often find it impossible to agree, and which may therefore be reasonably supposed to be sufficiently perplexing to the rest of the world.  State offences, such as treason and sedition, which are of comparatively rare occurrence, present many questions of greater intricacy than any other class of crimes.  In treason especially, a well-founded jealousy of the power and prerogatives of the crown has intrenched the subject behind a line of outposts, in the shape of forms and preliminary proceedings; the accused, for his greater security against a power which, if unwatched, might become arbitrary and oppressive, has been invested with rights which must be respected and complied with, and by the neglect of which the whole proceedings are rendered null and void.  At this moment, in all treasons, except attempts upon the person of the sovereign, “the prisoner,” in the language of Lord Erskine, “is covered all over with the armour of the law;” and there must be twice the amount of evidence which would be legally competent to establish his guilt in a criminal prosecution for any other offence, even by the meanest and most helpless of mankind.  Sedition is a head of crime of a somewhat vague and indeterminate character, and, in many cases, it may he extremely difficult, even for an acute and practised lawyer, to decide whether the circumstances amount to sedition.  Mr East, in his pleas of the crown, says, that “sedition is understood in a more general sense than treason, and extends to other offences, not capital, of a like tendency, but without any actual design against the king in contemplation, such as contempts of the king and his government, riotous assemblings for political purposes, and the like; and in general all contemptuous, indecent, or malicious observations upon his person and government, whether by writing or speaking, or by tokens, calculated to lessen him in the esteem of his subjects, or weaken his government, or raise jealousies of him amongst the people, will fall under the notion of seditious acts.”  An offence which admits of so little precision in the terms in which it is defined, depending often upon the meaning to be attached to words, the real import of which is varied by the tone or gesture of the speaker, by the words which precede, and by those which follow, depending also upon the different ideas which men attach to the same words, evidently rests on very different grounds from those cases, where actual crimes have been perpetrated and deeds committed, which leave numerous traces behind, and which may be proved by the permanent results of which they have been the cause.  Technical difficulties without number also exist:  the most literal accuracy, which is indispensable—­the artful inuendoes, the artistical averments, which are necessary, correctly to shape the charge ere it is submitted to the grand jury, may be well conceived to involve many niceties and refinements, on which the case may easily be wrecked.  It must also be remembered that the utmost legal ingenuity is called