be hoped, unless the motion I shall now take leave to make your lordships, be complied with:  and I move, “That an humble address be presented to his majesty, most humbly to advise and beseech his majesty, that he will be most graciously pleased to remove the right honourable sir Robert WALPOLE, knight of the most noble order of the blue riband, first commissioner of his majesty’s treasury, and chancellor of the exchequer, and one of his majesty’s most honourable privy council, from his majesty’s presence and councils for ever.”

He was seconded by lord ABINGDON in the following manner:—­My lords, the copiousness and perspicuity with which the noble lord has laid down the reasons of his motion, make it neither easy nor necessary to enlarge upon them.  I shall, therefore, only offer to your lordships a few thoughts upon the authority of common fame, as the evidence upon which the motion is in part founded.

That all the miscarriages of our late measures are by common fame imputed to one man, I suppose, will not be denied; nor can it, in my opinion, be reasonably required, that in the present circumstances of things any other proof should be brought against him.

Common fame, my lords, is admitted in courts of law as a kind of auxiliary or supplemental evidence, and is allowed to corroborate the cause which it appears to favour.  The general regard which every wise man has for his character, is a proof that in the estimation of all mankind, the testimony of common fame is of too great importance to be disregarded.

If we consider the nature of popular opinions on publick affairs, it will be difficult to imagine by what means a persuasion not founded on truth should universally take possession of a people; it will be yet more difficult to believe that it should preserve its empire, and that in opposition to every art that can be made use of to undeceive them, they should pertinaciously adhere to an errour not imbibed in their education, nor connected with their interest.  And how has any man been originally prejudiced against the present minister?  Or what passion or interest can any man gratify, by imagining or declaring his country on the verge of ruin?  The multitude, my lords, censure and praise without dissimulation, nor were ever accused of disguising their sentiments; their voice is, at least, the voice of honesty, and has been termed the voice of heaven, by that party of which those affect to be thought whom it now condemns.

Let it not be urged, that the people are easily deceived, that they think and speak merely by caprice, and applaud or condemn without any calm inquiry or settled determination; these censures are applicable only to sudden tumults, and gusts of zeal excited by fallacious appearances, or by the alarms of a false report industriously disseminated, but have no relation to opinions gradually propagated, and slowly received.