AMNESTY

A sovereign act of pardon and oblivion foi: past acts, granted by a government to all persons (or to certain persons) wfio have been guilty of crime or delict, generally political offenses,-treason, sedition, rebellion,--and often conditioned upon their return to obedience and duty, within a prescribed time.. A declaration of the person or persons who have newly acquired or recovered the sovereign power in a state, 'by which they pardon all persons who composed, supported, or obeyed the government which has been overthrown. The word "amnesty" properly belongs to international law, and is applied to treaties of peace following a state of war, and signifies there the burial in ob.livion of -the particular ea.use of strife, so· that that shall not be again a cause for war between the parties; and this signification of "amnesty" is fully and poetically expre ed in the Indian custom of burying the hatchet. And so amnesty fs applied to re- · bellions which by their magnitude are brought within the n1les of international law, and in which multitudes of men are the subjects of the clemency of the government. But in these casee, and in all cases, it means only "oblivion." and never expre es or implies a grant. Knote v. United States, 10 Ot. Cl. 407. "Amnesty" and "pardon" are very different. The former is an act of the sovereign power, the object of which is to efface and to c'ause to be forgotten a crime or misdemeanor; the latter is an act of the same authority, which exempts the individual on who in it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for-- the crime he has committed. Bouvier; United States,-. Bruisett, 5 Utah, 131, 13 Pac. 237; Davies v. McKeeby, 5 Nev. 373: State v. Blalock, 61 N. C. 247; Knote v. United States, 95 U. S. 149, 152, 24 L. Ed. 442.. [s. 72]