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 as 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 the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defense 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.[53]

In an argument for woman suffrage on the ground that suffrage is a right which ought not to be denied, it would be ignoring the question merely to enumerate the various ways in which the responsibility of a vote might help to better the condition of women.

To ignore the question by trying to lead the public off on a false scent is a constant device of officials who are accused of misconduct.  A United States senator whose election had been questioned gave in his defense a full and harrowing account of the struggles of his boyhood.  A board of assessors who had been charged with incompetence ended their defense, in which they had taken no notice of the charges, as follows: 

Criticism of the Board of Assessors comes with poor grace from those whose endeavors for the common good are confined to academic essays on good government.  It savors too much of the adroit pickpocket, who, finding himself hard pressed, joins in the chase, shouting as lustily as any of the unthinking rabble, “Stop, thief!”

The curious thing is that this trick of crossing the scent does lead so many people off the trail.

The so-called argumentum ad hominem and the argumentum ad populum are special cases of ignoring the question:  they consist of appeals to the feelings or special interests of the reader or the audience which run away from the question at issue.  They are not uncommon in stump speeches, and in other arguments whose chief purpose is to arouse enthusiasm.