About half-past ten a person is seen sitting on the rope-walk steps, wrapped in a cloak.  He drops his head when passed, to avoid being known.  Shortly after, two persons are seen to meet in this street, without ceremony or salutation, and in a hurried manner to converse for a short time; then to separate, and run off with great speed.  Now, on this same night a gentleman is slain, murdered in his bed, his house being entered by stealth from without; and his house situated within three hundred feet of this street.  The windows of his chamber were in plain sight from this street; a weapon of death is afterwards found in a place where these persons were seen to pass, in a retired place, around which they had been seen lingering.  It is now known that this murder was committed by four persons, conspiring together for this purpose.  No account is given who these suspected persons thus seen in Brown Street and its neighborhood were.  Now, I ask, Gentlemen, whether you or any man can doubt that this murder was committed by the persons who were thus in and about Brown Street.  Can any person doubt that they were there for purposes connected with this murder?  If not for this purpose, what were they there for?  When there is a cause so near at hand, why wander into conjecture for an explanation?  Common-sense requires you to take the nearest adequate cause for a known effect.  Who were these suspicious persons in Brown Street?  There was something extraordinary about them; something noticeable, and noticed at the time; something in their appearance that aroused suspicion.  And a man is found the next morning murdered in the near vicinity.

Now, so long as no other account shall be given of those suspicious persons, so long the inference must remain irresistible that they were the murderers.  Let it be remembered, that it is already shown that this murder was the result of conspiracy and of concert; let it be remembered, that the house, having been opened from within, was entered by stealth from without.  Let it be remembered that Brown Street, where these persons were repeatedly seen under such suspicious circumstances, was a place from which every occupied room in Mr. White’s house is clearly seen; let it be remembered, that the place, though thus very near to Mr. White’s house, is a retired and lonely place; and let it be remembered that the instrument of death was afterwards found concealed very near the same spot.

Must not every man come to the conclusion, that these persons thus seen in Brown Street were the murderers?  Every man’s own judgment, I think, must satisfy him that this must be so.  It is a plain deduction of common sense.  It is a point on which each one of you may reason like a Hale or a Mansfield.  The two occurrences explain each other.  The murder shows why these persons were thus lurking, at that hour, in Brown Street; and their lurking in Brown Street shows who committed the murder.

If, then, the persons in and about Brown Street were the plotters and executers of the murder of Captain White, we know who they were, and you know that there is one of them.