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Although much has been written on the general subject of the President's pardoning power, there is still considerable confusion concerning the use of that power for the restoration of civil and political rights to persons who have been deprived of them as a punishment for crime. Particular questions frequently raised are: What rights are lost? How are they lost? How may they be restored? That the issue is a live one is supported by the fact that in the year 1938 no fewer than 203 pardons were granted by the President to restore civil rights.The confusion on the subject is due in large measure to the complexities of our federal form of government. This was clearly noted by Attorney-General Caleb Cushing in his opinion of July 9, 1856, in the case of Oliver Robbins of Sackett's Harbor, New York. Robbins was convicted in 1851, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York, of an offense against federal law, and was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary of New York. In 1852, he received from President Fillmore a general pardon.

Perhaps it is the absence of a substantial communist opposition in Great Britain that has caused Americans to be less concerned about the reactions of our British allies than of the continental nations to the recent foreign policy of the United States. However, if Americans assumed an almost universal British acceptance of the foreign policy adopted by the United States and formally adhered to by the British Government, the Bevanite revolt of early 1951 administered a sharp jolt. First, in April there were the resignations from the Government of Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Labour, former Minister of Health, and one of Labour's strongest and most popular leaders, Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade and one of the Government's young intellectuals, and John Freeman, a lesser figure but in the significant position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply. Their resignation speeches made it clear that, while the immediate cause of their departure was a new budgetary provision requiring a health service charge for dentures and spectacles, the root of their dissatisfaction lay in the burden of rearmament expenditures accepted by the Government in accordance with the main lines of U. S. policy.