[Footnote 17: Yet an ingenious friend has urged to me in
mitigation of this practice, 1. That in nations emerging
from barbarism, it moderates the license of private war and
arbitrary revenge. 2. That it is less absurd than the
trials by the ordeal, or boiling water, or the cross, which
it has contributed to abolish. 3. That it served at least
as a test of personal courage; a quality so seldom united
with a base disposition, that the danger of a trial might be
some check to a malicious prosecutor, and a useful barrier
against injustice supported by power. The gallant and
unfortunate earl of Surrey might probably have escaped his
unmerited fate, had not his demand of the combat against his
accuser been overruled]