A Guide to the
Conclusion Section of Your Speech

THE CONCLUSION
OR PERORATION OF YOUR SPEECH

This is the summing up, or culmination, of all that has gone before, and should be marked by great earnestness. It is the most vital part of a speech, the supreme moment when the speaker is to drive his message home and make his most lasting impression. This calls for the very best that is in a man. The style of conclusion may vary according to circumstances, but generally it should be short, simple and earnest.

The customary method is to recapitulate or summarize what has been said, in order to impress it vividly upon the mind of the audience. While an abrupt ending may ruin an otherwise successful effort, the temptation to make the closing appeal too long should be carefully avoided. Whether the speech be memorized throughout or not, the speaker should know specifically the thought, if not the phraseology, with which he intends to end his address.

The following conclusions of well-known speeches should be studied and practised aloud:

1. Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you rise in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies and the verdant fields of New England . We greet your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of national existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of everlasting truth!

" Plymouth Oration." WEBSTER.

2. Go home, if you dare,-go home, if you can, to your constituents and tell them that you voted it down! Meet, if you dare, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments; that, you can not tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, affrighted you; that the specters of cimeters, and crowns and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity! I cannot bring myself to believe that such will be the feeling of a majority of this House.

"Duty of America to Greece ." HENRY CLAY.

3. I might, as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call upon you by the laws of the land, and their violation; by the instruction of eighteen centuries; by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present movement-tell us the rule by which we shall go; assert the law of Ireland ; declare the liberty of the land! I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; nor, speaking for the subject's freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be to break your chains and contemplate your glory. I never shall be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked; he shall not be in irons.

And I do see the time at hand; the spirit has gone forth; the declaration of right is planted, and tho great men should fall off, the cause will live; and tho he who utters this should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ that conveys it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet, but survive him.

"Declaration of Irish Bight." GRATTAN.