nduct
a state prosecution. Surely it is better far that these difficulties
should, in some instances, be even wholly insuperable, and that the
prosecution should be defeated, than that any change should come over
the spirit in which these trials are now conducted; or that the crown
should ever even attempt to make the criminal process of the law an
instrument of tyranny and oppression, as it was in the days of Scroggs
and Jefferies, and when juries, through intimidation, returned such
verdicts as the crown desired. Our very tenacity of our liberties may
tend to render these proceedings occasionally abortive; and the twelve
men composing a jury of the country, though possibly all their
sympathies would be at once enlisted in behalf of a wronged and
injured subject, may, unconsciously to themselves, demand more
stringent proof, in cases where the sovereign power appears before
then as the party; and more especially, when the offence is of an
impersonal nature, and where the theory of the constitution, rather
than the person or property of individuals, is the object of
aggression. In the olden time such was the power of the crown, that,
whenever the arm of the state was uplifted, the blow fell with
unerring accuracy and precision; but now, when each object of a state
prosecution is a sort of modern Briareus, the blow must be dealt with
consummate skill, or it will fail to strike where it was meant to
fall. On this account, perhaps, in addition to then own intrinsic
paramount importance, the proceedings now pending in Ireland, have
become the object of universal and absorbing interest throughout the
whole of the United Kingdom. Under these circumstances it has occurred
to us, that a popular and accurate review of the several stages of a
criminal prosecution, by which the general reader will be able, in
some degree, to understand the several steps of that proceeding which
is now pending, might not be unacceptable or uninstructive at the
present moment. It must, however, be observed, that it is scarcely
possible to divest a subject so technical in it very nature from those
terms of art which, however familiar they may be to many of our
readers, cannot be understood by all without some explanation, which
we shall endeavour to supply as we proceed.

The general importance of information of this nature has been well
summed up by a great master of criminal law. "The learning touching
these subjects," says Sir Michael Foster, "is