of the
offenders. Lord Stanhope said, that every farthing possessed by the
criminals, whether directors or not directors, ought to be confiscated, to
make good the public losses.

During all this time the public excitement was extreme. We learn from
Coxe's _Walpole_, that the very name of a South-Sea director was thought
to be synonymous with every species of fraud and villany. Petitions from
counties, cities, and boroughs, in all parts of the kingdom, were
presented, crying for the justice due to an injured nation and the
punishment of the villanous peculators. Those moderate men, who would not
go to extreme lengths, even in the punishment of the guilty, were accused
of being accomplices, were exposed to repeated insults and virulent
invectives, and devoted, both in anonymous letters and public writings, to
the speedy vengeance of an injured people. The accusations against Mr.
Aislabie, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Craggs, another member of
the ministry, were so loud, that the House of Lords resolved to proceed at
once into the investigation concerning them. It was ordered, on the 21st
of January, that all brokers concerned in the South-Sea scheme should lay
before the House an account of the stock or subscriptions bought or sold
by them for any of the officers of the Treasury or Exchequer, or in trust
for any of them, since Michaelmas 1719. When this account was delivered,
it appeared that large quantities of stock had been transferred to the use
of Mr. Aislabie. Five of the South-Sea directors, including Mr. Edward
Gibbon, the grandfather of the celebrated historian, were ordered into the
custody of the black rod. Upon a motion made by Earl Stanhope, it was
unanimously resolved, that the taking in or giving credit for stock
without a valuable consideration actually paid or sufficiently secured; or
the purchasing stock by any director or agent of the South-Sea company,
for the use or benefit of any member of the administration, or any member
of either House of Parliament, during such time as the South-Sea bill was
yet pending in parliament, was a notorious and dangerous corruption.
Another resolution was passed a few days afterwards, to the effect that
several of the directors and officers of the company having, in a
clandestine manner, sold their own stock to the company, had been guilty
of a notorious fraud and breach of trust, and had thereby mainly caused
the unhappy turn of affairs that had so much affecte