Clay's challenge with the utmost possible
promptitude, and bore himself throughout the affair like (to use the
poor, lying, tory cant of the last generation) "a high-toned Virginia
gentleman." Colonel Benton tells us that Mr. Randolph invented an
ingenious excuse for the enormous inconsistency of his conduct on this
occasion. A duel, he maintained, was private war, and was justifiable
on the same ground as a war between two nations. Both were lamentable,
but both were allowable when there was no other way of getting redress
for insults and injuries. This was plausible, but it did not deceive
_him_. He knew very well that his offensive language respecting a man
whom he really esteemed was wholly devoid of excuse. He had the
courage requisite to expiate the offence by standing before Mr. Clay's
pistol; but he could not stand before his countrymen and confess that
his abominable antithesis was but the spurt of mingled ill-temper and
the vanity to shine. Any good tory can fight a duel with a respectable
degree of composure; but to own one's self, in the presence of a
nation, to have outraged the feelings of a brother-man, from the
desire to startle and amuse an audience, requires the kind of valor
which tories do not know.
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