Angela Jong

APE Period 7
Argumentative Essay pg. 58

PROMPT: Write essay support, refute, qualify Spencer’s assertion that the House of Commons acted
foolishly in denying the water rights

In the “Collective Wisdom”, Herbert Spencer, vehemently refutes several of House of

Common’s reasons to oppose the Cheltenham Water Bill. Although he makes very good points
concerning the logical fallacies that the House of Commons based their decision on, Spencer fails to
fully convince the logic of his position because of his evident subjectivity and own use of rhetorical
fallacies.
Beginning with the example of the misleading Times article, Spencer shows how the
magazine uses the term “millions” to scare the public into believing that they are losing a large water
supply. Because the public is unaware of the relatively small amount that a 1 million gallons of
water is, the public becomes a force in which blindly rally for something with misinformation. They
are also left with a false image of a noble river being drained away by greedy corporations,
furthering leading to the demise of the Water bill. However Herbert Spencer disproves these falsities
by displaying how 1 million gallons of water is really 56 ft cube room, thus showing the bad
imagery the overbearing term ‘1 million’ brings. Additionally, Spencer includes the fact that the
Great Thames “discharges in 24 hours, eight hundred that amount”. At this point, Spencer logically
proves that the water lost would be nominal and quickly replaced.
Spencer continues on to exposes another logical fallacy that passing the Cheltenham Water
Bill would “rob the towns along the banks of Thames of their rights”. This slippery slope argument
blows up the issue of losing a few gallons of water to forfeiting rights. Without any real correlation,
this claim is poorly supported and can be easily refuted. First off, the river was never the property of
one person and thus cannot be claimed necessary for the enjoyment of their rights. Secondly, proven
since that the water lost would be replaced eight hundred times that amount within 24 hours, it
cannot be logically argued that the water lost would be harmful to the villagers subsistence.
With these clear refutations, Spencer draws compelling evidence to agree with him. However
it is with his description of the Thames Navigation Commissioners that he loses credibility. After
effectively proving the foolishness of the opposition’s fallacies, he himself employs a straw man
argument in which he oversimplifies the responses against the Water Bill. He simply says that the
House of Commons fear passing the Water Bill in fear of more homes being built at the cost of the
great Thames River. Spencer makes the mistake to merely include a quote from the delegate’s
speech to represent his whole position without including the opposition’s reasoning or facts. By
merely using a sentence to summarize the total extent of the opposite argument, Spencer leaves the
reader with a sense of inadequateness and raises question to the extent of his own accuracy of his
facts. Additionally Spencer makes an unwarranted claim that the 12 gallons/second being lost would
not prove harmful, but fails to explain how so or why. Consequently, Spencer casts doubt to his
effective rebuttals earlier in the essay and his own use of unwarranted claims to refute oversimplified
arguments does not aid his position.
Spencer’s logical procession to refute the Times article and the slippery slope argument of
losing rights equivalent to passing the Water Bill was very persuasive because of his clearly thought
out use of numbers and logic. However, when he resorts to a straw man argument and unsupported
claims, Spencer emits a dogmatic tone and evokes doubts about the extent of his truthfulness. If
Spencer had continued to rely on logic and withdrew some of his blatant subjectivity towards the
end, his stance would have been much more convincing.