The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-12 00:00:00

DUELLING.

On the vote for the "Pensions to the Widows of
Officers" being proposed,
Captain BERNAL rose to move for a copy of any
letter or correspondence which had passed between
the Secretary-at-War and the widow of the late
Lieutenant-Colonel David Lynar Fawcett, C. 8., re-
lative to the withholding of her pension. In bring-
ing forward this motion, he begged to return his
thanks to the Secretary-at-War for the cour-
tesy and kindness which he had received from that
Right Hon. and Gallant Gentleman on this occasion,
and he would venture to express a hope that the sub-
ject would be discussed in a spirit of temper and mo-
deration. It would be necessary to recal to the re-
membrance of the House the fact that the Hon. Mem-
ber for Truro had put a question to the First Lord of
the Treasury on this subject, and that the Right Hon.
Gentleman had, on that occasion, taken great credit to
his Government for exerting their legitimate influence
for the discouragement of duelling, by refusing a pen-
sion to the widow of an officer of great military
reputation, and who had distinguished himself
in the service of his country, but who had
unfortunately fallen in a duel. Those, he believed,
were the exact words of the Right Hon. Gentleman—
no special circumstances had been alleged, beyond
the fact of the officer falling in a duel, to justify the
refusal of the pension. He must confess that when
he heard that voluntary declaration of the Right
Hon. Gentleman, the First Lord of the Treasury, he
had been astonished, not so much at the manifest in-
justice of the act, as at the manner in which it had
been attempted to be justified. He had been told that
precedents might be brought forward to support that
act. He had searched diligently for precedents, but
had not been able to find a single one. At the time
the Noble Lord, the Member for Tiverton, was Se-
cretary at War, in the year 1817, a pension had
been refused to the widow of an officer who had
committed suicide ; but he would leave the House to
decide whether that could be considered a case in point.
It was not his intention now to enter into any general
discussion of the question of duelling. He would not do
so for this reason. He thought so long as the majority of
Members on both sides of that House were so ready to
follow in the footsteps of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox in
becoming parties to a hostile meeting, that such dis-
cussions were of no avail, and he would suggest to the
Hon. Gentleman who sat below (Mr. Turner), that
he would pursue an advisable course in withdrawing
the resolution of which he had given notice ;
and if he would turn his attention to the
state of the law at present on the subject,
and bring in a Bill by which the relations in any case
of fatal duel might come upon the survivor for damages—
as was the law in France ; and, to come nearer home,
Hon. Gentlemen were not perhaps a‘s are that such a law
existed in Scotland—it would have greater effect in putting
an end to the practice of duelling than any other course
of proceeding. The Right Hon. the Secretary at War
had coolly told the House the other night that there was
a clause in the Mutiny Act, by which all officers, or
persons who conveyed challenges to others, were lia,b!e
to be tried by court-martial and cashiered. He -would
read that clause: it was to the effect, that any officer
or soldier who gave, sent, conveyed, or promoted a
challenge to another, or upbraided another with not
fighting a duel; or, if commanding a guard, should per-
mit any member of that guard to go out to fight a duel,
should be liable, if an officer, to be cashiered or,
suffer any other punishment, according to the
nature and degree of the offence as in the
judgment of a court-martial should be awarded.
He (Captain Bernal) did not scruple to say that that
clause was certainly a dead letter. He could state, from
his own experience, that no officer could ordinarily re-
fuse a challenge ; and he knew of no instance where
the conveyor or promoter of a challenge was brought to