AMNESTY, an act of grace by which the supreme power in a State restores those who may have been guilty of any offence against it to the position of innocent persons. It includes more than pardon, inasmuch as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the offence. Amnesties, which may be granted by the Crown alone, or by act of parliament, were formerly usual on coronations and similar occasions, but are chiefly exercised towards associa tions of political criminals, and are sometimes granted absolutely, though more frequently there are certain specified exceptions. Thus, in the case of the earliest recorded amnesty, that of Thrasy bulus at Athens, the 3o tyrants and a few others were expressly excluded from its operation; and the amnesty proclaimed on the restoration of Charles II. did not extend to those who had taken part in the execution of his father. Other celebrated amnesties are that proclaimed by Napoleon on March 13 from which 13 eminent persons, including Talleyrand, were excepted ; the Prussian amnesty of Aug. Io 1840; the general amnesty pro claimed by the emperor Francis Joseph of Austria in 1857; the general amnesty granted by President Johnson after the Civil War in 1868; and the French amnesty of 1905. The last act of amnesty passed in Great Britain was that of 1747, which pro claimed a pardon to those who had taken part in the second Jacobite rebellion.
An amnesty clause is usually inserted in peace treaties grant ing immunity from prosecution for acts committed contrary to laws and customs of war by members of the armed forces of the respective belligerents or by their subjects. Not infrequently, however, named persons or persons alleged to have committed war crimes, subjects of the defeated belligerent, are excepted from the amnesty clause and a stipulation for their surrender is expressly included in the treaty. Instances of such exceptions are the Treaty of Peace with the Boers in 1881, the Vereeniging Treaty of 1902, and the Peace Treaties between the Allies and Associated Powers and Germany and her allies after the World War. A belligerent may, however, punish his own subjects, unless the contrary is stipulated in the treaty of peace. For instance, Russia in 1878 stipulated that Turkey should grant an amnesty to such of her own subjects as had compromised themselves during the war. (H. H. L. B.)