EXIGENT

In Law, a writ which lies when the defendant in at i action personal, or in an indictment, cannot be <bund; and where, in the former case, nothing of his can be found within the county whereby he may be attached •ii.-dup on. The writ is directed to the sheriff, to proclaim the absent party on five county court days, one after another; and if he do not answer on the fifth, he is outlawed, EXII.E. (Lat. exsilium, from exsul, one banished ex solo from the soil of his country.) In Roman Law, the punishment of banishment, or, more strictly speaking, the consequence of the interdiction from the use of fire and water, pronounced in early times as a sentence against great offenders, which compelled them to expatriate them It appears that the direct sentence of exile was Bat known to ■Defeat Roman jurisprudence. {Cicero ad IU i nin) In modern Francs (before the Revolution), there was a distinction between banishment and exile. The former was a punishment a igned by the law, and producing infamy; the latter a measure of discipline, in Sated hy the arbitrary act of the monarch (usually through.ettres de cachet). Thus political offenders were frejuenily exiled to their estates, to a certain distance from court, Ac. [s. 447]