of the case in which your most important
duty is to be discharged, as it respects the individuals who are the
object of this indictment, and the public, whose interests are to be
protected by the justice you are called upon to administer.

This is an indictment for an offence of great malignity and mischief; it
is for the offence of conspiracy, which is charged to have been
committed by the eight persons whose names are upon this indictment; and
it is for you to consider upon the statement of the evidence I shall
make to you, how far that offence is brought home to all or any of these
Defendants.

The offence of conspiracy, gentlemen, is an offence consisting in a
wicked concert, contrivance, and combination of individuals, to effect
some public or private injury or mischief; that contrivance and that
combination is not to be collected, nor is it practicable, in the course
of human affairs, to collect it from the mouths of the parties assembled
for the purpose of communication, but from the actings and conduct of
the several parties as they may appear generally, to conspire and
conduce to the same wicked end and purpose; and if it appears to you,
from the actings and conduct of these parties, that they entertained the
same common purpose of mischief, and that they have by their several
actings combined and co-operated to the effecting that same wicked
purpose, that is sufficient to bring home the imputation of the crime
charged against the parties; therefore the prosecutor need not shew that
they have met in common council, or even that they have seen one another
before, if their acting shews they were influenced by one common purpose
of mischief, and aimed at the production of the same malignant end and
effect. Suppose persons jointly charged in an indictment with the
breaking of an house, are found on different sides of the same house,
besetting and endeavouring to enter it at the same time; you need not
shew that they had actually met, and previously contrived the plan of
this joint robbery; the unity of their conduct proves their joint
contrivance and concert to accomplish the same end; though, indeed, this
is a case where personal presence at the acts done, renders all
intendment of the personal concert of the actors unnecessary. The same
rules which apply to the offence of conspiracy as a misdemeanor, apply
equally to all crimes committed by concert up to the crime of high
treason, which is often established by e