Select Speeches of Daniel Webster | Page 4

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 are innocent, it is
more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by that
alteration of the law which has left highway robbery no longer capital,
than upon what the guilty might gain by it. They have 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 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 case, or else take the jury as they find it.
They have lost the benefit of 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 is added that
they are strangers, almost wholly without friends, and without the
means for preparing their defence, it is evident they must take their trial
under great disadvantages.
But without dwelling on these considerations, I proceed, Gentlemen of
the Jury, to ask your attention to those circumstances which cannot but
cast doubts on the story of the prosecutor.
In the first place, it is impossible to believe that a robbery of this sort
could 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 is 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 general

correctness of the 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 observed, 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 large towns. From the commission of their crimes they
hasten into the crowd, and hide themselves in the populousness of great
cities. If it be wholly improbable that a gang existed in such a place for
the purpose of general plunder, the next inquiry is, Is there any reason
to think that there was a special or particular combination, for the
single purpose of robbing the prosecutor? Now it is material to observe,
that not only is there no evidence of any such combination, but also,
that circumstances existed which render 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, the
evening when the robbery is said to have been committed.
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 of December, 1816. 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, as far as he is aware, knew on the road that he had money,
and nothing happened till he reached Exeter, according to his account,
from which it might be conjectured that such was the case. 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 characters? Was he in a house of a suspicious character? On
this point he gives us