cover us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close; and in that scene of inconceivable solemnity, which lies yet farther onward, we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of duty, to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to perform it.

ARGUMENT OF MR. WEBSTER

IN THE GOODRIDGE CASE

THIS argument was addressed to a jury in April, 1817, on the occasion of the trial of Levi and Laban Kenniston, in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, held at Ipswich, in the county of Essex, for an alleged assault and robbery by Levi and Laban, on the person of Major Elijah Putnam Goodridge, of Bangor, Maine.

It was true (Mr. Webster said) that the offence charged was not capital; but perhaps this could hardly be considered as favorable to the defendants. To those who are guilty, and without hope of escape, no doubt the lightness of the penalty of transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants were innocent, it was more natural for them to be thinking upon what they had lost, by that alteration of the law which had left highway robbery no longer capital, than upon what the guilty might gain by it. They had lost those great privileges, in their trial, which the law allows, in capital cases, for the protection of innocence against unfounded accusation. They have lost the right of being previously furnished with a copy of the indictment, and a list of the Government's witnesses. They have lost the right of peremptory challenge; and, notwithstanding the prejudices which they know have been excited against them, they must show legal cause of challenge, in each individual

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call, or else take the jury as they find it. They have lost the benefit of the assignment of counsel by the court. They have lost the benefit of the Commonwealth's process to bring in witnesses in their behalf. When to these circumstances it was added that they were strangers, in a great degree without friends, and without the means for preparing their defence, it was evident they must take their trial under great disadvantages.

Mr. Webster then called the attention of the jury to those circumstances which he thought could not but cast doubts on the story of the prosecutor.

In the first place, it was impossible to believe a robbery of this sort to have been committed by three or four men without previous arrangement and concert, and of course. without the knowledge of the fact that Goodridge would be there, and that he had money. They did not go on the highway, in such a place, in a cold December's night, for the general purpose of attacking the first passenger, running the chance of his being somebody who had money. It was not easy to believe that a gang of robbers existed, that they acted systematically, communicating intelligence to one another, and meeting and dispersing as occasion required, and that this gang had their head-quarters in such a place as Newburyport. No town is more distinguished for the correctness of the general habits of its citizens; and it is of such a size that every man in it may be known to all the rest. The pursuits, occupations, and habits of every person within it are within the observation of his neighbors. A suspicious stranger would be instantly ob served, and all his movements could be easily traced. This is not the place to be the general rendezvous of a gang of robbers. Offenders of this sort hang on the skirts of great cities. From the commission of their crimes they hasten into the crowd, and hide themselves in the populousness of

great cities. If it were wholly improbable that a gang existed in such a place for the purpose of general plunder, the next inquiry was, Was there any reason to think that there had been a special or particular combination, for the single purpose of robbing the prosecutor? Now, it was material to observe, that not only was there no evidence of any such combination, but also that circumstances did exist which rendered it next to impossible that the defendants could have been parties to such a combination, or even that they could have any knowledge of the existence of any such man as Goodridge, or that any person, with money, was expected to come from the eastward, and to be near Essex bridge, at or about nine o'clock that evening.

One of the defendants had been for some weeks in Newburyport-the other passed the bridge from New Hampshire, at twelve o'clock, on the 19th. At this time, Goodridge had not yet arrived at Exeter, twelve or fourteen miles from the bridge. How, then, could either of the defendants know that he was coming? Besides, he says that nobody knew, on the road, that he had money, as far as he knows, and nothing happened till he reached Exeter, according to his account, from which it might be conjectured that he carried money. Here, as he relates it, it became known that he had pistols; and he must wish you to infer, that the plan to rob him was laid here, at Exeter, by some of the persons who inferred that he had money from his being armed. Who were these persons? Certainly not the defendants, or either of them. Certainly not Taber. Certainly not Jackman. Were they persons of suspicious character? Was he in a house of a suspicious character? On this point he gives us no information. He has either not taken the pains to inquire, or he chooses not to communicate the result of his inquiries. Yet nothing could be more important, since he

seems compelled to lay the scene of the plot against him at Exeter, than to know who the persons were that ne saw, or that saw him, at that place. On the face of the facts now proved, nothing could be more improbable than that the plan of robbery was concerted at Exeter. If so, why should those who concerted send forward to Newburyport to engage the defendants, especially as they did not know that they were there? What should induce any persons so suddenly to apply to the defendants to assist in a robbery? There was nothing in their personal character or previous history that should induce this.

Nor was there time for all this. If the prosecutor had not lingered on the road, for reasons not yet discovered, he must have been in Newburyport long before the time at which he states the robbery to have been committed. How, then, could any one expect to leave Exeter, come to Newburyport, fifteen miles, there look out for and find out assistants for a highway robbery, and get back two miles to a convenient place for the commission of the crime? That anybody should have undertaken to act thus, was wholly improbable; and in point of fact there is not the least proof of anybody's travelling, that afternoon, from Exeter to Newburyport, or of any person who was at the tavern at Exeter having left it that afternoon. In all probability, nothing of this sort could have taken place without being capable of detection and proof. In every particular the prosecutor has wholly failed to show the least probability of a plan to rob him having been laid at Exeter.

But how comes it, that Goodridge was near or quite four hours and a half in travelling a distance which might have been travelled in two hours or two hours and a half? He says he missed his way, and went the Salisbury road. But some of the jury know, that this could not have