If you wish to enrich a person, study not to increase his stores, but diminish his desires.

If you regulate your desires according to the standard of nature, you will never be poor; if, according to the standard of opinion, you will never be rich.

When men are

Rule 60.- Interrogation. strongly moved, whatever they would affirm or deny with great earnestness, they put in the form of a question.

Interrogation is one of the most powerful auxiliaries in persuasion that can be used: but its efficacy depends greatly upon the mode in which it is introduced and employed.

Questions to which the assent of an audience is desired, should arise out of some proposition of acknowledged truth, previously and most distinctly stated. The questions should then be so framed as to show the affinity between the proposition thus stated, and the view taken of the subject under consideration.

In acquiring the habit of using this figure with advantage, it will be useful to state a general proposition, and then a series of subordinate propositions arising out of it, placing the weakest first and the strongest last; and then turn those subordinate propositions into questions.

Thus, in speaking of the African slave trade: suppose it were stated as a general proposition, that "true policy must be founded upon justice." In applying this acknowledged proposition to the slave trade, these subordinate propositions might be stated. That therefore it cannot be policy to seize human beings who have never offended us; it cannot be policy to dissolve the ties of human consanguinity; it cannot be policy to inflict, without provocation, unrelenting cruelty upon any of our fellow creatures.

If these be now converted into questions, their additional force will be perceived. "True policy must be founded upon justice. Can it therefore be policy to seize human beings who have never offended us? Can it be policy to dissolve the ties of human consanguinity? Can it be policy to inflict, without provocation, unrelenting cruelty upon any of our fellow-creatures ?"

Care must also be taken that those questions do not require to be followed by any answer: but that they be so contrived as to exact the assent of the hearer.

Interrogation will always appear to the greatest advantage, if introduced toward the close of reasoning, and as the instrument for producing the last and deepest impression.

Rule 61.-Exclamations are also the effect of strong emotions of the mind; such as surprise, admiration, joy, grief, and the like.

Rule 62.- Amplification, or Climax, consists in heightening all the circumstances of an object or action, which we desire to place in a strong light.

The following is an example:

It is a cause which deeply affects every person that hears me: it is the cause of every man in the community: it involves the rights and interests of us all, of our children, and of our remotest posterity.

The rules already prescribed are sure guides to a correct and elegant style. It may not, however, be improper to caution the student against a practice

always dangerous and generally mischievous; that of imitating any favourite writer or speaker.

Few persons have succeeded in adhering to any such example. It generally happens that he who endeavours to imitate the style of any particular person, becomes what painters call a mannerist, an artist who adopts the mere peculiarities of method used by some great master, without attaining either his genius or skill.

Let young persons, therefore, lay it down as a rule, never to aim at the mere imitation of any writer or speaker. Read the works of the great masters of thinking, writing and speaking, as well those of modern times as those of antiquity.

They will furnish, not only examples of eloquence, but they will also afford the most valuable specimens of reasoning and reflection. They will show the manner in which almost every subject may be considered and discussed. Their works also will display the vast resources of language, and will thus aug. ment the student's collection of phraseology, as well as expand and multiply his ideas. But above all things, let the youthful orator proceed with caution.

To be enabled to speak with fluency and clearness, and without embarrassment or hesitation, will be a valuable acquisition. With this he must be contented for a time. He must be correct, before he attempts to be elegant; and not imagine, that because he may have attained a faculty, which will preserve him from looking like a fool when he has to address a company, that he has already become the rival of Demosthenes or Cicero. Let him remember that those great men, even when their talents and reputation were in a blaze of glory, were still diffident. They were not ashamed to have recourse to such men, and such works, as they imagined capable of imparting instruction or improvement.

PART IV.

EXERCISES IN READING AND RECITATION.

I.

On the Measure of the Irish Union.-PLUNKETT.

SIR, I in the most express terms deny the competency of parliament to do this act. I warn you-do not dare to lay your hand on the constitution. I tell you, that if circumstanced as you are, you pass this act, it will be a nullity, and that no man in Ireland will be bound to obey it. I make the assertion deliberately; I repeat it, and call on any man who hears me, to take down my words. You have not been elected for this purpose; you are appointed to make laws, not legislatures; you are appointed to exercise the functions of legislators, and not to transfer them; and if you do so, your act is a dissolution of the government; you resolve society into its original elements, and no man in the land is bound to obey you.

Sir, I state doctrines which are not merely founded in the immutable laws of justice and of truth; I state not merely the opinions of the ablest men who have written on the science of government; but I state the practice of our constitution as settled at the era of the revolution; I state the doctrine under which the house of Hanover derives its title to the throne. Has the king a right to transfer his throne? Is he competent to annex it to the crown of Spain, or of any other country? No, but he

may abdicate it; and every man who knows the constitution, knows the consequence, the right reverts to the next in succession; if they all abdicate, it reverts to the people. The man who questions this doctrine, in the same breath must arraign the sovereign on the throne as a usurper. Are you competent to transfer your legislative rights to the French council of five hundred? Are you competent to transfer them to the British parliament ! I answer, No. When you transfer you abdicate, and the great original trust reverts to the people from whom it issued. Yourselves you may extinguish, but parliament you cannot extinguish: it is enthroned in the hearts of the people; it is enshrined in the sanctuary of the constitution; it is immortal as the island which it protects; as well might the frantic suicide hope that the act which destroys his miserable body, should extinguish his eternal soul.

Again I therefore warn you, do not dare to lay your hands on the constitution; it is above your power. Sir, I do not say that the parliament and the people, by mutual consent and co-operation, may not change the form of the constitution. Whenever such a case arises, it must be decided on its own merits: but that is not this case. If government considers this a season peculiarly fitted for experiments on the constitution, they may call on the people. I ask you, Are you ready to do so? Are you ready to abide the event of such an appeal? What is it you must in that event submit to the people? Not this particular project, for if you dissolve the present form of government, they become free to choose any other; you fling them to the fury of the tempest; you must call on them to unhouse themselves of the established constitution, and to fashion to themselves another. I ask again, is this the time for an experiment of that nature? Thank God, the people have manifested no such wish; so far as they have spoken, their voice is decidedly against this daring innovation. You know that no voice has been uttered in its favour, and you cannot be infatuated enough to take confidence from the silence which prevails in some parts of the kingdom; if you know how to appreciate that silence, it is more formidable than the most clamorous opposition; you may be rived and shivered by the lightning before you hear