e 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.

Of these principles, which I suppose will not be contested, an easy
application may be made to the business of the present day. A question
has been debated with great address, great ardour, and great
obstinacy, which is in itself, though not doubtful, yet very much
diffused; complicated with a great number of circumstances, and
extended to a multitude of relations; and is, therefore, a subject
upon which sophistry may very safely practise her arts, and which may
be shown in very different views to those whose intellectual light is
too much contracted to receive the whole object at once. It may easily
be asserted, by those who have long been accustomed to affirm, without
scruple, whatever they desire to obtain belief, that the arguments in
favour of the motion, which has now been rejected by your lordships,
were unanswerable; and it will be no hard tas