Phenix gazette. [volume] (Alexandria [D.C.]) 1825-1833, 1826-07-29


cd, is withdrawn or lost, because there is no
time left to give it full and final examination;
or it is sent to the other House, where, is re-
notorious, and if they work great national mis-
chief, should NO, the impossibiity Of brief de-
bates in Parliament, by which the calamity
would be reduced or remedied, be proved clear
as the light of Heaven, before the hope De yield
ed that such an amendment will be made!
| am persuaded thatthe advantages oil such
an improvement would not be confined 10 the
dispatch Of public business. The taste OF our
speakers would share the benefit. In no coun-
My in the world has eloquence raised men TO so
high an eminence over their felow,cfea,ures as
in England; and in none is ii, as subject OF
study, as a part Of education, more shameiuHy
neglected. The ancients bad their teachers OF
rhetoric and schools of defamation, IN which
rules Of the art, ins,illed with anxious care, and
learned by loiIsome application, were wrought,
by continued practice under the eyes OF the
master, into the very habits and constitution OF
the pupil. The ancients were also frugal OF
their public time; and upon the most nomen-
tous question the speakers address was strict
y confined TO limited period. he conse-
quence Of this disc plEe, both In their schools
and their national assemblies, was, that their
statesmen entered public life practised and &C
complished orators, with tl,eir habits SO accom-
moda,ed II the established usages o. debate,
that every word and moment was husbanded
with penurious lh:lil, and nothing was spoken
that did not belong to the very plih and marrow
of the question "UW Mill deiraai potest," Is
the well known remark Of Quintilan Demos
thenes-,he most splendid pancgyric that was
ever pronounced upon an orator; and yet still
more descriptive of his capacity as man OF
business, than of his powers OF yet unequalled
eloQuence.
Far different is it with US. Our teacher Of
e,oquence, when there is person even assum-
ing that name, is the reader Of a dry lecture,
during an hour of each day, for so many days
of so many months. Our schools OF declama-
ton are few debating societies, almost con-
fined to the metropolis, where there is no teach
err oil the art, and composed chiefly, perhaps l
should say entirely, OF young men who were
never taught its rules, and arc, therefore, wholly
unfit for its practice. In such places, what can
be learned but what Quintifan has denounced
as the pernlcious fruit OF practice without study
the "verba in labris nafantin," that redundant
nuency which enables It's possessor to talk down
the patience OF any auditory, while it bereayes
him Of every quality Of an orator except the
gift of speech. If such speaker enters Par
lament, he carries into it vices OF style which
will be only confirmed BY the prevailing habits
Of loose debate; if Parliament be the first thea
ire of his excrions, even supposing him to have
made oratory the subject Of his private and Sc
cluded study, he must have uncommon powers,
if in his FIRST unpractised efforts he displays
brevi,y and compression, the most difficult OF
all attainmenls, add if we have it not hhen he is
not in a school where he will be likely to learn
it by example. If ever there was man de-
signed by nature to excel in eloquence, il was
Mr.. Fox. Yet this great DICTATOR, whose ora
tory was the very Child and nursing Of the
House Of Commons, where it was born, Graded,
reared, end matured, was so5iit!e master OF the
art Of compression, that he complained TO his
friends of being obliged TO spend two whole
DAYS in writing his celebrated letter to the e.
lec,ors of Westminster, which contains in eight
or nine pages the substance oftwo speeches that
occupied, in their delivery, nearly as many
hours.
Is it not fact worth noticing, that The most
effective and accomplished orations ever en-
ployed to convince or agitate mankind, were al
SO the brefcst? The longest of the political
speeches of Demosthenes could not have detain
ed the audience much longer than forty minutes,
and some Of them were probably spoken, as they
may now he read, with sufficient sowness and
distnctness, less than half an hour. Yet these
are the effusion, Of that rapid and mighty gent
us, the effec, Of whose words the language OF
the ancients seemed exhausted in describing; OF
which they FELT they could give an adequate &C
count, onlyby comparing it to the workings of
The mos, sublime and powerful agents of ma
ture-,he ulgovernable torrent-the resistless
thunder. Pliny indeed has said, in letter TO
Tacitus, th,t in his opinion the written ora
tons both 81 Cicero and Demosthenes were
mere report, compressed and polished by the
authors, of addresses which were delivered in a
more expanded form. But, as 10 Demos,he-
mes at least, besides the accordance OF the style
ofhis written compositions with the traditional
accounts gien by antiquity of his manner as
speaker, thy contain internal evidence, that
what modem readers peruse with an cnthusi-
asm whic .orceG even the cold blooded Hume
to declare that he thought, fcopied, its success
would be ifaible over modern assembly
was the ve,r form of words which, among the
Athenians, converted Senates into armies. The
picture givn Of Philip in the first Olynthiac;
the companion, in the second, between the A
thenans Of hat day and their ancestors; the ar
gument in tie fourth Philippe, that Philip, un-
der the guis of peace, was waglng actual war;
and bundled other passages OF equal beauty,
would, if expanded, lose the far greatest pro-
...,,:. Al, :. r...o ,r1 fervour and conce |