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WILLIAM WEMMS AND SEVEN OTHERS. 6505

cient reason to think it was, and he thereupon fired and killed
Attucks for the preservation of his own life; it was justifiable
homicide, and he ought to be acquitted. If you do not believe
that was the case, but upon the evidence are satisfied that he
was by that assembly assaulted with clubs and other weapons,
and thereupon fired at the rioters and killed Attucks; then
you ought to find him guilty of manslaughter only. But if,
upon the evidence, you believe that Montgomery, without
being previously assaulted, fired and killed Attucks; then you
will find him guilty of murder. But you must know that if
this party of soldiers, in general, were pelted with snowballs,
pieces of iee and sticks, in anger, this without more amounts
to an assault, not only wpon those that were in fact struck, but
upon the whole party; and is such an assault as will reduce
the killing to manslaughter. And if you believe, what some of
the witnesses have sworn, that the people round the soldiers,
and many of them armed with clubs, erowded upon the sol-
diers, and with the ery of, ‘‘Rush on, kill them, kill them,
knock them over,’’ did in fact rush on, strike at them with
their clubs, and give Montgomery such a blow, as to Enock
him down, as some of the witnesses say, or to make him sally,
or stagger, as others say, it will be sufficient to show that his
life was in immediate danger, or that he had sufficient reason
to think go,

It seems that a doctrine has of late been advanced, that sol-
diers, while on duty, may, upon no occasion whatever, fire
upon their fellow subjects, without the order of a civil mag-
istrate. This may possibly account for some of those who
attacked the soldiers, seying to them, ‘‘You dare not fire, we
know you dare not fire.” But it ought to be known that the
law doth not countenance such an absurd doctrine, A man by
becoming a soldier doth not thereby lose the right of self-
defense, which is founded in the law of nature. Where any
one is, without his own default, reduced to such circumstances
that the laws of society cannot avail him, the law considers
him ‘‘as still, in that instanee, under the protection of the law
of nature.’’ his rule extends to soldiers as well as others;

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