The Making of Arguments

secret societies in a certain school have led to immoral practices," is not direct evidence, nor to declare that "the best authorities in the city are agreed that the company should lay double tracks on a certain street." Such assertions are apt to be the most roundabout sort of hearsay. Try cross-examining the next man you hear make this kind of sweeping assertion, in order to see what he really knows of the facts, and you will soon find how recklessly such assertions are made. You constantly hear grave statements of facts whose ultimate basis is the imagination of some enterprising newspaper reporter; yet careful and truthful people pass them on as if they were indubitable. The news columns of the papers are largely written by young fellows just out of high school, who will declare the whole gospel on subjects with which they have a half hour's acquaintance, yet most people never question their statements. The printed page, whether of a hook, a magazine, or a newspaper, casts a spell on our judgment. Such floating assertions, with no one to father them, are of no value whatever. If you have to use statements in a newspaper as direct evidence, either take them from a newspaper which is recognized as careful about facts, or else look up the matter in two or three papers, and show that their testimony agrees. On the other hand, a specific name, with a specific reference to volume and page, will go a long way to give your readers confidence in the evidence you adduce. And rightly so, for one man with a name and address is worth hundreds of unnamed "highest authorities"; and the more specifically you refer to him and to his evidence, the more likely you will be to win over your audience to your view. A famous and effective example of the use of specific names to give authority to an argument, and the incidental refutation of a vague and loose assertion, is found in Lincoln's address at Cooper Institute, in the first part of which he took up Senator Douglas's statement that "our fathers, when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well as, and even better than, we do now," with the implication that they intended to forbid the federal government to control slavery in the federal territories. Lincoln showed that "our fathers who framed the government under which we live "must be the makers of the Constitution: and then he proceeded to show just what action each one of them, so far as record had been preserved, had taken on the question. Here is a passage from his argument: The question of Federal control in the Territories seems not to have been directly before the convention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the "thirty-nine," or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question. In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the ordinance of 1787, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the "thirty-nine"—Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without ayes and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, William S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thomas Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, and James Madison. This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the Federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition. Again, George Washington, another of the "thirty-nine," was then President of the United States and as such approved and signed the bill, thus completing its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country now constituting the State-of Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery in them. But they did interfere with it—take control of it—— even there, to a certain extent. In 1798 Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of organization they prohibited the bringing of slaves into the Territory from any place without the United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so brought. This act passed both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three of the "thirty-nine" who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George Read, and Abraham Baldwin. They all probably voted for it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it upon record if, in their understanding, any line dividing local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. In the end this exact statement of names, for which he had prepared himself with such laborious care, enabled Lincoln to sum up with absolute conclusiveness: The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the "thirty-nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have been able to discover. To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 7804, and two in 1819-1820, there would be thirty of them. But this would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin three times. The true number of those of the "thirty-nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the question which, by the text, they understood better than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any way. Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine fathers "who framed the government under which we live," who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better, than we do now"; and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"—so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and willful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions under such responsibility speak still louder. When you come to evidence about a large and complex state of affairs, which is the kind of fact that so many of the arguments of practical life deal with, though you will still be dealing with a fact, yet the very nature of the fact changes the value and the character of your evidence. It is a comparatively simple matter to determine whether a certain woman faced forward or backward as she was getting off a street car, or whether the eggs of a sea urchin do or do not begin to germinate under the influence of a certain chemical substance; but it is far from simple to determine whether a free elective course has or has not inured to greater intelligence and cultivation in the graduates of a certain college, or whether the graduates of another college where the classical course is maintained have keener and more flexible minds and more refined tastes as a result of their study of the classics. In such cases as these the citing of direct evidence brings on you difficulties of a different kind from those you face when you are establishing a single, simple fact. Here you will usually depend on two main sources of evidence: statistics, and the evidence of recognized authorities on the subject. 30. Statistics. Statistics, which are collections of figures, are notoriously treacherous. On many important subjects, such, for example, as the practical effect of the elective system, it is impossible to get them; and on many other subjects, such as the effects of a protective tariff, they must be had in so enormous masses, if they are to be trusted at all, that only profound students can handle them. Where the facts are complicated, and interests are tangled, moreover, many sets of figures may enter into the question, as notably in the case of a tariff; so clearly is this difficulty now recognized that Congress has authorized a tariff board made up of distinguished students of economics and men of long experience in dealing with tariff matters to collect and study the facts and make recommendations based on them. Similarly, with the investigation into the liquor question made fifteen years ago by the Committee of Fifty: the whole question had been so tangled by assertion and counter-assertion that it became desirable to have an investigation into the facts by men of recognized ability and impartiality.20 In general, to use statistics safely you need a wide acquaintance with a subject, especially where the question is in any way mixed up with men's feelings, whether through politics or not. All the statistics we have make dead against great armaments and preparation for war; yet while human nature is what it is, necessary prudence seems to require every nation of any size to have them. A very little human nature will upset a very great body of statistics. Furthermore, in most human affairs results are produced by a multiplicity of causes; and though statistics may throw light on three quarters of all the causes that are potent in any given case, yet the other quarter which are irreducible to definite statement may wholly alter the result. If you are using statistics in your argument, therefore, as evidence of some large and complex fact, you should usually justify them to some extent by showing that there are no counteracting forces which they do not cover. With this precaution, however, statistics are the foundation of most arguments on large questions. If you were arguing in favor of the purchase of local waterworks, you would present figures showing the number of houses using the public water supply, the rates paid, the profits of the company, the exact points at which public control could work economies. If you were arguing for a rule that no man shall play on a university team until he has been registered a year at the university, you would need statistics to show how many men would be affected by the rule. If you were arguing for a single session at a school instead of two, you would show exactly how many students in the school live more than a mile away from the building. In every case where statistics can be presented in such a way as to make clear that they fairly cover the ground, they are most valuable evidence. They give the argument the effect of being founded on a rock. If it be obvious that the statistics have been freshly gathered, and are not merely casual and second-hand gleanings, they have still greater effect, for then