implies the act of annulling, destroying, making void, or reducing to nothing. In our law, it signifies the repealing any law or statute. The leave given by a prince or judge to a criminal accuser to desist from farther prosecution of the accused; is in the most appropriate sense denominated abolition.

ABOLITION is particularly used among civilians, for remitting the punishment of a crime. It is, in this sense, a kind of amnesty; the punishment, not the infamy, is taken off.

in the Roman law, is the annulling a prosecution, or legal accusation: and in this sense, it is different from amnesty; for, in the former, the accusation might be renewed by the same prosecutor, but in the latter, it was extinguished forever. Within 30 days after a public abolition, the same accuser, with the prince's licence, was allowed to renew the charge; after a private abolition, another accuser might renew it, but the same could not. Abolition was also used for expunging a person's name from the public list of the accused, hung up in the treasury. It was either public, as that under Augustus, when all the names which had long hung up, were expunged at once; or private, when it was done at the motion of one of the parties. Abolition of debts, according to the laws of the Theodosian code, was sometimes granted to those who were indebted to the fiscus. A medal of the emperor Adrian represents that prince with a sceptre in his left hand, and a lighted torch in his right, with which he sets fire to several papers in presence of the people, who testify their joy and gratitude by raising up their hands towards heaven. The legend on the medal is, Reliqua vetera h. s. numinis abdita.