Confidence of Youth.

My own personal experience of non-professional debating societies is of rather ancient date; and it is also an experience of societies composed of very youthful members, and of a less advanced kind than I understand yours to be. It is now full five and forty years since, in the solemn councils of Conscript Orators, aged from twelve to eighteen, I used to debate such interesting questions as "Whether Brutus was justified in killing Cæsar;" and I can remember how the young advocates of Mary Queen of Scots on the one side, and of Queen Elizabeth on the other, used to fulminate their indignant eloquence at the memories of the rival Queens, and at each other; and now, I cannot help speculating how much one might learn if one possessed true reports of such school-boy utterances, so as to compare the happy audacity and vigorous prejudices of youth, with the self-doubtingness and the hesitating convictions of matured age.

I met the other day, in a colonial newspaper, with an article of some merit, entitled "The Courage of our Opinions," taken from The Australasian, in which the following passage occurs:—

"In youth we are apt to deem the frank, impulsive utterance of our opinions as a moral obligation—nay, almost as a point of honour. But we need to be reminded that probably we have neither seen, suffered, enjoyed, nor experienced enough to stamp our mere opinions as of any very great value. Surely it is not enough to say, 'Such, sir, is my honest opinion.' The question recurs,' What (if any) pains have you taken to verify and test it?' When a man is too young and too borné to admit of his being accepted as an authority, we naturally pay more regard to that which he shall prove than to that which he (however sincerely) may assert."

And again, "It is well for a rising young man to know and feel the strength and weakness of his true position. How fatal is too early a promotion. Excellent as are debating societies, I doubt whether the attentive listener docs not gain more real mental opulence than the voluble and complacent orator of the evening. But nothing can be much worse than the setting of boys or of girls to write themes in decent grammar before they have, or can have any ideas; it compels them to borrow in some form, and thus familiarises them with leaning upon other minds, and with making words do duty for ideas. It gives rise to an irresponsible slip-slop style, in which inferences are often confounded with facts, suspicion with belief, and personal conviction with evidence. Scott and Cobbett advise well. The first says,' Rise to speak not till you feel that you have something to say;' the second 'Sit down, not to think what you shall write, but to write what you have thought.'"

Although the observations of this writer about the themes of schoolboys and schoolgirls can have no direct application to members of such societies as yours, and I am not sure that they are altogether well founded, yet the concluding advice seems not unworthy of consideration, and adoption.