| Share page |
|
|
|||
|
30 |
SUSSEX SMUGGLERS. |
||
|
|
|||
|
constantly racked and torn during this time. But who can think on his tormentors without horror and detestation ? Bloody villains! had you thought that his death was absolutely necessary to secure your own lives, could you not have dispatched him at once, without exercising such a variety of merciless cruelties upon him ? It is true,,even in this case you would not have been excused, because you would have slain him while he was actually discharging his duty to his country, that is, endeavouring to detect and to bring to punishment wretches that live only by rapine and the plunder of the public. I say, had this been the case, and upon meeting him on the road you had shot him through the head, merely to prevent his bringing you to that righteous judgment which your country has since passed upon you, it might have been some mitigation of your crime; but to torture and to destroy a man by inches, to be constantly afflicting and lacerating his body for so many days together with every cruelty that malice itself could suggest; this surely must convince mankind that some malicious demon had taken possession of your souls, and banished every sentiment of humanity from your hardened hearts.
But let us now proceed to those other matters which we promised to give an account of. The first thing we shall mention ought indeed to have been taken notice of before, but we were not willing to interrupt the story of Chater till we had brought him to the last stage of his sufferings, and his final destruction in this world.
"When these miscreants had brought their unhappy victim within about two hundred yards of the well, Jackson and Carter stayed behind and bid Tapner, Cobby, Stringer, Steel, Perryer and Hammond go |
|||
|
|
|||