ather hears a rushing among the bushes,
takes it to be game, fires, and kills his son, through a mistake.
Here is innocent blood shed, but yet nobody will say the father
ought to die for it. So that the general rule of law is, that
whenever one person has a right to do an act, and that act, by any
accident takes away the life of another, it is excusable. It bears
the same regard to the innocent as to the guilty. If two men are
together, and attack me, and I have a right to kill them, I strike
at them, and by mistake strike a third and kill him, as I had a
right to kill the first, my killing the other will be excusable, as
it happened by accident. If I, in the heat of passion, aim a blow
at the person who has assaulted me, and aiming at him I kill another
person, it is but manslaughter.

(Foster. 261. section 3): "If an action unlawful in itself is done
deliberately, and with intention of mischief, or great bodily harm
to particulars, or of mischief indiscriminately, fall it where it
may, and death ensues, against or beside the original intention of
the party, it will be murder. But if such mischievous intention doth
not appear, which is matter of fact, and to be collected from
circumstances, and the act was done heedlessly and inconsiderately,
it will be manslaughter, not accidental death; because the act upon
which death ensued was unlawful."

Suppose, in this case, the mulatto man was the person who made the
assault; suppose he was concerned in the unlawful assembly, and this
party of soldiers, endeavoring to defend themselves against him,
happened to kill another person, who was innocent--though the
soldiers had no reason, that we know of, to think any person there,
at least of that number who were crowding about them, innocent; they
might, naturally enough, presume all to be guilty of the riot and
assault, and to come with the same design--I say, if on firing on
those who were guilty, they accidentally killed an innocent person,
it was not their fault. They were obliged to defend themselves
against those who were pressing upon them. They are not answerable
for it with their lives; for on supposition it was justifiable or
excusable to kill Attucks, or any other person, it will be equally
justifiable or excusable if in firing at him they killed another,
who was innocent; or if the provocation was such as to mitigate the
guilt of manslaughter, it will equally mitigate the guilt, if they
killed an innocent ma