to be confiscated, to make good the public losses.

During all this time the public excitement was extreme. We learn,
front 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, ineluding 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