I shall now consider one question more, and that is concerning provocation.  We have hitherto been considering self-defense, and how far persons may go in defending themselves against aggressors, even by taking away their lives, and now proceed to consider such provocations as the law allows to mitigate or extenuate the guilt of killing, where it is not justifiable or excusable.  An assault and battery committed upon a man in such a manner as not to endanger his life is such a provocation as the law allows to reduce killing down to the crime of manslaughter.  Now, the law has been made on more considerations than we are capable of making at present; the law considers a man as capable of bearing anything and everything but blows.  I may reproach a man as much as I please; I may call him a thief, robber, traitor, scoundrel, coward, lobster, bloody-back, etc., and if he kill me it will be murder, if nothing else but words precede; but if from giving him such kind of language I proceed to take him by the nose, or fillip him on the forehead, that is an assault; that is a blow.  The law will not oblige a man to stand still and bear it; there is the distinction.  Hands off; touch me not.  As soon as you touch me, if I run you through the heart, it is but manslaughter.  The utility of this distinction, the more you think of it the more you will be satisfied with it.  It is an assault whenever a blow is struck, let it be ever so slight, and sometimes even without a blow.  The law considers man as frail and passionate.  When his passions are touched, he will be thrown off his guard, and therefore the law makes allowance for this frailty —­considers him as in a fit of passion, not having the possession of his intellectual faculties, and therefore does not oblige him to measure out his blows with a yard-stick, or weigh them in a scale.  Let him kill with a sword, gun, or hedge-stake, it is not murder, but only manslaughter.

(Keyling’s Report, 135.  Regina versus Mawgrige.) “Rules supported by authority and general consent, showing what are always allowed to be sufficient provocations.  First, if one man upon any words shall make an assault upon another, either by pulling him by the nose or filliping him on the forehead, and he that is so assaulted shall draw his sword and immediately run the other through, that is but manslaughter, for the peace is broken by the person killed and with an indignity to him that received the assault.  Besides, he that was so affronted might reasonably apprehend that he that treated him in that manner might have some further design upon him.”

So that here is the boundary, when a man is assaulted and kills in consequence of that assault, it is but manslaughter.  I will just read as I go along the definition of assault:—­

(1 Hawkins. ch. 62, section 1):  “An assault is an attempt or offer, with force or violence, to do a corporal hurt to another, as by striking at him with or without a weapon, or presenting a gun at him at such a distance to which the gun will carry, or pointing a pitchfork at him, or by any other such like act done in angry, threatening manner, etc.; but no words can amount to an assault,”