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New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 585, 12 March 1851, Page 4

The following article (referred to by N. B.) is extracted from the ninth vol. of Punch, and has been republished by us to gratify the curiosity excited by the reference made to it by our correspondent:— THE ARGUMENT OF THE PISTOL. .[From Punch.] Mr. Roebuck has, at least, done one good thing. He has caused a great fall in the price of duelling-pistols. In a few years, and such social instruments will be only so much old iron. Hair-triggers, at least a few samples, will be preserved by the Meyricks and other virtuosi among the weapons of a by-gone time—of an extinct age of barbarism. They will take their place with the scalping-knife of the Red Man. A few nights since Mr. Roebuck, in his place in the House of Commons, flung some hard words at the Irish Repeal Members and their great Ohaiu- O’Connell, nCbisrs ars fs?? who cbd deny the truth of the assertions of the Member for Bath,; but then, it is said, truth is not to be spattered about in the material of dirt. The Irish Repeal Members—the mild “sucking doves” of Conciliation Hall—the orators, who, when speaking of the Saxon, link nameless phrases together—pretty and innocent as chains of daisies made by children—these, the sensitive and soft-spoken, when truth is to be dealt out upon them, would have it very mild and sweet, indeed! They would invoke Truth, as the Poet invokes spring :

“ Veiled in a shower of roses, soft, descend!” And when truth comes not in such odoriferous stream, but in a shower of mud —the sufferers, on the instant, shout for gunpowder to sweeten them from what they call the pollution. An Irish Repealer may deal in the syllables “miscreant "—" liar ” —“ coward “ renegade ” —“traitor;” no word can be too dirty for his tongue when assailing the Saxon: when, however, comes the turn of the Saxon to reply, he must respond alter Carnival-fashion ; with nothing harder than sugar-plums. A sweep attacks you with handfuls of soot from a bag that seems inexhaustible, —and yon are not to take the fellow by the collar, and shake him into some sense of decency: no, you are to fling nothing at him more offensive than egg-shells filled with rose-water. If you do, his honor is hit; his ermine-skinned reputation is stained, and—“blood and wounds!” —he rears for pistols I Mr, Roebuck thus denounced the Repeal worshippers of O’Connell Those who follow such a leader deserve little respect either for their position or their intellect.” Whereupon the gunpowder Member for Sligo, Mr. Somers, writes a note to Mr. Roebuck askinc?— b ‘ ‘Are you prepared to justify these words (These words are underlined.)? The meaning of the words I have underlined I am sure you are too well read in the old histories of chivalry to misinterpret.” Ha, Mr. Somers! the days of chivalry, if not gone, are fast going; for Mr. Roebuck vulgar man!—doesnot submit himself to the chance of being killed for speaking a hard, unpalatable verity, but calls upon the letter-writer before the House for breach of privilege, and is praised and patted oh the

back by the Prime Minister and others for his true courage. Whereupon, Mr. Somers does not offer a pistol at Mr. Roebuck, but an apology; a wiser and a better thing. It has been urged, that since Mr. Roebuck will not fight, he ought not, by his abusive powers, to render himself obnoxious to a challenge. Mr. Roebuck is no general favourite of ours. He is too “splenetic and rash ” —besides being a little tooihuch tainted with the conceit that he was sent into the world as the world’s sole Mentor. We do not always approve of Mr. Roebuck’s language : certainly, were we to select an epithet for him, we should not borrow that applied to Homer; no, we should not call him “ the golden-mouthed ” Roebuck. But this defect, we submit, is the greatest argument against the sheer folly, the inexpressible stupidity of duelling. We will suppose Mr. Roebuck to possess ten times his present amount of vituperation; we will imagine him to be worthy the envy of even O’Connell himself; we will think the Member for Bath a sort of human cuttle-fish,, blackening, when he lists, all around him. Well, had be even Irish charity to defend his bad words by a worse weapon, the pistol —would not the man he bad recklessly, most unjustly abused, be a fool—even though a fool “ of honour,” still a fool —to give his libeller the chance of shooting him be had outraged ? Thank heaven ! the opinion of the world is fast becoming a surer test of a man’s honour, than hair triggers.