We are convinced by a speaker's good character when their speech makes us trust them. We believe good people more easily and completely than others, especially when there's no definite answer and opinions are split.
For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in... ...
