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hood or right and wrong have changed, but that good taste and private justice are in the ascendant. We no longer (in good society) attack the motives, but the principles of men.

Let us apply the rule we have been illustrating to Parliamentary controversies. If every member were to say what is true or what he believes to be true of another, our legislative assemblies would soon come to resemble those of the United States, in one of which, not long ago, a member in audience being tired in listening to the member in possession of the house, got up and said: "Mr. Speaker, I should like to know how long that 'ar blackguard is to go on tiring me to death in this manner?" The Irish House of Commons, before the Union, furnishes a specimen of what must happen if sentiments are to be expressed without rule: "I will not call him villain, because he is chancelor of the exchequer; I will not call him liar, because he is a privy counselor; but I will say of him that he is one who has taken advantage of the privilege of this house to utter language to which, in any other place, my answer would have been a blow." Such were the expressions used by Mr. Grattan toward Mr. Corrie, and a duel was the immediate result. We endeavor to keep clear of this blackguardism; not because it is unimportant whether a man lies or not, but because we have learned the good sense of not impugning integrity upon suspicion; and when we can impugn it on fact we need no harsh words; the fact is the severest judgment.

De Morgan, whom I have just quoted, relates that the late Professor Vince was once arguing at Cambridge against dueling, and some one said, "Well, but professor, what could you do if any one called

you a liar?" "Sir," said the fine old fellow in his peculiar brogue, "I should tell him to pruv it; and if he did pruv it, I should be ashamed of myself; and if he didn't, he ought to be ashamed of himself."

The obvious laws we should impress on all who controvert, seem to be these:

1. To consult in all cases the improvement of those whom we oppose, and to this end argue not for our gratification, or pride, or vanity, but for their enlightenment.

2. To invert the vulgar mode of judgment, and not, when we guess at motives, guess the worst, but adopt the best construction the case admits.

3. To distinguish between the personalities which impugn the judgment, and those that criminate character, and never to advance accusations of either kind without distinct and indisputable proof; never to assail character on suspicion, probability, belief, or likelihood.

4. To keep distinct the two kinds of personalities, never mixing up those which pertain to character with those which pertain to judgment.

5. To never meddle with either, unless some public good is to come out of it. It is not enough that a charge is true; it must be useful to prefer it, before a wise publicist will meddle with it.

6. To dare all personalities ourselves; to brave all attacks; to defy the judgment of mankind, and when we are assailed, unfailingly to respect ourselves, and keep in view the betterance of him whom we oppose, rather than our own personal gratification.*

*For an enlarged consideration of this question see articles (Nos. 20 and 24 of the "People's Press") entitled the "Philosophy of Personalities," where I have treated of their introduction into public parties.

Were the errors discussed in this chapter confined to the vulgar, we might confide in the spread of ordinary intelligence to dissipate them. But it is otherwise. Who would have expected to have found the "sweetest and most genuine poetess of the age," C. B., writing in the Atheænum a letter of anger, reproach, and condemnation of Mr. Howitt, for having written something which she confesses she had "never read." Literary etiquette seems to have received no improvement with time. Hazlitt, Byron, Southey, and other luminaries of literature, sink to the level of the meanest of mankind when they are found engaged in the adjustment of their differences. When turning over the periodicals of their times, one is amazed at the flood of vituperation, the envy, jealousy, and miserable disparagement of each other. Yet if all this littleness exists, better that it be expressed, that one may see what our gods are made of. Rudeness is healthier than hypocrisy, and therefore the policy which conceals rankling malignity is more pernicious than the display of it. Let it be avowed until men are convinced that it is unreasonable. Leigh Hunt has the credit of having prophesied long ago that the old philosophic conviction would revive among us as a popular one, that recrimination, denouncements, and threats should be put an end to, and the perception prevail that the errors of mankind arise rather from the want of knowledge than the defect of goodness. But what is the history of modern parties? Has not recriminative error broken up the best of them into miserable sections? "Stupidity" can be informed, "ignorance" can be enlightened; but the "collision of interest and passion, and the perversities of self-will and self-opinion" destroy all before them.

.What hope is there of the improvement of the uneducated, while those who should know better perpetuate the infectious example? Men whose names it is needless to cite, and whom, prior to experience, I could not have believed to be unconscious of the fact, I have found unaware that simplicity in the expression of passion is the lesson of nature and of genius, and the greatest discovery of rhetorical experience. It is, however, clear that there is no hope for the efficient progress of the order of industry while their natural leaders and exemplars depart from that propriety which alone is strength.

The necessity of enforcing this most practical part of rhetoric, (the rhetoric of dispute,) which is taught in no Mechanics' or Literary Institution, is evidenced in the discouraging fact that an impartial, impersonal, and dispassionate tone is almost fatal in newspaper and periodical literature. We address a populace to whom nothing that is just seems spirited. We must be offensively personal or we are pronounced tame. Unless we are rancorous we are not relished. The reason is that most men, when stung by a sense of injury, are naturally precipitated from extreme to extreme. Their opinions, when sincere, "are not produced by the ordinary law of intellectual births, by induction or inference, but are equivocally generated" by the heat of fervid emotion, wrought upon by some sense of unbearable oppression.

So it ever is with the intellectually undisciplined, of whatever class; they believe all strength manifests itself in spasms, that truth is a descendant from the furies, that no man can be brave who does not bluster, nor have enthusiasm if he do not write in hysterics. But I quit this subject, repeating the fine language

of one whom I have several times quoted: "Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. ... A beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures. It is the finest of the fine arts. . . . The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure.. Coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene. . . Let us leave hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should signify, however remotely, the grandeur of our destiny."

CHAPTER XXII.

QUESTIONING.

THE Socratic method of disputation or artful questioning, (of which Zeno, the Eleatic, was the author,) by which an opponent is entrapped into concessions, and thus confuted, is rather fit for wranglers and sophists than reasoners. There is too much reason to believed that Socrates condescended to this course often at the expense of ingenuousness. It is said in his defense that he did it not as the sophists, for the sake of confounding virtue, but for the purer purpose of confounding dexterous vice. It is, however, beneath the dignity of a reasoner to betray his opponent into the truth.

Questioning, however, is an essential instrument. A high authority, Dr. Arnold, has put this in a useful

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