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the noblest capacities of the soul, it gives the mind the vigour that conduces to victory. It supplies, too, the best means of forcibly impressing the thoughtful mind; for

"Truth's like a torch-the more it's shook, it shines."

Under impressions faintly indicated in these few words they have superintended once again the contests of able disputants who have met to urge their thoughts upon each other and on those who feel interested in the subjects... The present volume will, it is believed, for controversial interest, bear comparison with its predecessors in worth of topics and in style of treatment, in ability of statement, mode of argument, and matter of debates.

The other departments have received the best attention of the conductors. The leading papers are furnished, as heretofore, and for so long a time, by an author than whom, a critic has said, "few men alive have done more to spur into active exertion the youthful intellect of England." The Essayist has had the aid of several able pens. The value of the Reviewer has been enhanced, both in the kind of books noticed and in the principles of criticism employed. The Topic might, we again suggest, receive more of our subscribers' attention, if they would use and improve "the day of small things." The Poetic Critique and the Societies' Section give variety and add interest to the contents of this volume. The Inquirer is still growing in importance and value. It contains much useful and special information. Our Collegiate Course and the Societies' Section, however, do not give the conductors unalloyed satisfaction. They feel that both might be improved if their readers would help them in their labour which is far more arduous than many would imagine by study, correspondence, interest, &c. Our Literary Notes keep pace with the growing and ever shifting history of books and their authors. We halt now, amid the "lesfy tuxuriance" of June, only to go on again "unhastingly, unrestingly. We throw behind us a look of gladness, and before

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us a glance of hope Around us we cast our eyes in thanks for past help and favour, while we ask for more darfest endeavour both to lighten and to utilize our labour from our friends and allies. Readers, we seek not yours, but your advancement, and we wish the pathway of human progress both lengthened and widened. In the spirit of the great poet of our own day we say,

"Forward, forward let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. "

Yet amid all changes may we attain to the Changeless-having Him and His as ours. May Truth's search and Truth's gain indeed be ours in the hereafter.

THE

BRITISH CONTROVERSIALIST.

Forensic Eloquence.

FORENSIC Eloquence is annually the arbiter of the joy or sorrow of multitudes. Its effects are felt in almost every phase and form of social life. The power of suasion which it exerts, affects daily the privileges, rights, reputation, property, liberty, or life of many. And hence, directly or indirectly, it is influencive for great results upon the whole ongoings of humanity. Justice every day dispenses her awards, and Law gives forth her mandates, practically, at the suggestion, instigation, or prompting of legal pleaders; whose skilful expositions, cogent statements, earnest appeals, and eager, passionate, or ingenious advocacy, touch the nicely poised balances, and give them that decisive inclination or turn to which the occu. pants of our judicial benches are so attentive and sensitive. To know the true worth, use, and method of this energy so subtly intertextured with all the concerns of existence, to estimate its quality, and to acquire a little information regarding its rules and processes, seem matters likely to be of some interest to general readers; while an exposition of the main principles, on which successful pleading depends, may not only gratify a legitimate curiosity regarding one of the most common yet singular phenomena of life, but may also supply instruction to those who wish to use this potent influence for professional purposes. All readers are now, more or less, accustomed to peruse in newspaper reports the chief efforts of forensic debaters; and many constitute themselves critics of the sweeping rhetoric, or the trenchant dialectics they display. It may, therefore, be conducive to the educative efficacy of the thoughtful reader to have a brief, reasoned-out view of the pleader's art, i. e., forensic eloquence, presented to their minds; and it may not be altogether valueless to the aspirant after legal honours or usefulness to learn the philosophic principles which underlie and form the foundations of those splendid efforts by which the great pleaders have acquired their fame-efforts too frequently supposed to be the results of a happy knack, or a rare sagacity; and too seldom attributed to their true cause, a diligent and careful employment of all the mental capacities upon the matters of fact, thought, evidence, or argument which cases yield.

1864.

B

Mere speech is not eloquence; it is often only verbiage. Eloquence is the development of the involutions of a subject in such a way as to affect at once the intellect, the will, and the emotions. It is not more an endowment than an attainment. Labour and learning are both requisite to form a finished orator. Nature and opportunity do much, but they cannot do all. The long results of earnest labour gleam out of every multitude-moving oration. Words, phrases, facts, arguments, marshalled by chance, and hurried together extempore, lose the main element of effectiveness -order and unity of purpose. The grand aggregate of logical consecutiveness, definite arrangement, adequate expression, and soul-stirring energy, is manageable only when the masterful might of the mind's whole capability is exerted to secure submission, and maintain subordination. In the presence of a great crowd under the excitement of popular feeling; in the halls of legislation in the heat of a notable debate; in the pulpit stirred by the sacred fire of the mighty message proclaimed-thought, invigorated by the pulsings of passion, and dashing, with a giant's strength, from a mind full to trembling with the might of a great truth-may move with the efficacy of eloquence a listening audience. But he who would trust himself at the bar to the mere chances of having his thoughts lit up by the attrition of circumstances, and depend upon deriving thence the vivid metaphor, the graphic illustration, the scathing utterance of scorn, the fierce invective, the soul-subduing plea, the winning persuasiveness, the sarcastic irony, or the striking apostrophe of which his case might stand in need, would find his triumphs few, his success short-lived, and the duration of his notoriety

"Brief as the lightning of the collied night."

The art of advocacy is not attained by inspiration; nor are its honours gained by some rare chance or "lucky hit." The secret of forensic success is the world-old one-thoughtful industry applied to the management of the veriest trifle connected with the accomplishment of the main design.

A persistent course of patient, long-continued, and severe mental discipline is necessary to the formation of the legal character. The tangled complexity of technicalities, the tortuous intricacies of procedure, the subtleties of argument, the methods of correct statement, the principles of right reasoning, the means of managing quibbles, and of handling casuistry, must all be known, mastered, and overcome by persevering intellectual effort. The mind must be inured to labour, and habituated to activity. It must be able to employ the whole armoury of its acquirements without pedantry, and free from display. A sort of instantaneity of logical thought and rhetorical speech must be industriously attained; and the power of tracing out a thought to all its possible conclusions must be so trained and practised as to become at last as much to be relied on as the activity and sagacity of an instinct. Mere learning, observation, or reflection will not accomplish it. Practice,

effort, and industry, as well as sedulous, severe, and solitary study, are required. Of the genuine forensic mind it may be truly said:

"All things within it

Are so digested, fitted, and composed,
As it shows Wit had married Order."

Forensic skill is not forensic eloquence. These often exist apart. A natural ingenuity of mind, assiduously subjected to careful culture, when employed in the conducting of a case involving great principles, or possessed of intrinsic elements of interest, may often display forensic skill, and even simulate, or-let us say-achieve, forensic eloquence. But this depends much more upon the case than upon the pleader. Less interesting contests as to property or rights, though they might be carried on with as profound an insight into the principles of jurisprudence, and elicit as masterly a statement of the applicability of the statutes or precedents implied in the trial, would yet fall flat and unimpressively upon the minds addressed, compared to the manner in which they would affect them, if the advocate could add the arts of persuasion to those of conviction, and could reinforce the issues of his skill with the products of his eloquence. Eloquence adds beauty to strength, grace to merit, influence to truth, effectiveness to force, attractiveness to good sense, interest to solid thought, and fits skill to achieve pleasantly what it has prepared to accomplish by dint of persistent and operose endeavour.

To think decidedly and to speak clearly; to know the requirements of courts and the forms of process; to possess as much selfconfidence as to plead without embarrassment, yet to be so free from self-conceit as to avoid offence; to have read with diligence a multitude of acts of parliament, the digests of legists, the decisions of judges, abstracts of cases, and specifications of styles; to have matured a habit of distinct definition; and to have settled into categories the various possibilities of civil, criminal, or other lawimportant as these are-will not succeed in eliciting the compliment due to distinguished forensic ability:

"Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks."

There is another set of studies to be mastered before the thrill of oratory can be employed to animate emotion, give effect to deft argument, and invincibility to intellectual force. To artistic precision of style, to perspicuity of thinking, to emphatic pertinence of argument, to thorough knowledge of law and acquiescence in its forms, there must be added the power of touching truth with the colours of imagination, of applying inducements to the will, and of stirring the sensitive feelings of the hearer. Thus alone is it possible

"To rule, like a wizard, the world of the heart,

To call up its sunshine, or draw down its showers."

We do not depreciate skill in comparison with eloquence. We

appreciate it as essential and indispensable. We do not suggest the lessening of skill; we only advocate the addition of another element of skill to that already impliedly attained. Forensic eloquence is confessedly not always a concomitant of forensic ability, and our best pleaders in law are not unfrequently our worst pleaders in speech. This does not result from any incompatibility between the possession of sound legal knowledge and ready facility in expression. It arises, more generally, from contempt for eloquence, as a subsidiary art, as a showy and fantastic acquisition, a simulating trickery, and an adventitious element in legal advocacy. This, we apprehend, is a misconception. Pleading is speech. Speech has its laws and forms, its graces and peculiarities, its processes and technicalities, If the instrument must be employed, the art of using it should be learned; and to trust to mere chance management, when the right and true way may be readily acquired, is as absurd as it would be for one to act as he thought proper, and believe it to be lawful and right-without attempting to distinguish between right and wrong;

Speech, as we have said, has been the subject of scientific culture. Its principles have been discovered, and their applicability has been tested. Speech as an instrument of persuasion has been much studied. The observations of many thinkers have been reduced to system, and formed into a science. There is a great likelihood that these deductions, arrived at by eminent minds, are in the main correct, and that conformity to the laws which they have laid down will lead to the right employment of language as a means of producing certain effects upon the mind, while disagreement with or neglect of them may conduce to the defeating of the ends in view in using speech.

Forensic eloquence is an adaptation of the principles and laws of persuasive utterance to the production, or at least the furtherance, of effective and successful advocacy in courts of law, in so far as such advocacy is regarded as having persuasion as its given purpose, and speech as the instrument employed in persuasion. The details of this secondary art depend upon certain subsidiary elements: as, for example, the nature of law and the constitution of its courts, in so far as they allow and provide for the exercise and employment of persuasion, the protection afforded to pleaders in the conducting of suits, the publicity or privacy in which the advocate conducts his case, &c. But the chief fundamental principles, maxims, and rules of the art are drawn from the purpose had in view in the institution of professional pleaders in the courts of law, and the duties which may be considered as incumbent upon such pleaders in their conjoint relationship to the law, and to the actual or possible clients in whose behalf they may appear in court.

Law is the guardian of civil society. It defines the rights, and determines the obligations of men. The safety and good order of every community depend on the majesty and magistracy of the law, which is, in the language of Burke, "beneficence acting by rule.'

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