“I cannot here omit taking notice of the unhappy cause of this fatal effect, now under your consideration. Every one here present will, in his own thoughts, anticipate my words and know I mean smuggling. Smuggling is not only highly injurious to trade, a violation of the laws, and the disturber of the peace and quiet of all the maritime counties in the kingdom; but it is a nursery for all sorts of vice and wickedness; a temptation to commit offences at first unthought of; an encouragement to perpetrate the blackest of crimes without provocation or remorse; and is in general productive of cruelty, robbery and murder.
“It is greatly to be wished, both for the sake of the smugglers themselves and for the peace of this county, that the dangerous and armed manner now used of running uncustomed goods was less known and less practised here.
“It is a melancholy consideration to observe, that the best and wisest measures of Government, calculated to put a stop to this growing mischief, have been perverted and abused to the worst of purposes. And what was intended to be a cure to this disorder has been made the means to increase and heighten the disease.
“Every expedient of lenity and mercy was at first made use of to reclaim this abandoned set of men. His Majesty, by repeated proclamations of pardon, invited them to their duty and to their own safety. But instead of laying hold of so gracious an offer, they have set the laws at defiance, have made the execution of justice dangerous in the hands of magistracy, and have become almost a terror to Government itself.
“The number of prisoners at the bar, and of others involved in the suspicion of the same guilt, the variety of circumstances attending this whole transaction, the length of time in the completion thereof, and the general expectation of mankind to be informed of every minute circumstance leading and tending to finish the scene of horror, will necessarily lay me under an obligation of taking up more time than will be either agreeable to the court or to myself.
“To avoid confusion in stating such a variety of facts with the evidence and proofs thereof, and to fix and guide the attention of the gentlemen of the jury to the several particular parts of this bloody tragedy, at last completed in the murder of Chater, I shall divide the facts into four distinct periods of time.
“1st. What happened precedent to Chater’s coming to a public-house, the sign of the White Hart, at Rowland’s Castle in Hampshire, kept by Elizabeth Payne, widow, upon Sunday, the 4th of February, 1747–8.
“And this period of time will take in the occasion and grounds of the prisoners’ wicked malice to the deceased and the cause and motive of his murder.
“2nd. What happened after Chater’s arrival at the widow Paine’s, to the time of his being carried away from thence by some of the prisoners to the house of Richard Mills the elder, at Trotton in Sussex.