Among others, the following books were used in the preparation of the arguments:
N. "The Monroe Doctrine," by T.B. Edgington. Chapters 22-28.
"Digest of International Law," by J.B. Moore. Report of Penfield of proceedings before Hague Tribunal in 1903.
"Statesman's Year Book" (for statistics).
A. Minister Drago's appeal to the United States, in Foreign
Relations of United States, 1903.
President Roosevelt's Message, 1905, pp. 33-37.
And articles in the following magazines (among many others):
"Journal of Political Economy," December, 1906.
"Atlantic Monthly," October, 1906.
"North American Review," Vol. 183, p. 602.
All of these contain material valuable for both sides, except those marked "N" and "A," which are useful only for the negative and affirmative, respectively.
Note:—Practise in debating is most helpful to the public speaker, but if possible each debate should be under the supervision of some person whose word will be respected, so that the debaters might show regard for courtesy, accuracy, effective reasoning, and the necessity for careful preparation. The Appendix contains a list of questions for debate.
25. Are the following points well considered?
The Inheritance Tax is Not a Good Social Reform Measure
A. Does not strike at the root of the evil
1. Fortunes not a menace in themselves A fortune of $500,000 may be a greater social evil than one of $500,000,000 2. Danger of wealth depends on its wrong accumulation and use 3. Inheritance tax will not prevent rebates, monopoly, discrimination, bribery, etc. 4. Laws aimed at unjust accumulation and use of wealth furnish the true remedy. B. It would be evaded 1. Low rates are evaded 2. Rate must be high to result in distribution of great fortunes.
26. Class exercises: Mock Trial for (a) some serious political offense; (b) a burlesque offense.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] McCosh's Logic is a helpful volume, and not too technical for the beginner. A brief digest of logical principles as applied to public speaking is contained in How to Attract and Hold an Audience, by J. Berg Esenwein.
[26] For those who would make a further study of the syllogism the following rules are given: 1. In a syllogism there should be only three terms. 2. Of these three only one can be the middle term. 3. One premise must be affirmative. 4. The conclusion must be negative if either premise is negative. 5. To prove a negative, one of the premises must be negative.
Summary of Regulating Principles: 1. Terms which agree with the same thing agree with each other; and when only one of two terms agrees with a third term, the two terms disagree with each other. 2. "Whatever is affirmed of a class may be affirmed of all the members of that class," and "Whatever is denied of a class may be denied of all the members of that class."
[27] All the speakers were from Brown University. The affirmative briefs were used in debate with the Dartmouth College team, and the negative briefs were used in debate with the Williams College team. From The Speaker, by permission.
CHAPTER XXIV
INFLUENCING BY PERSUASION
She hath prosperous art
When she will play with reason and discourse,
And well she can persuade.
—Shakespeare, Measure for Measure.
Him we call an artist who shall play on an assembly of men as a master on the keys of a piano,—who seeing the people furious, shall soften and compose them, shall draw them, when he will, to laughter and to tears. Bring him to his audience, and, be they who they may,—coarse or refined, pleased or displeased, sulky or savage, with their opinions in the keeping of a confessor or with their opinions in their bank safes,—he will have them pleased and humored as he chooses; and they shall carry and execute what he bids them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essay on Eloquence.
More good and more ill have been effected by persuasion than by any other form of speech. It is an attempt to influence by means of appeal to some particular interest held important by the hearer. Its motive may be high or low, fair or unfair, honest or dishonest, calm or passionate, and hence its scope is unparalleled in public speaking.
This "instilment of conviction," to use Matthew Arnold's expression, is naturally a complex process in that it usually includes argumentation and often employs suggestion, as the next chapter will illustrate. In fact, there is little public speaking worthy of the name that is not in some part persuasive, for men rarely speak solely to alter men's opinions—the ulterior purpose is almost always action.
The nature of persuasion is not solely intellectual, but is largely emotional. It uses every principle of public speaking, and every "form of discourse," to use a rhetorician's expression, but argument supplemented by special appeal is its peculiar quality. This we may best see by examining
The Methods of Persuasion
High-minded speakers often seek to move their hearers to action by an appeal to their highest motives, such as love of liberty. Senator Hoar, in pleading for action on the Philippine question, used this method:
What has been the practical statesmanship which comes from your ideals and your sentimentalities? You have wasted nearly six hundred millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. You have established reconcentration camps. Your generals are coming home from their harvest bringing sheaves with them, in the shape of other thousands of sick and wounded and insane to drag out miserable lives, wrecked in body and mind. You make the American flag in the eyes of a numerous people the emblem of sacrilege in Christian churches, and of the burning of human dwellings, and of the horror of the water torture. Your practical statesmanship which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models, has looked in some cases to Spain for your example. I believe—nay, I know—that in general our officers and soldiers are humane. But in some cases they have carried on your warfare with a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian cruelty.
Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as a liberator, who thronged after your men, when