Complaint is made that rewards were offered, in this case, and temptations held out to obtain testimony.  Are not rewards always offered, when great and secret offences are committed?  Rewards were offered in the case to which I have alluded; and every other means taken to discover the offenders, that ingenuity or the most persevering vigilance could suggest.  The learned counsel have suffered their zeal to lead them into a strain of complaint at the manner in which the perpetrators of this crime were detected, almost indicating that they regard it as a positive injury to them to have found out their guilt.  Since no man witnessed it, since they do not now confess it, attempts to discover it are half esteemed as officious intermeddling and impertinent inquiry.

It is said, that here even a Committee of Vigilance was appointed.  This is a subject of reiterated remark.  This committee are pointed at, as though they had been officiously intermeddling with the administration of justice.  They are said to have been “laboring for months” against the prisoner.  Gentlemen, what must we do in such a case?  Are people to be dumb and still, through fear of overdoing?  Is it come to this, that an effort cannot be made, a hand cannot be lifted, to discover the guilty, without its being said there is a combination to overwhelm innocence?  Has the community lost all moral sense?  Certainly, a community that would not be roused to action upon an occasion such as this was, a community which should not deny sleep to their eyes, and slumber to their eyelids, till they had exhausted all the means of discovery and detection, must indeed be lost to all moral sense, and would scarcely deserve protection from the laws.  The learned counsel have endeavored to persuade you, that there exists a prejudice against the persons accused of this murder.  They would have you understand that it is not confined to this vicinity alone; but that even the legislature have caught this spirit.  That through the procurement of the gentleman here styled private prosecutor, who is a member of the Senate, a special session of this court was appointed for the trial of these offenders.  That the ordinary movements of the wheels of justice were too slow for the purposes devised.  But does not everybody see and know, that it was matter of absolute necessity to have a special session of the court?  When or how could the prisoners have been tried without a special session?  In the ordinary arrangement of the courts, but one week in a year is allotted for the whole court to sit in this county.  In the trial of all capital offences a majority of the court, at least, is required to be present.  In the trial of the present case alone, three weeks have already been taken up.  Without such special session, then, three years would not have been sufficient for the purpose.  It is answer sufficient to all complaints on this subject to say, that the law was drawn by the late Chief Justice himself,[1] to enable the court to accomplish its duties, and to afford the persons accused an opportunity for trial without delay.