In writing of the Union we desire to criticise a kind of speaking which is frequently heard at the debates. It is evident that many men carefully prepare their five-minutes speeches, commit them to memory, and then declaim them. To our mind a debating society is not the place for declamation; but aside from that, the method is very ineffective, and ridicule oftener than approbation is manifested by the listeners. An assembly usually greatly prefers to hear a speaker who hesitates and stumbles in his remarks, provided they are extemporaneous, than one who fires off at short range a carefully prepared and committed speech, though it may be faultless in form and logical in argument.
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