Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

Next. Never strain your vocal organs by attempting to fill spaces which are too large for you. Speak as loudly and distinctly as you can do easily, and let the most distant portions of your audience go. You will find in that way very soon that your voice will increase in compass and power, and you will do better than by a habit of straining the voice beyond its natural capacity. Be careful to avoid falsetto. Shun imitating the tricks of speech of other orators, even of famous and successful orators. These may do for them, but not for you. You will do no better in attempting to imitate the tricks of speech of other men in public speaking than in private speaking.

Never make a gesture for the sake of making one. I believe that most of the successful speakers whom I know would find it hard to tell you whether they themselves make gestures or not, they are so absolutely unconscious in the matter. But with gestures as with the voice, get teachers or friendly critics to point out to you any bad habit you may fall into. I think it would be well if our young public speakers, especially preachers, would have competent instructors and critics among their auditors, after they enter their profession, to give them the benefit of such observations and counsel as may be suggested in that way. If a Harvard professor of elocution would retain his responsibility for his pupils five or ten years after they got into active life he would do a great deal more good than by his instructions to undergraduates.

So far we have been talking about mere manner. The matter and substance of the orator's speech must depend upon the intellectual quality of the man.

The great orator must be a man of absolute sincerity. Never advocate a cause in which you do not believe, or affect an emotion you do not feel. No skill or acting will cover up the want of earnestness. It is like the ointment of the hand which bewrayeth itself.

I shall be asked how I can reconcile this doctrine with the practice of the law. It will be said the advocate must often defend men whom he believes to be guilty, or argue to the court propositions he believes to be unsound. This objection will disappear if we consider what exactly is the function of the advocate in our system of administering justice.

I suppose it is needless to argue to persons of American or English birth that our system of administering justice is safer for the innocent and, on the whole, secures the punishment of guilt and secures private right better than any other that now exists or that ever existed among men. The chief distinction of the system we have inherited from England consists in two things: first, the function of the advocate, and second, that cases are decided not upon belief, but upon proof. It has been found that court or jury are more likely to get at truth if they have the aid of trained officers whose duty it shall be to collect and present all the arguments on each side which ought to be considered before the court or jury reach the decision. The man who seems clearly guilty should not be condemned or punished unless every consideration which may tend to establish innocence or throw doubt upon guilt has been fully weighed. The unassisted tribunal will be quite likely to overlook these considerations. Public sentiment approves the judgment and the punishment in the case of John W. Webster. But certainly he should never have been convicted without giving the fullest weight to his previous character and to the slightness of the temptation to the commission of such a crime, to the fact that the evidence was largely circumstantial, to the doubt of the identity of the body of the victim, and to the fact that the means or instrument of the crime which ordinarily must be alleged and proved in cases of murder could not be made certain, and could not be set forth in the indictment. The question in the American or English court is not whether the accused be guilty. It is whether he be shown to be guilty, by legal proof, of an offence legally set forth. It is the duty of the advocate to perform his office in the mode best calculated to cause all such considerations to make their due impression. It is not his duty or his right to express or convey his individual opinion. On him the responsibility of the decision does not rest. He not only has no right to accompany the statement of his argument with any assertion as to his individual belief, but I think the most experienced observers will agree that such expressions, if habitual, tend to diminish and not to increase the just influence of the lawyer. There was never a weightier advocate before New England juries than Daniel Webster. Yet it is on record that he always carefully abstained from any positiveness of assertion. He introduced his weightiest arguments with such phrases as, "It will be for the jury to consider," "The Court will judge," "It may, perhaps, be worth thinking of, gentlemen," or some equivalent phrase by which he kept scrupulously off the ground which belonged to the tribunal he was addressing. The tricks of advocacy are not only no part of the advocate's duties, but they are more likely to repel than to attract the hearers. The function of the advocate in the court of justice, as thus defined and limited, is tainted by no insincerity or hypocrisy. It is as respectable, as lofty, and as indispensably necessary as that of the judge himself.

In my opinion, the two most important things that a young man can do to make himself a good public speaker are:

First. Constant and careful written translations from Latin or Greek into English.

Second. Practice in a good debating society.

It has been said that all the greatest Parliamentary orators of England are either men whom Lord North saw, or men who saw Lord North—that is, men who were conspicuous as public speakers in Lord North's youth, his contemporaries, and the men who saw him as an old man when they were young themselves. This would include Bolingbroke and would come down only to the year of Lord John Russell's birth. So we should have to add a few names, especially Gladstone, Disraeli, John Bright, and Palmerston. There is no great Parliamentary orator in England since Gladstone died. I once, a good many years ago, studied the biographies of the men who belonged to that period who were famous as great orators in Parliament or in Court, to find, if I could, the secret of their power. With the exception of Lord Erskine and of John Bright, I believe every one of them trained himself by careful and constant translation from Latin or Greek, and frequented a good debating society in his youth.