that before any person should be permitted to practice in a
federal court he must take oath asserting that he had never voluntarily
borne arms against the United States, had never given aid or comfort to
enemies of the United States, and so on. Garland, who had been a
Confederate sympathizer and so was unable to take the oath, had however
received from President Johnson the same year "a full pardon 'for all
offences by him committed, arising from participation, direct or
implied, in the Rebellion,' * * *" The question before the Court was
whether, armed with this pardon, Garland was entitled to practice in the
federal courts despite the act of Congress just mentioned. Said Justice
Field for a sharply divided Court: "The inquiry arises as to the effect
and operation of a pardon, and on this point all the authorities concur.
A pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the
guilt of the offender; and when the pardon is full, it releases the
punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of
the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the
offense. If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties
and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching; [thereto],
if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities,
and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a
new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity."[134] Justice Miller
speaking for the minority protested that the act of Congress involved
was not penal in character, but merely laid down an appropriate test of
fitness to practice the law. "The man who, by counterfeiting, by theft,
by murder, or by treason, is rendered unfit to exercise the functions of
an attorney or counsellor at law, may be saved by the executive pardon
from the penitentiary or the gallows, but he is not thereby restored to
the qualifications which are essential to admission to the bar."[135]
Justice Field's language must today be regarded as much too sweeping in
light of a decision rendered in 1914 in the case of Carlesi _v._ New
York.[136] Carlesi had some years before been convicted of committing a
federal offense. In the instant case the prisoner was being tried for a
subsequent offense committed in New York. He was convicted as a second
offender, although the President had pardoned him for the earlier
federal offense. In other words, the fact of prior conviction by a
fede