His lordship likewise took notice of the dangerous confederacies that had been formed for many years past in Sussex and its neighbouring counties, for very unwarrantable and very wicked purposes; even for robbing the public of that revenue which is absolutely necessary to its support, and for defeating the fair trader in his just expectations of profit; and which, without mentioning more, are the necessary unavoidable consequences of that practice which now goes under the name of smuggling; and this, his lordship said, was not all, for this wicked practice had been supported by an armed force; and acting in open day-light, in defiance of all the law, to the terror of his Majesty’s peaceable subjects; and had gone so far in some late instances, as deliberate murders, attended with circumstances of great aggravation, in consequence of those unlawful combinations. His lordship likewise said, that in case of a murder, wherever it appeared that the fact was committed with any degree of deliberation, and especially where attended with circumstances of cruelty, the usual distinction between murder and manslaughter could never take place; for the fact is, in the eye of the law, wilful murder, of malice prepense; and involves every person concerned, as well those aiding and abetting as those who actually commit the fact, in the same degree of guilt. His lordship was pleased further to take notice, that where a number of people engage together with a felonious design, every person so engaged, and present aiding and abetting in the fact, is considered as a principal in the felony; and the reason the law goes upon is this, that the presence of every one of the accomplices gives countenance and encouragement to all the rest; so that consequently the fact is considered, in the eye of the law, and of sound reason too, as the act of the whole party, though it be perpetrated by the hands only of one; for he is considered the instrument by which the others act. And when we say that the presence of a person at the commission of a felony will involve him in the guilt of the rest, we must not confine ourselves to a strict, actual presence as would make him an eye or ear witness of what passes. For an accomplice may be involved in the guilt of the rest, though he may happen to be so far distant from the scene of action, as to be utterly out of sight or hearing of what passes.