Select Speeches of Daniel Webster | Page 5

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 he saw, or who 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 it 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 any body should have undertaken to
act thus is wholly improbable; and, in point of fact, there is not the least
proof of any body'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
delayed him more than five or ten minutes. He ought to be able to give
some better account of this delay.
Failing, as he seems to do, to create any belief that a plan to rob him
was arranged at Exeter, the prosecutor goes back to Alfred, and says he
saw there a man whom Taber resembles. But Taber is proved to have
been at that time, and at the time of the robbery, in Boston. This is
proved beyond question. It is so certain, that the Solicitor-General has
nol prossed the indictment against him.
There is an end, then, of all pretence of the adoption of a scheme of
robbery at Alfred. This leaves the prosecutor altogether unable to point
out any manner in which it should become known that he had money,

or in which a design to rob him should originate.
It is next to be considered whether the prosecutor's story is either
natural or consistent. But, on the threshold of the inquiry, every one
puts the question, What motive had the prosecutor to be guilty of the
abominable conduct of feigning a robbery? It is difficult to assign
motives. The jury do not know enough of his character or
circumstances. Such things have happened, and may happen again.
Suppose he owed money in Boston, and had it not to pay? Who knows
how high he might estimate the value of a plausible apology? Some
men have also a whimsical ambition of distinction. There is no end to
the variety of modes in which human vanity exhibits itself. A story of
this nature excites the public sympathy. It attracts general attention. It
causes the name of the prosecutor to be celebrated as a man who has
been attacked, and, after a manly resistance, overcome by robbers, and
who has renewed his resistance as soon as returning life and sensation
enabled him, and, after a second conflict, has been quite subdued,
beaten and bruised out of all sense and sensation, and finally left for
dead on the field. It is not easy to say how far such motives, trifling and
ridiculous as most men would think them, might influence the
prosecutor, when connected with any expectation of favor or
indulgence, if he wanted such, from his creditors. It is to be
remembered that he probably did not see all the consequences of his
conduct, if his robbery be a pretence. He might not intend to prosecute
any body. But he probably found, and indeed there is evidence to show,
that it was necessary for him to do something to find out the