The Council for three days, he saw by the means fortified sath the materials for judgement furnished by the Deposition or the Records of the Court. There right to have "been much more evidence obtained considering that the offence committed by a large body of men are believed to love from the Mainland, and, mixed with a number of loose fellows belonging to the village or neighborhood, had, with weapons and torches – (and a row reported, but not stated in the depositions, with drunken rioters and sticks) broken into and robbed a ship, while a policeman had been killed and another wounded in the fray.
As regarded the case of the convicted persons, there among them who appeared to have been actually active party to the murder, they were all cases of constructive murder but not of murder in the first degree, and he should be extremely reluctant to sign Death Warrants for such an offence, and should be glad to have the concurrence of the Council in commuting the sentences of the guilty into transportation for life. He wished that each member of Council should, in the order of seniority, give his opinion on the general question, and also on the case of the individual prisoners.
The following written opinions of the Members of the Council were given in: