Amnesty

Amnesty (from Greek words for 'not remembered') signifies an act of pardon or oblivion, and the effect of it is, that the crimes and offences against the state, specified in the act, are so obliterated that they can never again be charged against the guilty parties. While pardon exempts individuals from the punishment the law inflicts for their offence, an amnesty is generally granted to a whole class of offenders. The word is also applied to those clauses in a treaty of peace, which confirm what the enemy state has been done with property or debts during the war. The amnesty may be either absolute, or qualified with exceptions. Bonaparte, on his return from Elba in 1815, declared an amnesty, from the benefits of which he excepted thirteen persons whom he named. Upon the restoration of Charles II., the persons actually concerned in his father's execution were, as a class, excluded from the amnesty granted. It is of importance that exceptions should be specific, and not, as in the Bourbon Amnesty of 1816, of a general kind, so as to leave doubt and uncertainty in the public mind. The amnesty to all who were guilty of treason against the United States, or adhered to their enemies during the civil war, included domiciled aliens. But the amnesty proclamation (25th December 1868) did not entitle one whose property had been sold under the Confiscation Act of 1862 to reclaim the proceeds after they had been paid into the treasury of the United States. The French pardoned 2245 Communists by decree in 1879, and granted a general amnesty for political offences in 1880. The pardon granted to deserters, on the occasion of the Queen's jubilee (1887), was virtually an amnesty.