l8 X DISSERTATION RHETORIC is thus demonstrated to be an ART. For, if we allow the two sources of its success- ful application to be casualty and habit, we may equally concede the competency of any man to establish a rule whereby he may set chance at defiance, and generally succeed. Now, it is the province of art alone to assign such rules ; and, therefore, the object to be attained by them must be itself an art. In PROOF consists the principal Address of the Rhetorician. And here I cannot be refuted upon the grounds of omission in those authors, who have treated the- subject, more with reference to the several pas- sions of the human heart, than those modes of argument (particularly enthymem *) so essential to the formation of proof. Passion, in point of fact, lies more at home with the person who ad- judges, than the orator who enforces an appeal. If the former acted up to his duty in all matters touching justice ; and were every government to be modelled upon the policy of the best-regulated republics, the advocates of an opinion contrary to mine, would find little room to dilate when they would speak in public. This licentious habit of expatiating is theoreti- cally reprobated, but I know of few places where the orator is expressly forbidden to travel out of
- This argumentative term is explained in progress.
