and to excite
their good-will in some degree. But the narration of the accuser will
be a separate count, as it were, which will contain an explanation
of every sort of transaction liable to suspicion, with every kind
of argument scattered over it, and all the topics for the defence
discredited. But the speaker for the defence must pass over or
discredit all the arguments employed to raise suspicion, and will
limit himself to a narration of the actual facts and events which have
taken place. But in the corroboration of our own arguments, and in the
invalidation of those of our adversaries, it will be often the object
of the accuser to rouse the feelings of the minds of his hearers, and
of the advocate for the defence to pacify them. And this will be the
course of both of them especially in the peroration. The one must
have recourse to a reiteration of his arguments, and to a general
accumulation of them together; the other, when he has once clearly
explained his own cause, refuting the statements of his adversary,
must have recourse to enumeration; and, when he has effaced every
unfavourable impression, then at the end he will endeavour to move the
pity of his judges.

XXXVI. _C.F._ I think I know now how conjecture ought to be dealt
with. Let me hear you now on the subject of definition.

_C.P._ With respect to that the rules which are given are common to
the accuser and the defender. For whichever of them by his definition
and description of a word makes the greatest impression on the
feelings and opinions of the judges, and whichever keeps nearest to
the general meaning of the word, and to that preconceived opinion
which those who are the hearers have adopted in their minds, must
inevitably get the better in the discussion. For this kind of topic
is not handled by a regular argumentation, but by shaking out, as it
were, and unfolding the word; so that, if, for instance, in the case
of a criminal acquitted through bribery and then impeached a second
time, the accuser were to define prevarication to be the utter
corruption of a tribunal by an accused person; and the defender were
to urge a counter definition, that it is not every sort of corruption
which is prevarication, but only the bribing of a prosecutor by a
defendant: then, in the first place, there would be a contest between
the different alleged meanings of the word; in which case, though
the definition, if given by the speaker for the defence, approaches
nea