1. An agreement, communication, or other preliminary activity aimed at inciting treason or some lesser commotion against public authority.
2. Advocacy aimed at inciting or producing — and likely to incite or produce — imminent lawless action. • At common law, sedition included defaming a member of the royal family or the government. The difference between sedition and treason is that the former is committed by preliminary steps, while the latter entails some overt act for carrying out the plan. But of course, if the plan is merely for some small commotion, even accomplishing the plan does not amount to treason. Cf. TREASON. [Cases: Insurrection and Sedition
1. C.J.S. Riot; Insurrection § 29.] — seditious, adj.
“Sedition — This, perhaps the very vaguest of all offences known to the Criminal Law, is defined as the speaking or writing of words calculated to excite disaffection against the Constitution as by law established, to procure the alteration of it by other than lawful means, or to incite any person to commit a crime to the disturbance of the peace, or to raise discontent or disaffection, or to promote ill-feeling between different classes of the community. A charge of sedition is, historically, one of the chief means by which Government, especially at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, strove to put down hostile critics. It is evident that the vagueness of the charge is a danger to the liberty of the subject, especially if the Courts of Justice can be induced to take a view favourable to the Government.” Edward Jenks, The Book of English Law 136 (P.B. Fairest ed., 6th ed. 1967).
