Eight Opinions more Important than Facility of Expression.

No one can doubt, upon reflection, that the formation of right, just, and safe opinions, is of infinitely more value than a facility for expressing arguments and conclusions carelessly adopted or arrived at.

I would venture to repeat it, at the risk of being accused of serving you up a rechauffé of trite and tedious maxims and dogmas, instead of furnishing you with fresh matter palateably concocted for your entertainment, that without first thinking, and reading, and thinking again, the art of mere speaking, not to say of oratory, must be delusive and mischievous.

I may assume—not indeed without fear of contradiction—(because such a statement would be very rash when addressed to the members of debating societies), but with something like certainty, in spite of contradiction, that to a well educated mind, a right judgment and a cultivated taste, nothing is more offensive than those products of a fatal facility for glib speaking, irrespective of precision as to facts, and strictness of reasoning, which, especially in popular assemblies, not unfrequently excite the applause of the unthinking.

If your Societies were so conducted as to encourage this sort of mischief, I for one should consider them as social nuisances, rather than as benefits to the community.

But I feel confident that the very formation of the Association over which you permit me to preside, is a certain proof that your individual Societies, and their members, have higher aspirations than to become collections of mere "spouters" and "declaimers;" that you desire to extend the areas of your intellectual enterprise, and the arena of your intellectual contests; that you strive to prove by your discussions that you cultivate literature, honestly, for itself—for the enlightenment and enjoyment it affords, and not for the sole purposes of display and the gratification of personal vanity.