There is no occasion for the magistrate to read the riot act.  In the case before you, I suppose you will be satisfied when you come to examine the witnesses and compare it with the rules of the common law, abstracted from all mutiny acts and articles of war, that these soldiers were in such a situation that they could not help themselves.  People were coming from Royal Exchange Lane, and other parts of the town, with clubs and cord-wood sticks; the soldiers were planted by the wail of the Customhouse; they could not retreat; they were surrounded on all sides, for there were people behind them as well as before them; there were a number of people in the Royal Exchange Lane; the soldiers were so near to the Customhouse that they could not retreat, unless they had gone into the brick wall of it.  I shall show you presently that all the party concerned in this unlawful design were guilty of what any one of them did; if anybody threw a snowball it was the act of the whole party; if any struck with a club or threw a club, and the club had killed anybody, the whole party would have been guilty of murder in the law.  Lord Chief-Justice Holt, in Mawgrige’s case (Keyling, 128), says:—­

“Now, it has been held, that if A of his malice prepense assaults B to kill him, and B draws his sword and attacks A and pursues him, then A, for his safety, gives back and retreats to a wall, and B still pursuing him with his drawn sword, A in his defense kills B; this is murder in A. For A having malice against B, and in pursuance thereof endeavoring to kill him, is answerable for all the consequences of which he was the original cause.  It is not reasonable for any man that is dangerously assaulted, and when he perceives his life in danger from his adversary, but to have liberty for the security of his own life, to pursue him that maliciously assaulted him; for he that has manifested that he has malice against another is not at to be trusted with a dangerous weapon in his hand.  And so resolved by all the judges when they met at Seargeant’s Inn, in preparation for my Lord Morley’s trial.”

In the case here we will take Montgomery, if you please, when he was attacked by the stout man with a stick, who aimed it at his head, with a number of people round him crying out, “Kill them, kill them.”  Had he not a right to kill the man?  If all the party were guilty of the assault made by the stout man, and all of them had discovered malice in their hearts, had not Montgomery a right, according to Lord Chief-Justice Holt, to put it out of their power to wreak their malice upon him?  I will not at present look for any more authorities in the point of self-defense; you will be able to judge from these how far the law goes in justifying or excusing any person in defense of himself, or taking away the life of another who threatens him in life or limb.  The next point is this:  that in case of an unlawful assembly, all and every one of the assembly is guilty of all and every unlawful act committed by any one of that assembly in prosecution of the unlawful design set out upon.