nd measure rare,
expressed his views on this occasion with more fervour and publicity
than the circumstances demanded; but his words are as balm to the
irritation which some of us suffer and conceal when drained of our
reluctant applause.

It is perhaps because women have been trained to a receptive attitude
of mind, because for centuries they have been valued for their
sympathy and appreciation rather than for their judgment, that they
are so perilously prone to enthusiasm. It has come to all of us of
late to hear much feminine eloquence, and to marvel at the nimbleness
of woman's wit, at the speed with which she thinks, and the facility
with which she expresses her thoughts. A woman who, until five years
ago, never addressed a larger audience than that afforded by a
reading-club or a dinner-party, will now thrust and parry on a
platform, wholly unembarrassed by timidity or by ignorance.
Sentiment and satire are hers to command; and while neither is
convincing, both are tremendously effective with people already
convinced, with the partisans who throng unwearyingly to hear the
voicing of their own opinions. The ease with which such a speaker
brings forward the great central fact of the universe, maternity,
as an argument for or against the casting of a ballot (it works just
as well either way); the glow with which she associates Jeanne d'Arc
with federated clubs and social service; and the gay defiance she
hurls at customs and prejudices so profoundly obsolete that the
lantern of Diogenes could not find them lurking in a village
street,--these things may chill the unemotional listener into apathy,
but they never fail to awaken the sensibilities of an audience. The
simple process, so highly commended by debaters, of ignoring all that
cannot be denied, makes demonstration easy. "A crowd," said Mr.
Ruskin, "thinks by infection." To be immune from infection is to
stand outside the sacred circle of enthusiasts.

Yet if the experience of mankind teaches anything, it is that vital
convictions are not at the mercy of eloquence. The "oratory of
conviction," to borrow a phrase of Mr. Bagehot's, is so rare as to
be hardly worth taking into account. Fox used to say that if a speech
read well, it was "a damned bad speech," which is the final word of
cynicism, spoken by one who knew. It was the saving sense of England,
that solid, prosaic, dependable common sense, the bulwark of every
great nation, which, after Sheridan's famous