Ignoring the Question
The same kind of flimsy mental process results in ignoring the question. Instead of sticking closely to the proposition to be proved the speaker argues beside the point, proving not the entire proposition but merely a portion of it. Or in some manner he may shift his ground and emerge, having proven the wrong point or something he did not start out to consider.
An amateur theatrical producer whose playhouse had been closed by the police for violating the terms of his license started out to defend his action, but ended by proving that all men are equal. In fact he wound up by quoting the poem by Burns, "A Man's a Man for A' That." Such a shifting of propositions is a frequent error of speakers. It occurs so often that one might be disposed to term it a mere trick to deceive, or a clever though unscrupulous device to secure support for a weak claim.
One of the first ways for the speaker to avoid it is to be able to recognize it when it occurs. One of the most quoted instances of its effective unmasking is the following by Macaulay.
The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues! Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood!
We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation.