicious reports to which he has been exposed. Slander stabs more keenly than steel; it crushes with greater certainty than a pistol bullet. I would not wish to live twenty-four hours in society, constituted as it is at present, without the protection of the duel.