The New York Courier has the following dispatch:
“WASHINGTON, THURSDAY NIGHT.
Mr. Brooks, by Mr. Lane of Oregon, sent today a note to Gen. Wilson, demanding that Gen. Wilson should either retract the words “murderous, brutal, and cowardly,” used by him in characterizing Mr. Brooks’ assault on Mr. Sumner, or indicate where he would receive a hostile message from Mr. Brooks. Gen. Wilson, in answer refused to retract or qualify his words, declined receiving a challenge, but said he would defend himself from personal violence. For some hours after this correspondence had passed, a street fight was expected, as General Wilson was well armed, and was surrounded by armed friends.—Mr. Brooks left for Cincinnati this afternoon, and General Wilson will go North tomorrow. General Wilson proposes to address a Republican meeting at Newburgh on Saturday night.”
General Webb adds the following telegraphic item:
“General Wilson’s refusal to fight Mr. Brooks, on the ground that dueling is contrary to the laws of God and man, is approved, but there are those who condemn him for inviting the challenge, while entertaining such sentiments, and think he has lost ground by the affair, and that Mr. Brooks has benefitted in the same ration. There will be no more bullying and blustering, and the peace will not be disturbed by the principals or the friends.”
We are not advised by whom Wilson’s refusal to fight is approved, and it is rather unintelligible, on connexion with what follows, that he had lost ground for refusing a challenge after having defied it. We suppose the meaning of it to be that Wilson was unwilling to engage in a fair fight, but was not adverse to a row, surrounded by armed friends, in which he might hope for some undue advantage. Whatever be the fact, we are not surprised to hear that even his own section is ashamed of him. Wherever English blood flows, and the English language is spoken, a man who acts the bully, or indulges in personal abuse of others, must suffer in public estimation, if, when called on for honorable satisfaction, he refuses to accord it. It is proper it should be so. It is the right of society to make those suffer who outrage the recognized laws of good breeding. We may say what we will of the absurdity and immorality of dueling, and of its ineffectiveness as a mode of personal redress; but, as human nature is constituted, there is no alternative, except street fights, or secret associations, or a disgraceful system of vilification and calumny, attended by slander suits. Poisoning, or some other secret mode of murder, was the system in earlier times, and continued to a quite late day in Italy. The duello superseded it among all the chivalrous nations of modern times, and wherever the “code of honor” has been established, it has maintained, speaking generally, a high and courteous bearing between man and man. Many individuals may have lost their lives by it; but society reaped the benefit. This was the mode of adjusting private wrongs, which prevailed throughout our Republic in its earlier days. It then knew no North or South—it bore sway everywhere. But in later times, a great change has taken place. Mercantile caution, purantic hypocrisy and the spirit of knavish attorneys at the North, have combined to ignore this mode of adjustment, and substituted slander suits. Our intercourse with the North as affected us some what, and, under its influence, we have enacted anti-duelling laws; though popular opinion continues to damn a man if he does not fight, and then doubly damns him if he does. Society, however, still exacts its dues here, and insists that those who outrage its prerogatives shall pay the penalty of their crimes, and from Gen. Webb’s despatch it appears that they cannot escape altogether undamaged even at the North.
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