Practical Argumentation by George K. Pattee (summer reading list .txt) 📖

The case before the court is not of ordinary importance, nor of everyday occurrence. It affects not this college only, but every college, and all the literary institutions of the country. They have flourished hitherto, and have become in a high degree respectable and useful to the community. They have all a common principle of existence, the inviolability of their charters. It will be a dangerous, a most dangerous experiment, to hold these institutions subject to the rise and fall of popular parties, and the fluctuation of political opinions. If the franchise may at any time be taken away, or impaired, the property also may be taken away, or impaired, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theatre for the contentions of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the places consecrated to piety and learning. These consequences are neither remote nor possible only. They are certain and immediate. [Footnote: Webster’s Great Speeches, p. 23.]

As a rule, most of the criticisms that can be made of any conclusion pertain to matters of taste and judgment. A writer or speaker may have made too detailed or too brief a summary; he may have erred in choosing the best method of persuasion; he may have injured his argument in almost countless other ways. In these matters a textbook can give only general and rather vague instruction. Each argument must be suited to the particular case in hand. There are several common errors in students’ work, however, that should always be avoided and that can definitely be pointed out.

1. An argument should not have an abrupt and jerky ending. It is not uncommon especially in class room debate, to hear a student at the close of his discussion say, “This is my proof; I leave the decision to the judges”; or “Thus you see I have established my proposition.” Such an ending can in no way be called a conclusion or a peroration.

2. A conclusion should contain no new proof. Violations of this principle brand an arguer as careless, and greatly weaken his argument. Proof is most convincing when arranged in its proper place and in its logical order. Furthermore, the purpose of the conclusion is to review the points that have already been established. If the arguer forgets this fact and mixes proof with summary, the audience is liable to become badly confused and not know what has been established and what has not.

3. A conclusion should not refer to a point that has not already been established. A careless writer or debater will sometimes state that he has proved an argument which he has not previously touched upon. Such a procedure smacks of trickery or ignorance, and is sure to be disastrous. Not only will the audience throw out that particular point, but they will be highly prejudiced against both the arguer and his argument. It is permissible for one to maintain that he has proved a point even though the proof be somewhat inadequate, but for one to refer in his conclusion to a point that he then mentions for the first time is unpardonable.

4. A conclusion must reaffirm the proposition exactly as stated at the beginning. Sometimes a writer, discovering at the close of his argument that he has not stuck to his subject but has proved something different, or at best has proved only a part of his subject, states as his decision a totally different proposition from that with which he started. To illustrate, a student once attempted to argue on the affirmative side of the proposition, “The United States should discontinue its protective tariff policy”; but he gave as his concluding sentence, “These facts, then, prove to you that our present tariff duties are too high.” This last sentence embodied the real proposition which he had discussed, and if he had taken as his subject, “Our present tariff duties are too high,” his argument would have been successful. As it was, his failure to support the proposition with which he started rendered his whole effort worthless.

A conclusion that is weaker than the proposition is commonly called a “qualifying conclusion.” When one has fallen into this error there are two possible ways of removing it: one is to change the whole argument so that the conclusion will affirm the truth or falsity of the proposition; the other is to change the proposition. In a debate, of course, or whenever a subject is assigned, the latter method cannot be followed.

As a final example of what a good peroration should be, consider the following conclusion of Webster’s speech, delivered in the United States Senate, on The Presidential Veto of the United States Bank Bill. Notice the skillful interweaving of conviction and persuasion, and remember in connection with the principle of proportion that this is the conclusion of a speech containing about 14,000 words.

“Mr. President, we have arrived at a new epoch. We are entering on experiments, with the government and the Constitution of the country, hitherto untried, and of fearful and appalling aspect. This message calls us to the contemplation of a future which little resembles the past. Its principles are at war with all that public opinion has sustained, and all which the experience of the government has sanctioned. It denies first principles; it contradicts truths, hitherto received as indisputable. It denies to the judiciary the interpretation of law, and claims to divide with Congress the power of originating statutes. It extends the grasp of executive pretension over every power of the government. But this is not all. It presents the chief magistrate of the Union in the attitude of arguing away the powers of that government over which he has been chosen to preside; and adopting for this purpose modes of reasoning which, even under the influence of all proper feeling towards high official station, it is difficult to regard as respectable. It appeals to every prejudice which may betray men into a mistaken view of their own interests, and to every passion which may lead them to disobey the impulses of their understanding. It urges all the specious topics of State rights and national encroachment against that which a great majority of the States have affirmed to be rightful, and in which all of them have acquiesced. It sows, in an unsparing manner, the seeds of jealousy and ill-will against that government of which its author is the official head. It raises a cry, that liberty is in danger, at the very moment when it puts forth claims to powers heretofore unknown and unheard of. It affects alarm for the public freedom, when nothing endangers that freedom so much as its own unparalleled pretences. This, even, is not all. It manifestly seeks to inflame the poor against the rich; it wantonly attacks whole classes of the people, for the purpose of turning against them the prejudices and the resentment of other classes. It is a state paper which finds no topic too exciting for its use, no passion to inflammable for its address and its solicitation.

“Such is this message. It remains now for the people of the United States to choose between the principles here avowed and their government. These cannot subsist together. The one or the other must be rejected. If the sentiments of the message shall receive general approbation, the Constitution will have perished even earlier than the moment which its enemies originally allowed for the termination of its existence. It will not have survived to its fiftieth year.” [Footnote: Webster’s Great Speeches, page 338.]

APPENDICES.

A WRITTEN ARGUMENT AND ITS BRIEF.

SHOULD IMMIGRATION BE RESTRICTED? [Footnote: The North American Review, May, 1897, page 526.]

During recent years there has been a growing interest in plans for further checking or limiting the tide of immigration whose waves sweep in upon the United States almost daily in constantly increasing volume. Several restrictive measures are already in force: paupers, idiots, contract laborers, the Chinese, and several other classes of people are prohibited from entering our ports. The subject has been discussed in legislatures, in political meetings, from pulpits, in reform clubs, and among individuals on every hand. The reason for the interest which the subject now excites is easily found in the recent enormous increase of immigration.

The problem divides itself at the outset into two distinct questions: First, is it for the advantage of the United States that immigration be further checked or limited? Second, if so, in what way should the check or limit be applied?

It is evident that these questions cover two distinct fields of inquiry, the industrial and the political. Nor can the two fields be examined simultaneously, for the reasons, if there are any, from a political point of view, why immigration should be limited, would not apply to the questions viewed on its industrial side, and vice versa.

Taking up first the industrial question, we may assume that the entrance of the swarms of immigrants into our country represents the introduction of just so much laboring power into the country, and we may also assume as a self-evident proposition that the introduction of laboring power into an undeveloped or partially developed country is advantageous until the point is reached at which all the laborers whom the country can support have been introduced. Adam Smith says that labor is the wealth of nations. If this is true, the laborer is the direct and only primary means of acquiring wealth. The facts of the history of our country bear out this view. Beginning with the clearing of the forests, the settlements of the villages, the cultivation of farms, proceeding to the establishment of the lumber industries, the cultivation of vast wheat and corn fields, the production of cotton, the working of the coal and oil fields of Pennsylvania, the development of the mining districts of the West, culminating in the varied and extensive manufactures of the Eastern and Central States, the laborer has been the Midas whose touch has turned all things to gold.

There is, however, a limitation to the principle that the introduction of laborers into a partially developed country is advantageous. A point is finally reached which may be called the saturation point of the country; that is, it has as many inhabitants as it can supply with reasonably good food and clothing. This saturation point may be reached many times in the history of a country, for the ratio between the food and clothing products and the population is constantly varying. New modes of cultivation, and the use of machinery, as well as natural causes affecting the fertility of land, which are as yet obscure, render a country at one time capable of supporting a much larger number of inhabitants than at another time. Still, there is a broad and general truth that, time and place and kind of people being considered, some countries are over-populated, and some are under-populated.

We are accustomed to say that some of the countries of Europe are over-populated, and there are among us some who are beginning to say that the United States has reached the same point. This is far from being the case, and a single glance at the comparative average density of population of the principal European nations and of the United States will be sufficient to drive this idea out of any fair-minded person’s head.

The most thickly settled country of modern Europe is the Netherlands, which had, in the year 1890, the very large average of three hundred and fifty-nine inhabitants per square mile of territory. Great Britain