[The question was then put, and determined in the negative, by 90 against 35.]

After the conclusion of this long debate, the ministry did not yet think their victory in repelling this censure sufficiently apparent, unless a motion was admitted, which might imply a full and unlimited approbation of their measures; and therefore the earl of SCARBOROUGH rose, and spoke to the following effect:—­My lords, it has been justly observed in the debate of this day, that the opinions of the people of Britain are regulated in a great measure by the determinations of this house; that they consider this as the place where truth and reason obtain a candid audience; as a place sacred to justice and to honour; into which, passion, partiality, and faction have been very rarely known to intrude; and that they, therefore, watch our decisions as the great rules of policy, and standing maxims of right, and readily believe these measures necessary in which we concur, and that conduct unblameable which has gained our approbation.

This reputation, my lords, we ought diligently to preserve, by an unwearied vigilance for the happiness of our fellow-subjects; and while we possess it, we ought likewise to employ its influence to beneficial purposes, that the cause and the effect may reciprocally produce each other; that the people, when the prosperity which they enjoy by our care, inclines them to repose in us an implicit confidence, may find that confidence a new source of felicity; that they may reverence us, because they are secure and happy; and be secure and happy, because they reverence us.

This great end, my lords, it will not be very difficult to attain; the foundation of this exalted authority may easily be laid, and the superstructure raised in a short time; the one may be laid too deep to be undermined, and the other built too firmly to be shaken; at least they can be impaired only by ourselves, and may set all external violence at defiance.

To preserve the confidence of the people, and, consequently, to govern them without force, and without opposition, it is only necessary that we never willingly deceive them; that we expose the publick affairs to their view, so far as they ought to be made publick in their true state; that we never suffer false reports to circulate under the sanction of our authority, nor give the nation reason to think we are satisfied, when we are, in reality, suspicious of illegal designs, or that we suspect those measures of latent mischiefs with which we are, in reality, completely satisfied.

But it is not sufficient, my lords, that we publish ourselves no fallacious representations of our counsels; it is necessary, likewise, that we do not permit them to be published, that we obviate every falsehood in its rise, and propagate truth with our utmost diligence.  For if we suffer the nation to be deceived, we are not much less criminal than those who deceive it; at least we must be confessed no longer to act as the guardians of the publick happiness, if we suffer it to be interrupted by the dispersion of reports which we know to be at once false and pernicious.