1819 Aug. 18 Note

Fallacies 4 Ch. 2 Question-beggars

Note

An instrument of no small usefulness to the purposes /advancement/ of morality, public and private, would be a Table of appellatives in which under the two heads eulogistic and dyslogistic, added to the corresponding head neutral, all those words which in this way are liable to be converted into /used as/ instruments of fallacy should be ranged.

I hereby venture to /the amusement to/ recommend it to any one of those, who to the love of mankind, or the desire of obtaining /earning/ the reputation of it, add to a sufficient relish for such a task the requisite leisure. Not only in the scale of importance /utility/, but in the scale of difficulty, how much higher would such an exercise stand than those dictionaries of synonymies indiscriminately taken, which however are by no means without their difficulty any more than without their use.

For the due composition of such a work, logical acumen, in no inconsiderable quantity, may be found necessary.

In some instances, correspondent to the eulogistic or dyslogistic appellative, it may turn out that the language does not at present furnish any word that continues to preserve its neutral sense. This may perhaps be found to be the case with the abovementioned words adduced as examples of eulogistic appellatives: namely honour and glory, dignity and liberality. In the case of howsoever liberality though when the act is exercised at the expence of the public the term depredation[?] may with strict propriety be applied to that same act, yet the two terms the one eulogistic the other dyslogistic can not with propriety be stated as synonymous: and so in the case /instance/ of dignity national dignity if on this occasion, as is so naturally and

frequently

frequently the case, it should turn out that an /the/ act which had been termed an act /expression/ of national dignity was really an expression of official and diplomatic insolence, having for its object the plunging the nation into a needless and groundless war for the profit of those who looked to have the conduct of it.