necessarily in secret, or the very end and object of their mission would be frustrated, to collect and gather information from every authentic source, and to watch, with their own eyes the proceedings which have attracted attention.  This is a work of time, perhaps; but suppose that it is complete, and that the minister having before him in evidence, true and unmistakable, a complete case of crime to lay before a jury, what, under these circumstances, is the first step to be taken by the crown?  Either of two distinct modes of procedure may be chosen; the one mode is by an ex officio information, the other is by indictment.  An indictment is the mode by which all treasons and felonies must be proceeded against, and by which ordinary misdemeanours are usually brought to punishment.  An ex officio information is an information at the suit of the sovereign, filed by the Attorney-General, as by virtue of his office, without applying to the court where filed for leave, and without giving the defendant any opportunity of showing cause why it should not be filed.  The principal difference between this form of procedure and that by indictment, consists in the manner in which the proceedings are commenced; in the latter case, the law requires that the accusation should be warranted by the oath of twelve men, before he be put to answer it—­or in other words that the grand jury must give that information to the court, which, in the former case, is furnished by the law officer of the crown.  The cases which are prosecuted by ex officio information, are properly such enormous misdemeanours as peculiarly tend to disturb and endanger the government or to molest or affront the sovereign in the discharge of the functions of the royal office.  The necessity for the existence of a power of this nature in the state, is thus set forth by that learned and illustrious judge, Sir William Blackstone.  “For offences so highly dangerous, in the punishment or prevention of which a moment’s delay would be fatal, the law has given to the crown the power of an immediate prosecution, without waiting for any previous application to any other tribunal:  which power, thus necessary, not only to the ease and safety, but even to the very existence of the executive magistrate, was originally reserved in the great plan of the English constitution, wherein provision is wisely made for the preservation of all its parts.”

The crown, therefore, in a case such as we have imagined, must first make choice between these two modes of procedure.  The leniency of modern governments has of late usually resorted to the process by indictment; and the crown, waiving all the privileges which appertain to the kingly office, appears before the constituted tribunals of the land, as the redresser of the public wrongs, invested with no powers, and clothed with no authority beyond the simple rights possessed by the meanest of its subjects.  We shall, for this reason, take no further notice of the ex officio information; and as treasons form a class of offences governed by laws and rules peculiar to itself, we shall also exclude this head of crime from our consideration, and confine ourselves solely to the ordinary criminal process by which offenders are brought to justice.