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DUEL BETWEEN MR. BANNISTER, THE ATTORNEY-GENE-
RAL, AND DR. WARDELL, EDITOR, OF THE AUSTRA-
LIAN.
NOTHING has astonished us so much as to find the
Attorney-General should have fought a duel—and espe -
chilly such a duel as he has fought, considering the
cause of the challenge of his antagonist. If the former
in his speech before the Chief Justice, in the trial
of Rex v. Howe, for libel on Mr. Bannister, called
Dr. Wardell "the scum of London," when he is
is really a Yorkshireman, and not a Cockney; still
it was as true as the assertion of the said man of York,
that the King put his hand on the head of Mr. B. "in a
shed." The latter was an expression teeming with full
as much bitterness of resentment as Mr. Bannister's
which represented the writer of the sneers and insults in
The Australian paper of Wednesday se'nnight,' as "the
scum of London."
BUT we are still more surprised that Mr. Bannister,
because he had once been a soldier, should have allowed
the foolish esprit-de-corps of his youthful and inex-
perienced days to predominate over those improvements of
his understandinging and heart, which should have taught
him to look down on duelling, as an act beneath a phi-
losopher, a philanthropist, and a Christian; and of course
beneath a gentleman who, like the Attorney-General
can justly claim the above terms to be adjectively at-
tached to his designatory character of. a gentleman. A
gentleman who is neither a philosopher, a philanthro-
pist, nor a Christian, i. e. who is a mere gentleman empty
headed and vacant hearted, ought by all means to fight
duels.
But Mr. Bannister is a man of too elevated a mind
to have risked injuring his reputation with good men
by fighting a duel. To fear our Maker, is the most
ennobling and elevating of sentiments. Mr. Bannister's
heart we are sure has been, and we trust still is, the
seat of this sublime feeling. How, then, could he
condescend. to crouch before the opinion of his frail
fellow creatures so much as to venture to go before
his Maker with the bloody stain on his immortal
soul, of self-murder! A crime which cannot be
repented of, because the unhappy sinner perishes in
the very act? This is the only fault we have ever known
the late Attorney-General to commit deserving public
reprehension.
THE account of the duel is already before the public:
The parties met at Piermont. Both sides behaved
with the utmost coolness. We think the seconds acted
well in permitting no more than a shot a-piece.
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