The Sun. — 1844-03-12 (London, England)

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., relative to the withholding of her pension. In bringing forward this motion, he begged to return his thanks to the Secretary-at-War for the courtesy 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 subject would be discussed in a spirit of temper and moderation. It would be necessary to recal to the remembrance of the House the fact that the Hon. Member 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 pension 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 injustice 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 Secretary 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 discussions 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 permit 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 refuse a challenge ; and he knew of no instance where the conveyor or promoter of a challenge was brought to