Such is a faint picture of the defensive operations on such occasions: how is this untiring, bitter energy met by those who represent the crown? "Look on this picture and on that." Here all is calm, dignified, generous, and forbearing; every consideration is shown, every indulgence is granted, to the unfortunate being who is in jeopardy. The crown has no interest to serve beyond that which the state possesses in the vindication of the law, and in that cool, deliberate, and impartial administration of justice which has so long distinguished this country. Nothing is unduly pressed against the prisoner, but every extenuating fact is fairly laid before the jury by the crown; it is, in short, generosity, candor, and forbearance, on the one side, matched against craft, cunning and the resolution _by any means_ to win, upon the other. Such are the real difficulties which may be often felt by those who conduct 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