This tends to the most
perfect liberality. It is no good hearing the arguments of an opponent,
for in good verity you rarely follow them; and even if you do take the
trouble to listen, it is merely in a captious search for weaknesses.
This is proved, I fear, in every debate; when you hear each speaker
arguing out his own prepared _specialite_ (he never intended speaking,
of course, until some remarks of, etc.), arguing out, I say, his own
_coached-up_ subject without the least attention to what has gone
before, as utterly at sea about the drift of his adversary's speech as
Panurge when he argued with Thaumaste, and merely linking his own
prelection to the last by a few flippant criticisms. Now, as the rule
stands, you are saddled with the side you disapprove, and so you are
forced, by regard for your own fame, to argue out, to feel with, to
elaborate completely, the case as it stands against yourself; and what a
fund of wisdom do you not turn up in this idle digging of the vineyard!
How many new difficulties take form before your eyes? how many
superannuated arguments cripple finally into limbo, under the glance of
your enforced eclecticism!

Nor is this the only merit of Debating Societies. They tend also to
foster taste, and to promote friendship between University men. This
last, as we have had occasion before to say, is the great requirement of
our student life; and it will therefore be no waste of time if we devote
a paragraph to this subject in its connection with Debating Societies.
At present they partake too much of the nature of a _clique._ Friends
propose friends, and mutual friends second them, until the society
degenerates into a sort of family party. You may confirm old
acquaintances, but you can rarely make new ones. You find yourself in
the atmosphere of your own daily intercourse. Now, this is an
unfortunate circumstance, which it seems to me might readily be
rectified. Our Principal has shown himself so friendly towards all
College improvements that I cherish the hope of seeing shortly realised
a certain suggestion, which is not a new one with me, and which must
often have been proposed and canvassed heretofore--I mean, a real
_University Debating Society_, patronised by the Senatus, presided over
by the Professors, to which every one might gain ready admittance on
sight of his matriculation ticket, where it would be a favour and not a
necessity to speak, and where the obscure student might have anothe