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1857. pl. 25.

DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, TO WIT;

BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the first day of January, SEAL. in the thirty fifth year of the independence of the United States of America, HILLIARD & METCALF of the said district have deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words following, to wit; "lectures on rhetoric and oratory, delivered to the classes of "senior and junior sophisters in Harvard university, by JOHN "QUINCY ADAMS, LL.D. late Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory. In two volumes."

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In conformity to the act of the congress of the United States. entitled "an act for the encouragement of learning by securing "the copies of maps, charts, and books to the authors and pro“prietors of such copies during the times, therein mentioned;" and also to an act, entitled "an act for the encouragement of "learning by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books to "the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times, "therein mentioned; and extending the benefits thereof to the "arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other "prints."

W. S. SHAW, clerk of the district of Massachusetts.

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LECTURE XIX.

PROPOSITION AND PARTITION.

THERE are, says Aristotle, only two parts absolutely necessary to every public discourse, and these parts are the proposition and the proof; which are equivalent to the problem and its solution in geometry. The narration essentially belongs only to judicial causes. The exordium and peroration may sometimes be discarded. If a distribution of parts be made only for the sake of discovering how much ingenuity can be wasted upon the multiplication of distinctions without dif ference, we might treat of a narration, a pre-narration, a post-narration, a super-narration; a refutation, a super-refutation, and the like to an infinite extent. These, as that great philosopher observes,

are ridiculous divisions. But the proposition and the proof are indispensable.

It will thus appear, that he does not even assign a separate apartment for the narration. But in judicial causes, where it is necessary, he includes it within the compass of the proposition.

By the forms of proceeding in our judicial courts the distinction between the narration and proposition is sufficiently clear. They both constitute a part of the written pleadings, which precede the trial of the cause. The narration in the

process of the common law is called the declaration, and is inserted into the writ or indictment, with which the suit commences. To this narra,

The

tion the defendant answers by a plea, and a written altercation ensues, terminating in an issue between the parties. The proposition of the plaintiff is that side of the issue, which he maintains. proposition of the defendant consists in the direct denial of what his opponent affirms, and the issue is the question in controversy between them.

In discourses of the other classes it is not always necessary formally to lay down the proposiSometimes it is inferrible from the whole

tion. tenor of the speech. Sometimes it comes in most naturally by way of recapitulation at the close of

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