Hall grew up in Lincolnshire, had a good education and as a young man was interested in social and religious work, which probably brought him under the notice of William Wilberforce.
Hall was given a grant of land, but in October 1814 Macquarie mentioned that he had "commenced merchant at Sydney", and he was associated in this year with Simeon Lord and others in the promotion of the New Zealand Trading Company.
It was probably as a result of this application that Hall was appointed coroner of the territory in February 1820, however he did not hold this position for long, and in 1821 went with 10 assigned servants to the land granted him near Lake Bathurst.
It stood for trial by jury and a popular legislature, and it condemned in unmeasured terms the oppression of convicts, public immorality on the part of officers, and even the conduct of the governor himself.
But some six months before, Hall had written to Sir George Murray a letter in which he made 14 specific charges against Darling, and he had succeeded in enlisting the aid of Joseph Hume, who took up his cause in the British House of Commons.
Goderich, writing to Governor Bourke on 24 March 1832, denied that Hall's representations had affected the question of the recall of Darling, but there can be little doubt that it had a strong influence on it.
In August 1891 Sir Henry Parkes, speaking of the early friends of freedom in Australia, said: The name I mentioned first Edward Smith Hall belonged to a man of singularly pure and heroic disposition ... he met the greatest form of aggressive power we ever experienced in this country, and he paid the price of resistance to it by all that kind of punishmerit which follows a man who tries to preserve the public spirit and awaken a love of liberty in a community.