The Decline of Duelling and the Emergence of the Middle Class in Ireland

Abstract

Duelling was emblematic of the aristocratic order of ancien regime Europe and, between the late sixteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries, of the Irish ruling elite.^p1 It was, for this reason, valorised by representatives of that elite across Europe, who passionately affirmed the reasonableness of their claim to possess a right to duel, and of the code of honour, which provided its rationale. It was, Dr Johnson observed, indicative of a ‘highly polished society’, while Lord Chesterfield, whose celebrated letters to his son constitute a revealing window onto what was expected of a gentleman, justified the resort to arms when matters of honour were at issue as a ‘humane, sensible and equitable method of decision of right and wrong’.^p2 Comparable sentiments were expressed from within the elite in Ireland. But it is the advancement and articulation of opposition by the middling sort that is revealing of the shift from the aristocratic order of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the increasingly middle-class order of the nineteenth century because it allows one to track the adoption of the cultural values that are diagnostic of the middle class and, by extension, to trace its emergence as a social interest. This was not a straightforward process; the ‘middle station’³ in Ireland was of modest size and, possessing little of the requisite political, cultural and social influence, exerted a correspondingly modest influence during its formative phase, which spanned the eighteenth century.