rest with the workmen who guide and superintend its action?  Are the principles of its construction now no longer known or understood?  Are they, like those of the engines of the Syracusan philosopher, lost in the lapse of time?  Is the crown less efficiently served than private individuals? and can it be possible, it has even been demanded, that those who are actively employed on these occasions have been so long removed on the practice of what is often deemed the simpler portion of the law, and so long employed in the higher and more abstruse branches of the science, that they have forgotten the practice of their youth, and have lost the knowledge acquired in the commencement of their professional career?  Lesser criminals, it is said, are every day convicted with ease and expedition—­how is it, therefore, that the cobweb of the law holds fast the small ephemerae which chance to stray across its filmy mesh, but that the gaudy insect of larger form and greater strength so often breaks through, his flight perhaps arrested for a moment, as he feels the insidious toil fold close about him?  It is, however, only for a moment; one mighty effort breaks his bonds—­he is free—­and flies off in triumph and derision, trumpeting forth his victory, and proclaiming his escape from the snare, in which it was hoped to encompass him.  The astute and practised gentlemen thus suspected, strong in the consciousness of deep legal knowledge, and ready practical skill and science, may justly despise the petty attacks of those who affect to doubt their professional ability and attainments.  Some in high places have not hesitated to hint, on one occasion, at collusion, and to assert, that a certain prosecution failed, because there was no real desire to punish.

Such is the substance of the various questions and speculations to which the legal events of the last thirteen years have given rise.  We have now collected and enumerated them in a condensed form, for the purpose of tracing their rise and progress, and in order that we may demonstrate that, though there may possibly exist some reasons for these opinions, founded often on a misapprehension of the real circumstances of the cases quoted in their support, that they have, in fact, little or no substantial foundation.  With this view, therefore, we shall briefly notice those trials, within the period of which we speak, which form the groundwork of these charges against the executive, before we proceed to state the real obstacles which do, in fact, occasionally oppose the smooth and rapid progress of a “State Prosecution.”

The first of these proceedings, which occurred during the period of the last thirteen years, was the trial of Messrs O’Connell, Lawless, Steel, and others.  This case perhaps originated the opinions which have partially prevailed, and was, in truth, not unlikely to make a permanent impression on the public mind.  In the month of January 1831, true bills were found against these parties by the Grand Jury of Dublin,