The sun. [volume], August 18, 1918, Section 5 Magazine Section, Page 11, Image 47

About The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920

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11
Exile as a Punishment Is Unknown Here
Louis Malvy's Case
in France Attracts
World's Attention
to Code Napoleon
Penaljty
How Great Britain
Sometimes Sets
Aside the Constitu
tional Rights of Its
Citizens
THF. SUN. SUNDAY. AICIST 1. HtlS.
B
By F. CUNL1FFE-OWEN.
AN'ISHMKNT, the punishment to
which the Senate of France, sitting
as a high court of justice, has condemned
Louis Malvy for grosi malfeasance in
office as a member of the Chamber of
Deputies and as former Minister of the
Interior, is a penalty so unfamiliar to the
English speaking races and fosses; cs in
their cars such a sound of lucdwvalism
that sonic explanation concerning the
matter may proe of interest.
I'anUiimcnt is a puuUlinient tliat can
not he found in the statutes either of the
United Status or of the United Kingdom.
True, the Governments of these two coun
tries retain the right to expel from their
territories undesirable aliens. Hut from
the moment that a man becomes an Amer
ican citizen or u citizen of Great lirit
ain the Gocmmenls at Washington ind
in London ceas.-' to hr.e the power .o de
port him to any foreign land unless
have cancelled his naturalization papers.
One of the Cherished Rights.
Among the mot cherished of conslitu
tional prerogatives of the citizen of both
these gnat Powers is the right to abide
in his own country. Exile is a punish
ment unknown to the common law of the
United States and Great Britain in these
modern times. Were it considered nec
essary for the welfurc-of the nation to
impose the penalty of banishment on any
United States citizen native bom a
special act of Congress would have to Irt!
pased, precisely in the same way that a
special act of "the Parliament would be
needed to enable the English Crown to
banish any of its subjects.
In Great Britain the constitutional
rights of the citizen arc so liberally con
strued that although within the realm the
sovereign may command the service of all
his lieges, yet he e.innot send any one out
of the realm, even upon public servie..",
excepting soldiers and sailors. He actu
ally may not send a citizen abroad in a
diplomatic or consular capacity against
his will, for this might be made a s; ecies
of honorable exile.
In Kroner, however, and in other con
tinental countries, espeeiaVK- those where
the Coil.; Napoleon constitutes the basis
of law, banishment is retained as a pun
ishment for crime, and is usually accom
panied bv forfeiture of all civil lights.
It is, in the words of the Code Napoleon,
a peine infilmante. In the ease of Louis
Mnlvy, however, he docs 'not suffer the
forfeiture of his civil rights.
Banishes Habitual Criminals.
There are several crimes and felonies
for which the French courts impose ban
ishment, sometimes to follow imprison
ment with hard labor and sometimes with
out imprisonment. Habitual criminals are
banished. In fact the French code secim
to take the ground that there are a large
number of persons belonging to the crimi
nal classes whom it is more profitable to
banish with what is known as civic degra
dation than to maintain them in some
French penitentiary or penal colony.
Then there arc the crimes against the
State, such as that of which Malvy ha?
been convicted.
Nineteen or twenty years ago the
French Senate, sitting as a high court of
justice, also condemned the late Paul De
roulcde as well as the Comte de Lur
Suluces and Andre Buffet to banishment
after conviction of conspiracy to over
throw the republic, but more especially
because they weic proved to have dis
obeved those particular clauses of the
Penal Code-which prohibit citizens from
instigating either fellow citizens or ser
vants of the State to disobey orders of
Government and laws of the land. These
paragraphs arc 121 and 125 of the Penal
Code, which provide that in extreme cases
the penalty of death may he imposed.
But their exile was not of long durations
Their patriotism and their ardent love for
France had never been questioned. Popu
lar sentiment exacted their speedy am
nesty as well as the full restoration of
LOUIS MALVY.
their civil rights, and. l)erouIcdc died on
the cxe of the war, mounted by the entire
nation irrespective of political party.
Civic degradation entails the incapac
ity to hold office, the loss of all
decorations, medals, &c, the forfeiture of
franchise, the inability to give legal tes
timony, to act as guardian of minors
or as executor of wills, as teacher in pub
lic or private schools, to serve in the
French army or navy, to bear arras even
for sport, while it is only in the event
of special permission being granted that
an individual is permitted to retain pa
rental rights.
Li eases where civic degradation is
accompanied by banishment the exile can
claim no protection from the French
coiiu!ar or diplomatic authorities abroad.
Under existing statutes of the United
States persons thus exiled could not Le
permitted to land in America, being men
condemned for felony. Nor is it likely
that any other State would be willing to
concede the rights of citizenship to men
who have been turned out of their coun
try for their country's good.
I cannot sufficiently emphasize the fact
the banishment of Malvy is not a legisla
tive or political act, but a purely ju
dicial one. At the outset of his trial
a little group of Senators favorable to
him endeavored to move in parliamen
tary fashion the adjournment of the pro
ceedings for three months. But old An
tonin Dubost, former Minister of Justice
as well as Keeper of the Great Seal of
France and who has been president of
the Stna'.o for twelve years or more, at
once cut them thort by reminding them
that the Senate was no longer sitting as
the upper chamber of the national Legis
lature but as a high court of justice.
This was emphasized by the change in
the appearance of the House. The fa
miliar presidential platform had been re
moved and its place taken by desks for
the officials of the court, for the public
prosecutor and for the two Advocates
General, clad- in robes of . scarlet and
ermine. President Dubost was seated at a,
rainsl desk and directed the proceedings,
while Malvy took his place on a seat on
tho extreme left, where a prisoners'
dock had been railed off from the rest
of the chamber by brass stanchions and
velvet cords.
No sketch of the French laws of ban
ishment, however brief, would be com
plete without mention of the exile of the
Duke of Orleans and Prince Victor Na
poleon. Their banishment, unlike that
of Malvy, carries with it no imputation
of crime or stigma of infamy. Exile in
their case is not due to the judgment of
any tribunal, nor ha3 it-been imposed for
any offence against tho law. They are
banished by a special act of Parliament,
passed just thirty years ago largely at
the instance of Gen. Boulanger, and which
for the sake of strengthening the much
menaced republic decreed that the recog
nized heads of the dynasties which have
reigned in France should be exiled from
French territory.
That is to say, if Prince Victor Bona
parte were suddenly to die to-d3y in Eng
land, where he has been living with his
wife, Princess Clementine of Belgium,
since the Germans seized his palace at
Brussels, his little fonr-ycar-old boy,
Prince Louis Napoleon, at present free to
visit or to reside in France with his
mother, would at once become subject to
the Parliamentary act of exile of 1883,
and be banished from French territory. In
66
Value of Having: a Plain Signature
T TijKE a man who writes a legible
hand," said Mr. Blinkiuton, "and
I should be inclined to trust a man who
wrote his signature so plainly that it was
unmistakably clear in cadi and every let
ter. 'In the body of a letter you can often
make out blind words by the context; but
the signature has no context. It is 'true
that you can sometimes compare blind
letters in the signature with blind letters
in words in the letter, which you can
identify; but in these days of typewritten
letters there may be no such guide and the
signature may be quite unreadable.
"The best letter of recommendation that
I could receive for a young man would be
one written by himself in which each and
every word, including his signature, was
absolutely legible and clear, the signature
being of especial importance. An older
man might perhaps be pardoned for slur
ring Ins signature; a famous man might
write a signature that was quite undeci
pherable in itself but that was known
because it was associated with him in the
public mind; a rich man might write a
signature that was more or less blind and
yet that was clear enough at the bank
where it was known; but a young man or
a man publicly unknown should write his
name so that it can be read.
"An absolutely clear signature means
that the writer of it likes his own name
:;nd is ready to stand hack of it and that
he wants you to know it without possi
bility of mistake.
"When 1 see a signature like that I feel
that the writer of it is standing up like.a
man and looking me fair and square in the
eye. I feel that I know where to find him
and that I can trust him. A young man
could have very few characteristics of
habits more helpful to him than that of
writing an absolutely plain-signature."'
the same way, if anything untoward were
to happen to Philippe, Duke of Orleans,
who is childless and the recognized head
of the historic French dynasty of Bour
bon, bis younger brother Ferdinand, Duke
of Montpensier, a frequent visitor to
America and a familiar figure in New
York, would become, ipso facta, an exile
from his native land.
Otaer Cases Among Royalty.
Much in the same way that the Duke
of Orleans and Prince Victor Najiolcon
are exiled from France, ex-King Manoel
and his widowed mother, Queen Marie
Amelie, have been banished from Portu
gal. The late Don Carlos was forbidden
to set his foot on Spanish territory, anil
this prnl'ib.tion also extends to his son
and l..:r, Don Jaime, Legitimist Pretender
to the throne of Spain. Brazil has re
fused to permit Prince Louis of Orleans
Braganza, 'second son but heir of the
ex-Crown Princess of Brazil, to set foot
on Brazilian territory; and ex-Queen
Natalie, until the beginning of the pres
ent war, was barred from Serbia. In the
sume way ex-King Constantine, his Ger
man born consort, Sophia of Hohenzol
Icm, and their eldest son, George, are
banished by legislative act from Greece;
while the ex-Kbedive Abba3 remains ex
cluded from Egypt.
Of course during the present war
military and political conditions have led
to a temporary suspension of civic rights.
Thus, the English Government, by means
of the Defence of the Realm act, and also
by virtue of martial law, has not hesitated
to deport from Ireland natives regarded
as constituting an element of disorder.
Indeed, out of Great Britain the Crown,
- even in times of peace, is much less care
ful about interfering with the constitu
tional rights of the citizen. Thus Lord
Milncr, while High Commissioner of Brit
ish South Africa in 1904, ordered the ban
ishment from all South Africa of the jate
William T. Stead, editor of the London
Rcritxc of Reviews, in consequence of the
speeches which he had been delivering in
Cape Colony, Natal and in the Transvaal,
denouncing the Government.
Shipped Labor Af itetors Away.
In 1914 Gen. Botha, Premier of the
Sonth African Union, arrested ten English
labor leaders active in fomenting dis
turbances and shipped them td England, ,
his vigorous measures meeting with gen
eral approval. The Viceroy of India, in
the same way, caused the expulsion from
India of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt for using
his prestige as a former member of the
diplomatic service to encourage native Na
tionalist agitators; and later Lord Cromer
banished Blunt from Egypt for making
trouble there.
There arc other forms of banishment
which differ, however, from those cited
above, in that they are arbitrary and theo
retically illegal. Thus there arc few Gov
ernments that do not virtually impose the
penalty of exile on persons guilty of
crime by permitting them to leave the
country on the understanding that they
will be thrown into prison and subjected
to public trial and conviction in the event
of their return. They are, in one word,
relieved of the legal stigma of a felon as
long as they consent to remain abroad.
It must be thoroughly understood, how
ever, that this form of expatriation is
unconstitutional, since the authorities
have no right to concede immunity from
penalties provided by the code nor to
compound a felony by permitting a crimi
nal to retain his liberty.
Still another form of banishment is
tliat to which the monarchs of Enrope
subject those members of their family
who happen to incur their displeasure.
The Grand Dukes Paul Alexandrovitcb,
Cyril Vladimirovitch and Michael Alex
androvitch all suffered banishment from
Kussia for marrying without the sanction
of the Czar. And among others who have
t i i i a . t j- - i :
ocen uuujecicu w nival disciplinary
measures have been the ex-Crown Princess
nF S.iTonv. lier hmtlipr. the ex-Arcfcdufce
Leopold of Atrin, and the disreputable
sons of the late Prince Albert of Prussia.