Our supreme governors, the mob.

Walpole’s phrase is a sardonic inversion of constitutional language: instead of king, parliament, or law being “supreme,” he names “the mob” as the real power. The line captures an aristocratic anxiety that public opinion and crowd action can overawe formal institutions, forcing leaders to govern by fear of popular tumult rather than by principle. Read this way, the quote is less a democratic celebration than a warning about volatility—how collective passion, rumor, and sudden enthusiasm can become a de facto sovereign. It also reflects Walpole’s broader habit of political irony, using compressed wit to expose what he saw as the practical realities behind official rhetoric.