On Tuesday the 31st December 1839, all the fourteen prisoners were arraigned on an indictment consisting of four counts: two for levying war against her Majesty in her realm; a third for compassing to depose the Queen from her royal throne; and the last, for compassing to levy war against the Queen, with intent to compel her to change her measures. To this indictment each of the fourteen prisoners pleaded not guilty; and it is to be particularly observed that they all did so without making any objection on any score. Thus was taken the first move by the Crown counsel, who may possibly, for aught we can at present see, have thereby gained some very great advantage. Let us now conceive the solemnly-exciting scene of the court house at Monmonth, on this memorable trial. Three judges sitting, in their imposing scarlet and ermine vestments, calm and grave; a phalanx of counsel sitting beneath them; the prisoners standing at the bar, on their deliverance, silent as the grave, while the fate-fraught procedure of the court was methodically going on; the spectators crowding every part of the court that they could occupy, and all silent, nothing heard but official voices; while without that court all was excitement--repressed, however, by the stern presence of the civil and military power; detachments of troops at that moment scouring the adjacent hills in quest of malcontents, and preventing any fresh rising of the population. The first step taken by the prisoner's counsel was to state that they appeared for John Frost alone, and should challenge the jury separately: on which all the other prisoners were removed from the bar, John Frost remaining to take his trial alone. Then came the swearing of the jury--the name of every one, with his calling in life, and place of abiding, being known to the prisoner and his counsel, who objected to the very first step taken by the clerk of the Crown. He had begun to call over the names in their alphabetical order on the panel--the usual course for a great series of years; but Sir Frederick Pollock objected to his doing so, insisting on each juror's name being taken from the ballot-box. The Lord Chief-Justice was about to have overruled the objection; but the Attorney-General intimated that he consented to the course proposed by the prisoner's counsel. Each witness was sworn first on the _voir dire_, (_i. e._ _dicere verum_) as to his qualification, before he was sworn to try. First came a juryman who was challenged peremptorily on the part of the Crown; but the prisoner's counsel, doubtless for very good reasons, wishing him to remain on the jury, insisted, first, that the Crown had no such right--an objection at once overruled; secondly, that the crown was too late, as the juror had actually got the New Testament into his hand to be sworn to try before the Crown challenged. But, on the court's inquiry, it turned out that the witness had himself taken the book, without having been