PRELIMINARY DEBATES FOR PRACTICE As the purpose of the study of Burke's Speech on Conciliation is the development of the student's argumentative power, and as this development can be had only by practice, every opportunity for the student's practice should be seized upon. No better opportunity can be found for increasing the student's interest in the history study preparatory to the study of the speech itself, and for giving him practice in speaking, than by debating upon questions chosen from the history leading up to the study of the Speech on Conciliation. A student will master the history leading up to the Speech on Conciliation in no other way with such interest and rapidity as he will while he is studying that history in order to prepare for a debate upon some question drawn from that history. The debate furnishes a motive for the study of the history with zeal. For two reasons, therefore practice in speaking, and the finding of a motive for the deeper interest in the history leading up to the study of the Speech-the questions for debate should be chosen from the history that is being studied. The following questions will serve as specimens: 1. Was the British Government justified in closing the port of Boston ? 2. Was the conduct of the British soldiery in the Boston massacre justifiable? 3. Was the Stamp Act a justifiable governmental measure? 4. Was England justifiable in her policy of "making the colonies useful to the mother country "? 5. Was the British Government justifiable in revoking the charter of Maryland? 6. Were the Bostonians justifiable in throwing the tea overboard in the "Boston Tea Party"? finds religious and racial differences gradually becoming forgotten in the growing similarity of their industrial conditions and their political wrongs, at which time the various spirits of resistance became unified in what may be called the "first Americans." A knowledge of these facts impresses one with the value of the oppressions of the king and the British ministries as a negative good, in bringing together and unifying in a common spirit of resistance these discordant elements-a thing so wonderful as to cause Washington to say that in his opinion it was little less than a miracle. As it was these various spirits of resistance, unified, that Burke was attempting to persuade the British ministry to conciliate, it must be evident to the student that Burke's effort to bring about conciliation can not be understood by any one who attempts to read it without a knowledge of these spirits of resistance and their development through the oppressive acts of the king and his ministers. Burke himself takes cognizance of these different spirits when, in paragraph forty-five of his speech, he names among the "six capital sources of the trouble the following: "Of descent, of form of government, of religion in the northern provinces, of manners in the southern provinces, and of education." He says, "From all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up." 99 99 It is the development of this "fierce spirit of liberty that the student must understand to be able to read the great speech in the true sense. A METHOD FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY It may be permissible to suggest here a method of studying the development of the various spirits of resist ance in such a manner as to accomplish the purpose of developing argumentative power on the part of the students. No better opportunity can be offered for the training of the student in the preliminary steps of the preparation of an argument than is to be found in the study of the development of the spirit of resistance in the colonies, provided the ordinary method of single questions with brief answers be laid aside, and an opportunity be given the student to take up a certain line of study in the development of the spirit of resistance in a colony, to read up on the subject, to work out his reading into connected form, and to give an extended and connected report on the same. Isolated thoughts will not make an argument, nor even a respectable talk or narrative. It is the power of connected and logical thought upon a subject that a student should seek to develop. Each one should understand that his training is distinctively his own, and that, like training in anything else, it depends upon processes through which he himself must go; that no other person's going through these processes will make the student an adept in them any more than some one else's practicing upon the piano will make the student a good pianist. He should go patiently to work through the various processes in the formation of a speech or an argument until he can, without assistance, accomplish these processes with that degree of ease and success that should be expected in high-school work, and that will be of value to him in his later life in college or out in the world. The student should not worry because he does not seem to be "covering enough ground"; that he is not "going through" a sufficient number of classics. He should expurgate these expressions from his vocabulary.. It is not a question of "covering ground"; it is, as Dr. W. N. Hailmann says, a question of "going into the ground"; and it is a question of training. If the student feels that he is daily developing power while undergoing this study preparatory to the study of Burke's speech, he should keep right on: he is doing well enough. The question at last will be, both in college and out in life, not "How many classics have you read?" but "How much training have you received?" or "What can you do?" An interesting evidence of this is to be found in the remark introductory to the questions on English at a recent examination (1899) for admission to Cornell University. The examiner says: "The main object of this examination is not to test the candidate's knowledge of the books involved, though gross ignorance will be rejected, but rather to test the candidate's training in written expression." Training in the preparation and delivery of an argument is the thing to be sought in the study of Burke, at all expense whatsoever. The aim should be to give to each student opportunities to practice certain necessary processes preliminary to the processes required in the preparation of an argument. The following processes are those most necessary to the beginner: * 1. The choice and limitation of the terms of a subject. * This book makes no pretension of being a treatise on argumentation. It does not pretend even to state, as should be done in a more elaborate work, the final steps in the preparation of an argument. It simply states certain steps, the carrying out of which will be necessary to any student who takes up afterward the study of scientific argumentation. It asserts, however, that the mastery of these steps is necessary to any person who expects ever to make a right use of books in any line of study. For the best statement of the principles of argumentation, see Baker's Principles of Argumentation. Ginn & Co. 2. The learning how to find for one's self books upon this subject. 3. The reading of the books and the taking of notes. 4. The rearrangement of the notes in logical order. 5. The expansion of the notes into a speech or a written thesis. The student should seek every opportunity to go through these processes, as he must know how to do these things in order to do the work preliminary to the preparation of an argument. The following method for the study of the history leading up to the Speech on Conciliation is suggested as furnishing opportunities for practice in the steps given in the preceding chapter: The class may be divided into sections, to each of which should be assigned the tracing of the spirit of resistance in one of the five colonies mentioned, care being taken to impress each section that it is not tracing the history of the colonies in general, but that it is tracing, in the history of the colonies, the development of the spirit of resistance to British oppression in regard to the particular colony assigned to that section. In the student's search for related facts upon his subject, to the exclusion of unrelated facts, is to be developed the training for that all-important step in the preparation of an argument—the power to collect material. The subject of the development of the spirit of resistance may, in classes of twenty-four to thirty, be subdivided, with reference to each colony, to great advantage, as will be shown hereafter, as follows: Should there be six in a section, the following subdivision may be made, one part being given to each student to trace: 1. The settlement of the colony, and the cause of the settlement in relation to its spirit of resistance. |