Banishment

“ For banishment is not a punishment, but is a refuge and harbour of safety from punishment. For those who are desirous to avoid some punishment or some calamity, turn to banishment alone,—that is to say, they change their residence and their situation, and, therefore, there will not be found in any law of ours, as there is in the laws of other states, any mention of any crime being punished with banishment. ”

“ Banishment, I suppose; which is looked on as the greatest evil. Now, if the evil of banishment proceeds not from ourselves, but from the froward disposition of the people, I have just now declared how contemptible it is. But if to leave one’s country be miserable, 202the provinces are full of miserable men, very few of the settlers in which ever return to their country again. ”

“ Never let them return to this happy land never let them taste the sweets of that independence which they strove to prevent. Banishment, perpetual banishment, should be their lot.
Pennsylvania Packet, August 5, 1779 ”

“ It is far from my intention to add to your distress by upbraiding you with the errors of your past life; none of us can recall the past; but, for the consolation of human nature, we possess, with the divine aid, over the future an unlimited and absolute control: to this latter point I am particularly desirous of directing your attention.
The word exile, or banishment, sounds harshly on the ear, and must ever convey to the heart the most acute feeling of anguish. Our native land, containing the scenes of youthful amusements and innocent pleasures, abandoned perhaps for ever! ”

“ The witch in Smithfield shall be burnt to ashes,
And you three shall be strangled on the gallows. 8
You, madam, for you are more nobly born,
Despoiled of your honour in your life,
Shall, after three days' open penance done,
Live in your country here in banishment, 12
With Sir John Stanley, in the Isle of Man.
Elea. Welcome is banishment; welcome were my death.
Glo. Eleanor, the law, thou seest, hath judged thee:
I cannot justify whom the law condemns. 16
[Exeunt the Duchess, and the other Prisoners, guarded.] ”

“ Stronger reasons then should exist to justify the banishment of a native than of a foreigner, of a man criminated for the first time than of one who has been often so situated.
But should a man who is banished and excluded for ever from the society of which he was a member be also deprived of his property? ”

“ For which attempt the judges have pronounc'd My everlasting doom of banishment. TITUS. O happy man! they have befriended thee. Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers? Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey But me and mine; how happy art thou then From these devourers to be banished! ”

“ In the next place, it observes an impolitic and improvident kind of punishment inflicted upon376 Dædalus—that of banishment; for good workmen are gladly received everywhere, so that banishment to an excellent artificer is scarce any punishment at all; whereas other conditions of life cannot easily flourish from home. ”

“ But, indeed, suppose banishment not to be a punishment to us, yet the witness of their own conscience may still attribute the last and worst wickedness to those who can lay upon the innocent what they think to be a punishment. ”

“ The loss of property is a greater punishment than banishment; there ought, therefore, to be some cases in which, according to his crime, a man should lose the whole, or part, or none of his property. The confiscation of the whole will occur, when the legal sentence of banishment is of a kind to annihilate all the ties that exist between society and its offending member; for in such a case the citizen dies, and only the man remains ”

“ OTIUM SINE DIGNITATE
committing the crime, knowing that his family and relatives must suffer with him. It was preventive merely and not retributive punishment. The commonest method of punishing officials has always been banishment. No man was ever exiled from the country, for in the days before the country was opened to foreign intercourse this would have seemed far more cruel than death ; but banishment means the transportation of the offender to some distant portion of the country, often some island in the archipelago, and keeping him there at government expense and under strict espionage. ”

“ Others have not only been forced into voluntary banishment, by great numbers, to avoid further cruelty, but divers, after long and sore imprisonment, have been forced to abjure the land by oath, never to return without leave. ”

“ VALENTINE. And why not death rather than living torment?
To die is to be banish'd from myself,
And Silvia is myself; banish'd from her
Is self from self, a deadly banishment.
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? ”

“ Banishment would, upon the face of the law, be equal to banishment: but it will not readily be admitted, that to a servant of the public, who happens to have nothing to live upon but a salary, the receipt of which depends upon attendance at his office, it would be no greater punishment than to a sturdy labourer, who in one country as well as in another, may derive an equal livelihood from the labour of his hands. ”

“ Some hold that the established penalty for his offence is to break his wings and hurl him helpless from the top of the tallest elm. Some, more merciful, are for banishment, that he be outlawed, and compelled to build his nest and roost on an isolated tree, exposed to all the insults of the crows. The older members of the council, great sticklers for tradition, maintain that the ancient and only adequate punishment is the hanging up of the offender by one leg to a dead and projecting branch, there to dangle and die of starvation, a terror to all such evil-doers. ”

“ Banishment is punishment in the practical sense. It may deprive a man and his family of all that makes life worth while. Those who have their roots here have an important stake in this country. Their plans for themselves and their hopes for their children all depend on their right to stay. If they are uprooted and sent to lands no longer known to them, no longer hospitable, they become displaced, homeless people condemned to bitterness and despair. ”

“ Those who would not obey the laws of one country must seek a home in another. Banishment seemed at once the mildest and the most reasonable punishment (if indeed it can be so called) ,—not transportation to some special spot, but simply exile from England and from all British dominions and colonies—the Great Federation being absolutely united in this important matter—under 24penalty of death if the banished returned. ”

“ On the eleventh of this month, the answer of your Highness was received with the order respecting the prisoner, in execution of which, his sentence was read to him in the hall of the tribunal, and he made an abjuration de levi, was absolved ad cautelam, admonished, reprehended, and warned, after which he was sentenced to ten years banishment from this city and the Court, to the extent of eight leagues, the first five years of his banishment to be passed in confinement in the garrison of Oran. ”

“ The native of India accommodates himself more easily to banishment than a European does, because his ideas lead to predestination, and his habits are [48] simple. In former days, when convict discipline was not so well understood as it is now, the convicts transported from India used to traffic and amass money; banishment was in some cases, perhaps, sought for, and crimes were, it is feared, sometimes committed by natives to obtain it; but the felon must now expect to be kept in his place and hard at work. ”

“ Those that loved Religion and constancy at their hearts, did instantly separate themselves by banishment, others were troubled and wavered seeking holes and hiding places, soliciting Cæsar by Petitions either to change the decree or grant them a longer time or else indeavouring by words to obtaine it, as much as was in any mans power. There were not some wanting who pretending the discomodities of banishment, poverty, age, sicknesse, duties, and every thing else, thought it best to satisfie the Emperours will. ”

“ The resolution of the Executive Council, which deals with the mitigation of the sentences, states that the imprisonment portions of the sentences are remitted; that the fines (£2,000 in all cases) must be paid at once; and that the banishment shall remain in abeyance subject to the faithful observance of the above undertaking; but that should any action be taken by any of the prisoners constituting in the opinion of the Executive Council a breach of the above undertaking, the sentence of banishment shall come into force. ”

“ If, during his self-imposed exile, the relatives expressed their willingness to accept the indemnity, he was at liberty to return and resume his position in society.
In later times banishment is (1) a legal punishment for particular offences; (2) voluntary.
1. Banishment for life with confiscation of property was inflicted upon those who destroyed or uprooted the sacred olives at Athens; upon those who remained neutral during a sedition (by a law of Solon, which subsequently fell into abeyance) ; upon those who gave refuge to or received on board ship a man who had fled to avoid punishment ”

“ But no sentence either of complete disfranchisement or of perpetual banishment can be passed against any citizen, because every one of the 5040 lots of land must always remain occupied.288 Nor can any citizen be fined to any greater extent than what he possesses over and above his lot of land. ”

“ But let the world look to this, which accounts banishment a penalty. To them, their country is too dear, and they have the same name as their parents; but we abhor even our parents themselves if they would persuade us against God. To them, it is a severe punishment to live outside their own city; to the Christian, the whole of this world is one home. Wherefore, though he were banished into a hidden and secret place, yet, associated with the affairs of his God, he cannot regard it as an exile. In addition, while honestly serving God, he is a stranger even in his own city. ”

“ If a man had a son, who had been condemned to death or to banishment for his evil deeds, it is most sure that his father would be full of solicitude, laboring to the utmost of his power both by day and by night to obtain a reprieve or to have the sentence of banishment removed, addressing all possible petitions and making presents, according to the extent of his ability, both personally, and through the means of others. ”

“ A lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges of this species of delinquency, and the sentence they pronounce is equally concise and terrible; it is nothing less than a confiscation of all property and immediate banishment—a prescription that has been carried into effect, and exceeds, in the number of those it consigns to ruin and misery, every example that ancient or modern history can supply. ”

“ Here we see operating, in its original unqualified way, that governing influence of public sentiment which precedes more special governing influences. The dread of social reprobation is in some cases enforced by the dread of banishment. Among the otherwise unsubordinated Australians, they "punish each other for such offenses as theft, sometimes by expulsion from the camp." Of one of the Columbian tribes we read that "the Salish can hardly be said to have any regular form of government"; and then, further, we read that "criminals are sometimes punished by banishment from their tribe." ”

“ H. W. Pitman, B. H. Spencer and David W. Nowlin. While we can not know the causes that led to the banishment of these men, we would state that they came among us under the ban of the Government, and we looked upon them as objects of suspicion. ”

“ Banishment, too, has this effect above all, that it either wears the exile out or develops whatever is greatest in him. 'In all our more populous cities,' says Gioviano Pontano, 'we see a crowd of people who have left their homes of their own free will; but a man takes his virtues with him wherever he goes.' And, in fact, they were by no means only men who had been actually exiled, but thousands left their native place voluntarily, because they found its political or economic condition intolerable. ”

“ Nay, it is easy to suppose cases, in which negative restraints may be a greater hardship than positive ones. The interdiction of fire and water is not a sentence of positive punishment, and yet banishment, or death must be the consequence. ”

“ When compounding sentences in the form of a deprivation of freedom and and in the form of exile, banishment, or corrective labor, three days of exile, banishment, or corrective labor are taken as equal to one day of deprivation of freedom. ”

“ The girls looked at each other in dismay. To think that one of their small number should make it necessary to take up the question of punishment!
Miss Miller read: "Punishments are meted out by the Chief and Council, after a hearing of the case. They consist of: Exclusion from the games or boats for a time. Reduction in rank, or of fines, etc. The extreme penalty is 'death'; that is, banishment from the Tribe. Elena, enter these items in the Tally Book." ”

“ The most complete nudity appears to be obligatory throughout the entire tribe, a decree of banishment having apparently been pronounced against the slightest strip of hide, or the minutest leaf. Some sovereign, in order to give his people full liberty to develop themselves and spread out unfettered, must have decreed a sumptuary law on the most radical lines. ”