A wise practice is followed in courts of law. No judge pronounces an opinion on a hypothetical case. What he would do? or what would be the judgment of the law, suppose a certain case should arise?--are questions he never condescends to answer. 'Bring the plaintiff into court, let the evidence be taken, and then we will decide. We sit here to judge actual, not suppositious cases.' Such would be the reply. People out of court might profit by the example. I remember one striking instance of the pernicious effects of surmise. Some years ago I took part in a Fraternal Demonstration at Highbury Barn. The assembly was numerous, and composed of persons of all nations and all parties. The celebration was avowedly one of fraternity. The tone of the meeting reflected its object. Pacific words were on every tongue, and harmony reigned up till eleven o'clock. At that hour Monsieur Chillman asked me if some steps could not be taken to annualize the meeting, and he requested me to prepare and propose a resolution to that effect. Monsieur Chillman, thinking the resolution ought to come from an Englishman, strongly urged me to move it. I, thinking it too important to emanate from a young man, looked about for a person of experience and known discretion to introduce it. After several had declined, Mr. Hetherington undertook it. The English politicians were composed of two parties, the friends of Mr. O'Connor, and the members of the National Hall. At that time they were pleased to be the antipodes of each other. No sooner had Mr. Hetherington spoken, he being the friend of Mr. Lovett, than his motion was supposed to come from Mr. Lovett's party, though they were utterly ignorant of its origination. Clamour's hundred tongues were loosened. Slumbering differences were awakened. Suspicion spread like an infection. Fraternity perished of the contagion. Twenty amendments were proposed, and it was not till midnight, and then in a storm indescribably contradictory of the meeting's whole purport, that a common understanding was come to. Had the least inquiry been made by the objecting party, previously to dissenting, they would have found that the suspicious proposition originated with one of themselves. But assuming premises, they inferred from conjecture instead of fact, and raised disastrous doubts as to the ability of that assembly for domestic or international fraternisation.