e can be admitted as a proof of facts.

It is first to be inquired, my lords, whether the reports of fame are
necessarily or even probably true? A question very intricate and
diffusive, entangled with a thousand, and involving a thousand,
distinctions; a question of which it may be said, that a man may very
plausibly maintain either side, and of which, perhaps, after months or
years wasted in disputation, no other decision can be obtained than what
is obvious at the first view, that they are often true, and often false,
and, therefore, can only be grounds of inquiry, not reasons of
determination.

But if it appear, my lords, that this oracle cannot be deceived, we are
then to inquire after another difficulty, we are to inquire, _What is
fame?_

Is fame, my lords, that fame which cannot err? a report that flies, on a
sudden, through a nation, of which no man can discover the original; a
sudden blast of rumour, that inflames or intimidates a people, and
obtains, without authority, a general credit? No man versed in history
can inquire whether such reports may not deceive. Is fame rather a
settled opinion, prevailing by degrees, and for some time established?
How long, then, my lords, and in what degree must it have been
established, to obtain undoubted credit, and when does it commence
infallible? If the people are divided in their opinions, as in all
publick questions it has hitherto happened, fame is, I suppose, the
voice of the majority; for, if the two parties are equal in their
numbers, fame will be equal; then how great must be the majority before
it can lay claim to this powerful auxiliary? and how shall that majority
be numbered?

These questions, my lords, may be thought, perhaps with justice, too
ludicrous in this place, but, in my opinion, they contribute to show the
precarious and uncertain nature of the evidence so much confided in.

Common fame, my lords, is to every man only what he himself commonly
hears; and it is in the power of any man's acquaintance to vitiate the
evidence which they report, and to stun him with clamours, and terrify
him with apprehensions of miseries never felt, and dangers invisible.
But, without such a combination, we are to remember, that most men
associate with those of their own opinions, and that the rank of those
that compose this assembly naturally disposes such as are admitted to
their company, to relate, or to invent, such reports as may be
favourably received, so that