The duke of ARGYLE spoke next, as follows:--My lords, if we will obstinately shut our eyes against the light of conviction; if we will resolutely admit every degree of evidence that contributes to support the cause which we are inclined to favour, and to reject the plainest proofs when they are produced against it, to reason and debate is to little purpose: as no innocence can be safe that has incurred the displeasure of partial judges, so no criminal that has the happiness of being favoured by them, can ever be in danger. That any lord has already determined how to vote on the present occasion, far be it from me to assert: may it never, my lords, be suspected that private interest, blind adherence to a party, personal kindness or malevolence, or any other motive than a sincere and unmingled regard for the prosperity of our country, influences the decisions of this assembly; for it is well known, my lords, that authority is founded on opinion; when once we lose the esteem of the publick, our votes, while we shall be allowed to give them, will be only empty sounds, to which no other regard will be paid than a standing army shall enforce. The veneration of the people, my lords, will not easily be lost: this house has a kind of hereditary claim to their confidence and respect; the great actions of our ancestors are remembered, and contribute to the reputation of their successours; nor do our countrymen willingly suspect that they can be betrayed by the descendants of those, by whose bravery and counsels they have been rescued from destruction. But esteem must languish, and confidence decline, unless they are renewed and reanimated by new acts of beneficence; and the higher expectations the nation may have formed of our penetration to discover its real advantages, and of our steadiness to pursue them, the more violent will be its resentment, if it shall appear, on this important question, that we are either ignorant or timorous, that we are unconcerned at the miseries of the people, or content ourselves with pitying what our ancestors never failed to redress. Let us, therefore, my lords, for our own interest, attend impartially to the voice of the people; let us hear their complaints with tenderness, and if, at last, we reject them, let it be evident that they were impartially heard, and that we only differed from them because we were not convinced. Even then, my lords, we shall suffer, for some time, under the suspicion of crimes, from which I hope we shall always be free; the people will imagine that we were influenced by those whose interest it appears to continue their miseries, and, my lords, all the consolation that will be left us, must arise from the consciousness of having done our duty.