That peculiar modern survival of the ancient trial by combat, the
duel, was still blocking the way of English civilisation when Her
Majesty assumed the sceptre. A palpable anachronism, it yet seemed
impossible to make men act on their knowledge of its antiquated and
barbarous character; legislation was fruitless of good against a
practice consecrated by false sentiment and false ideas of honour;
but when dislodged from its chief stronghold, the army, it became
quickly discredited everywhere, with the happy result noted by a
contemporary historian, that _now_ "a duel in England would seem as
absurd and barbarous as an ordeal by touch or a witch-burning."
Militarism, that mischievous counterfeit of true soldierly spirit,
could not thrive where the duel was discountenanced; and the friends
of peace might rejoice with reason.
But those peaceful agitators, the sagacious, energetic Cobden and his
allies, resented rather sharply the interference of the Lord Ashley
of that day with the "natural laws" of the labour market--laws to
whose operation some of the party attributed the cruelly excessive
hours of work in factories, and the indiscriminate employment of all
kinds of labour, even that of the merest infants.
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