of himself. Yet Burke opened his remarks with these
plain words.

"Mr. Speaker! I rise under some embarrassment occasioned by a
feeling of delicacy toward one-half of the House, and of
sovereign contempt for the other half."

This is childish, of course. A man may not infrequently be forced by
circumstances to speak before an audience whose sentiments, opinions,
prejudices, all place them in a position antagonistic to his own. How
shall he make them well-disposed, attentive, willing to be instructed?
The situation is not likely to surround a beginning speaker, but men
in affairs, in business, in courts, must be prepared for such
circumstances. One of the most striking instances of a man who
attempted to speak before an antagonistic group and yet by sheer power
of his art and language ended by winning them to his own party is in
Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_ when Mark Antony speaks over his dead
friend's body. Brutus allows it, but insists on speaking to the people
first that he may explain why he and his fellow conspirators
assassinated the great leader. It was a mistake to allow a person from
the opposite party to have the last word before the populace, but that
is not the point just here. Brutus is able to explain why a group of
noble Romans felt that for the safety of the state and its
inhabitants, they had to kill the rising favorite who would soon as
King rule them all. When he ceases speaking, the citizens approve the
killing. Mark Antony perceives that, so at the beginning of his speech
he seems to agree with the people. Caesar was his friend, yet Brutus
says he was ambitious, and Brutus is an honorable man. Thus the
skilful orator makes the populace well-disposed towards him, then
attentive.

Having secured those things he proceeds slowly and unobtrusively to
instruct them. It takes only a few lines until he has made them
believe all he wants them to; before the end of his oration he has
them crying out upon the murderers of their beloved Caesar, for whose
lives they now thirst. Yet only ten minutes earlier they were loudly
acclaiming them as deliverers of their country. The entire scene
should be analyzed carefully by the student. It is the second scene of
the third act of the play.

In actual life a man would hardly have to go so far as seemingly to
agree with such opposite sentiments as expressed in this situation
from a stage tragedy. It is general knowledge that during the early
years of