"Extortion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last with honour to itself and with usefulness to others. To-day, over in England, they are quarrelling with bitter acrimony concerning forms and outward symbols of religion, thus fulfilling the words of the Lord, 'Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter but within ye are full of extortion and excess.' Now, if the Spirit of Christ were at all in these men who thus argue, there would be no trouble about forms or symbols of faith,—there would be too much of the faith itself for any such petty disputation. Monseigneur, I swear ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... you will not be extortioned? Do you know anybody who keeps a conscience with respect to the profits he makes? Is there anybody scarcely who won't charge his neighbor more than the article is worth, if he has a chance, and call it lawful? That is extortion. It may be only asking twopence for an article worth a penny, or a 1,000 pounds for what 700 pounds should buy; it does not matter ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... on hearing this defense, understood that the cat had been a pretext for extortion, and decided that the two claims offset each other, so that no payment was ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... of it," said Andrea, who, without becoming angry, as Caderousse feared, at this new extortion, quietly resigned the ring. Caderousse looked so closely at it that Andrea well knew that he was examining to see if all ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Senate; on the other side, the equestrian order. Since the jurors were chosen from the latter, it had control of the courts, and often made an unscrupulous use of its power, especially in those courts which were established to try governors for extortion in the management of provinces (quaestiones rerum repetundarum). From the Equites, too, were taken the tax-gatherers of the provinces. They pillaged and robbed the people at will, and, if a governor ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... able. Under the consulship of Lucius Tullus and Marcus Lepidus, Publius Autronius and Publius Sylla,[109] having been tried for bribery under the laws against it,[110] had paid the penalty of the offense. Shortly after Catiline, being brought to trial for extortion,[111] had been prevented from standing for the consulship, because he had been unable to declare himself a candidate within the legitimate number of days.[112] There was at that time, too, a young patrician of the most daring spirit, needy and discontented, named Cneius Piso,[113] whom poverty ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... ambition of Themistocles to place it, his star began to sink, though he still continued for some time to enjoy the fruits of his memorable deeds. He was conscious of the services he had done his country, and never scrupled to show that he knew his own value. His extortion and avarice, which made him ready to do anything, and by which he accumulated extraordinary wealth, could not fail to raise enemies against him. But what perhaps contributed more to his downfall was his constant watchfulness ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... his hand, Potemkin dismissed the unhappy jeweller, who left that princely den of extortion a ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... rest prosper who change the open free market into a carrion-pit of extortion and a den of robbery, where the poor are daily overcharged, new burdens and high prices are imposed, and every one uses the market according to his caprice, and is even defiant and brags as though it were his fair privilege ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... A scarcity of coin was already felt in Bengal. Cossim Ali Khan, (the Nabob whom the Company's servants had lately set up, and newly expelled,) during the short period of his power, had exhausted the country by every mode of extortion; in his flight he carried off an immense treasure, which has been variously computed, but by none at less than three millions sterling. A country so exhausted of its coin, and harassed by three revolutions rapidly succeeding ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to attend to the check-issuing business it is right that the employees should bear that expense. I believe the mills at Westlake have commissaries, but I know the mill-owners and do not believe they practice any extortion. They pay off in checks. They have a monthly pay-day, and if, like railway employees, these should wait until the first Saturday after the 5th or 10th of each month they could draw their wages in cash. No mill ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... worth no more. I will give you this check to-night. You will cash it in the morning. I shall have the cancelled check as a voucher. If ever you ask me for a dollar more, you go to State's Prison for extortion—on the testimony of these three witnesses. My legal department is the best in the country. In short, it is worth fifty thousand dollars to me. It is not worth fifty thousand and one. Also, you sail to London within ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... All this persecution merely aroused public sympathy for Mrs. Grey, and she found her bread becoming immensely popular. The boycotters then demanded $2500 for paying their boycott expenses. When news of this attempt at extortion was made public, it heightened the tide of sympathy, the courts took up the matter, and the boycott failed. The New York Boycotter, a journal devoted to this form of coercion, declared: "In boycotting we believe it to be legitimate to strike a man financially, socially, ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... Then, through Townsend, the unknown principal demanded that a larger sum should be handed over as an evidence of good faith on her part before he would consider further negotiations. This, though, turned out to be only the beginning of the extortion processes. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... "When this system of extortion was successfully launched the Trust determined to reward its patrons, as a means of pacifying ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... peoples by making it more difficult to negotiate loans in the markets of the world to subdue their outbreaks. For it firmly rejected in the Cuban adjustments the immoral doctrine that an ill-treated and revolting colony, after gaining its freedom, must still submit to the extortion from it of the cost of the parent country's unsuccessful efforts to subdue it. We therefore left the so-called Cuban bonds on the hands of the Power that issued them, or of the reckless lenders who advanced the money. At the same time the United States strained a point elsewhere in the direction ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... would have made the Commission effective, or even provide funds for the Commission to carry on its work, even had the Commissioners been so inclined, California has been left helpless to oppose any extortion which the railroad might see fit to exact. The system of charging all that the traffic will bear has governed utterly. For this the Southern Pacific Company can thank, and the People ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... and saw the breast Like a rough ocean—ne'er at rest: Fear, guilt, and conscience gnawed the heart; Extortion ever made it smart— It seemed as if no sunlit gleam Could brighten ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... castles he sat silent and woful, apparently incapacitated for any exertion whatever, either bodily or mental. The affairs of his realm were neglected, and his bailiffs and feudal chiefs, left with irresponsible power, were guilty of such acts of extortion and tyranny, that, in the province of Suabia the barons combined, and a fierce insurrection broke out. Forty important towns united in the confederacy, and secured the co-operation of Strasburg, Mentz and other large ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... goodnesse Of gleaning all the Lands wealth into one, Into your owne hands (Card'nall) by Extortion: The goodnesse of your intercepted Packets You writ to'th Pope, against the King: your goodnesse Since you prouoke me, shall be most notorious. My Lord of Norfolke, as you are truly Noble, As you respect the common good, the State Of our despis'd Nobilitie, our Issues, (Whom ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... "What extortion!" cried Isabel, with an indignation that secretly unnerved him. He trembled upon the verge of confession; but he had finally the moral force to resist. He suffered her to compute the cost of their stay at Niagara without allowing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that they keep themselves from the deadly danger of ambitious glory. And if a man fall into it, there followeth upon it a whole flood of all unhappy mischief: arrogant manner, high solemn bearing, overlooking the poor in word and countenance, displeasant and disdainful behaviour, ravine, extortion, oppression, hatred ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... jury to find the latter guilty of the capital charge brought against him. Many of the lawyers, indeed, were of opinion, that the man's last story was true, that he had found the clothes, and, being a desperate character and in needy circumstances, had written the letter for purposes of extortion. Of this offence only was he found guilty, and condemned, as a vagrant and impostor, to a few months' imprisonment. By the American laws no severer punishment could be awarded. The one, however, was far from satisfying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... without paying it; the hope of gain will always surmount the fear of punishment. If, when the veteran has served you at the risque of life, you withold his hire; it will be in vain to threaten usury and extortion with imprisonment and fines. If, in your armies, you suffer it to be any man's interest, rather to preserve the life of a horse than a man; be assured, that your own sword is drawn for your enemy: for there will always be some, in whom interest is stronger than humanity and honour. ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... footman—however wounded at her obstinate rejection, have been likely, in pursuit of no legal rights, to have alarmed her by threatening letters and intrusions, for no purpose but one confessedly of pecuniary extortion? From the very mode of pursuing his claim it is plain that Savage felt it to be a false one. It seems, also, to be forgotten by most readers, that at this day real sons—not denied to be such—are continually banished, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Censorinus impeached him of extortion, for having exacted a vast sum of money from a well-affected and associate kingdom. However, Censorinus did not appear at the trial, but dropped his accusation. His quarrel, meantime, with Marius began to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... were called two perilous knights, the one knight hight Sir Edward of the Red Castle, and the other Sir Hue of the Red Castle; and these two brethren had disherited the Lady of the Rock of a barony of lands by their extortion. And as this knight was lodged with this lady she made her complaint to him of ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... and the laws disappeared. The rope was loosened from the very neck of the robber if he had anything of value to promise the king; while the popular courts of shires and hundreds were forced to become engines of extortion, probably by the employment of the sheriffs, who were allowed to summon them, not according to the old practice, but when and where it suited their convenience. The machinery of the state and the interpretation of its laws were, in days ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... abduction, ablation; subtraction, withdrawal &c 38; abstraction, ademption^; adrolepsy^. dispossession; deprivation, deprivement^; bereavement; divestment; disherison^; distraint, distress; sequestration, confiscation; eviction &c 297. rapacity, rapaciousness, extortion, vampirism; theft &c 791. resumption; reprise, reprisal; recovery &c 775. clutch, swoop, wrench; grip &c (retention) 781; haul, take, catch; scramble. taker, captor. [Descent of one of the earth's crustal plates under another plate] subduction [Geol.]. V. take, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... A low Nile and a famine resulted in a demand for an investigation into the administration, and the following year Ismail was obliged to authorise a commission of inquiry. The waste, extravagance, and wholesale extortion from the peasantry revealed by this report made a deep impression upon Europe, and Ismail was forced to disgorge the estates which he had received ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... met elsewhere was very chary of his opinions, and confined himself to the "hope that England would see her way to compensate the Church and the country for centuries of extortion and oppression." This he thought was a matter of "common honesty." He did not exactly suggest a perpetual church-rate for the benefit of the Catholics of Ireland, but the thing is on the cards, and may be proposed by Mr. Gladstone later on. Something ought to ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... mask. Miss Tinne wished to hire, for the accommodation of her people, a small zeribah, or camp, containing two tents; and Biselli named thirty dollars as the rent, but when Miss Tinne's servants began to store the baggage, he suddenly raised his demand to two hundred. This attempt at extortion was promptly and firmly refused; he then reduced the charge to forty dollars, which was paid. Soon afterwards the caravan was in need of dourra, and recourse was had to Biselli. The knave, presuming on their necessity, charged forty times more than the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... away from Westminster. Some, it is charitably supposed, have gone to look after their allotments. Others, it is believed, have been kept away by a different reason. The taxicab-drivers, men constitutionally averse from extortion, have refused to enter the railway-station yards so long as the companies persist in exacting from them a whole penny for the privilege. Consequently some of our week-ending legislators are reported to be interned at Waterloo and Paddington, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... indulge." When he asked an hostler to call him early in the morning, he was answered that—he might call himself and be d——d. In the Western country he found no symptoms of hospitality—witnessed only idleness and licentiousness, and experienced every where brutal rudeness and unbounded extortion. The western people usually combine in cheating all travellers, and sometimes "rifle," that is shoot residents among them who do not choose to descend to their own level. In Illinois "a party ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... declines to accept a girl already selected." Similarly the educated Prabhus are beginning to dispense with the astrologer's calculations showing the agreement of the horoscopes of the couple, which are too often made a cloak for the extortion of large presents. "It very often happens that everything is amicably settled except the greed of the priest, and he manages to find out some disagreement between the horoscopes of the marriageable parties to vent his anger. This trick has been sufficiently exposed, and the educated portion ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... fighting Tammany that dealt the cards and took all the tricks, and for that fight New York owes him a debt it hardly yet knows of. Besides, though those raids hastened the process, it was already well underway. The police extortion of itself would have finished it in time. A blackmailer in the long run always kills the goose that lays his golden egg. His greed gets the better of his sense. The interview I quoted was not a plea for legalizing wrong. That will get us no farther. It was rather a ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were arrested, and the King put to torture Guy Fawkes and the other prisoners with royal vigor. A very intense love story ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... of adverse comment upon the mine owners' lawlessness in the organs of capitalist opinion, while they poured forth torrents of righteous indignation at the lawlessness of the miners. When labor leaders, like the late Sam Parks, for example, are accused of extortion and receiving bribes, the employers and their retainers, through pulpit, press, and every other avenue of public opinion, denounce the culprit, the bribe taker, in unmeasured terms—but the bribe giver is excused, or, at worst, only lightly criticised. These are but a few common illustrations ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... that whatever route was used, the benefit to the particular section of the Isthmus through which it passed would be so great that the country controlling this part would be eager to facilitate the building of the canal. It is out of the question to submit to extortion on the part of a beneficiary of the scheme. All the labor, all the expense, all the risk are to be assumed by us and all the skill shown by us. Those controlling the ground through which the canal is to be put are wholly incapable of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... up. It might well be, for the odds were great against him, that it was to this day that all his life had led up; that life by which men would by-and-by judge him, recalling this and that, this chicane and that extortion, thanking God that he was dead, or perhaps one here and there shrugging his shoulders ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... different spirit, however, from that of romance or of knight-errantry which inspired the bosoms of the citizens whose acclamations now rent the air on her approach. They beheld in the princess whom they welcomed the daughter of that Henry who had redeemed the land from papal tyranny and extortion; the sister of that young and godly Edward,—the Josiah of English story,—whose pious hand had reared again the altars of pure and primitive religion; and they had bodied forth for her instruction and admonition, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... that such abuses have been discovered in the commissariate transactions of the province of Oran, that the Law is making inquiries. The peculation is self-evident, and the guilty persons are known. If severe measures are not taken, we shall continue to lose more men through the extortion that limits their rations than by Arab steel or the fierce heat of the climate. We await further information before enlarging on this deplorable business. We need no longer wonder at the terror caused by ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of it out. Also here in Venice the dames turn their black hair yellow by the sun and art, to be wiser than Him who made them. Ye enter no Italian town without a bill of health, though now is no plague in Europe. This peevishness is for extortion's sake. The innkeepers cringe and fawn, and cheat, and in country places murder you. Yet will they give you clean sheets by paying therefor. Delicate in eating, and abhor from putting their hand in the plate; sooner they will apply a crust or what not. They do even tell of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and glory of his rule shrank from its terrible ruthlessness. He was charged with having sold for a vast sum the services of British troops to crush the free tribes of the Rohillas, with having wrung half-a-million by extortion from the Rajah of Benares, with having extorted by torture and starvation more than a million from the Princesses of Oudh. He was accused of having kept his hold upon power by measures as unscrupulous, and with having murdered a native who opposed him by an abuse of the forms ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... it. Langdon remained the district attorney. Though Ruef imposed every possible obstacle, the Grand Jury was impaneled, November 7, and began its work of investigation with such startling celerity that Ruef and Schmitz faced charges of extortion on five ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... years of the Christian era did not pass away without several insurrections on the part of the Jews, and repeated acts of severity and extortion inflicted upon them by their stern conquerors. The commotion excited by Judas, called the Gallilean, is regarded by historians as one of the most important of those ebullitions which were constantly breaking forth among that inflammatory people, not only on account of its ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... domestic unhappiness in a measure canceled his guilt—so, at least, said the code under which Lorelei lived. What concerned her far more than the moral complexion of the liaison, was her brother's connection with the unlawful scheme of extortion. Jim, she saw, had gone wrong with a vengeance, and the consequences to him troubled her, for in spite of all that he might be or do she cherished a sisterly affection for him. Family ties were very real and very strong to her—strong ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... deprive the other half of education, of all opportunities to rise in the world, of all property rights and all family ties, merely to make them more convenient tools for their profit and luxury, then every injustice and extortion, which oppresses the laboring man in any ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... to deny that, in the great art of inspiring large masses of human beings with confidence and attachment, no ruler ever surpassed Hastings. If he had made himself popular with the English by giving up the Bengalese to extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had conciliated the Bengalese and alienated the English, there would have been no cause for wonder. What is peculiar to him is that, being the chief of a small band of strangers who exercised ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... governorship, Felix began to show himself as wicked as his brother. The violence, misrule, extortion, and cruelty which went on in Judaea was notorious. He caused the high-priest at Jerusalem to be murdered out of spite. Drusilla, his wife, he had taken away from a Syrian king, who was her lawful husband. Making money seems to have been his great object; ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... in Europe by never going to church, though and while she actually lived in a disestablished and disendowed monastery. To punish them for which (the non sequitur is intentional) she does little but talk of dirt, discomfort, bad food, extortion, foul-smelling oil and garlic, varying the talk only to foul-smelling oil and garlic, extortion, bad food, discomfort, or dirt. The book no doubt yields some of her finest passages of descriptive prose, both as regards landscape, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... The other tribes, allies of the French, were of the same mind; and their respect for their Great Father seems not to have been permanently impaired by his occasional practice of bullying them for purposes of extortion. Frontenac appears to have had a liking not only for Indians, but also for that roving and lawless class of the Canadian population, the coureurs de bois, provided always that they were not in the service of his rivals. Indeed, as regards the Canadians ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... another side to the picture. Many of the corporations sought to become monopolies and to make profits, not by economies and good management, but by extortion from purchasers. Sometimes they mercilessly crushed small business men, their competitors, bribed members of legislatures to secure favorable laws, and contributed to the campaign funds of both leading parties. Wherever ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... whole length. This voyage, which in our times can be performed in a month, most probably then took eighteen. Transit and customs duties must have been paid over and over again, and there must have been plenty of extortion. All this will explain how pepper could not be sold in the Roman market under fifty-six times its prime cost. Immediately previous to the discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope, we find that the price of pepper in the markets of Europe had fallen to 6s a pound, or ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... he say? What I said didn't make a bit of difference. He made proclamation that any reasonable price I might name he would consider. He wouldn't submit to what he called 'extortion' of course, but he would be perfectly fair, and all that. I kept sayin' no and he kept sayin' yes. Our talk got more and more sultry long towards the last of it. He told me that he made it a p'int to get what he wanted and he was goin' to get it now. One thing ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... It's absurdly simple. I need some getaway money. I ought to have it—and I'm going to get it by the oldest known method—extortion through intimidation. Your father is a smart man and he will see ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... also to establish prices, but not in order to limit the profits of the farmers, but only to guarantee to them when necessary a minimum price which will insure them a profit where they are asked to attempt new crops and to secure the consumer against extortion by breaking up corners and attempts at speculation, when they occur, by fixing temporarily a reasonable price at which middlemen ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... not justifying extortion) when it is drawn by the millionaire, not only because his labor did not earn the principal, but because he has the power to take it out of the country where it was earned. And he does take it out thereby impoverishing the country of the capital that is needed to carry on ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... castle of Malmsbach on the Pegnitz would lately have been bought by the city for a thousand Rhenish gulden, but that Master Ulrich Rummel, whose it was, would not part with it. And we were now required to pay the price of two dozen such strongholds! It was indeed an unheard-of and devilish extortion; and when Kubbeling came to hear of it he turned his wild-cat-skin pocket inside out, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eagerness among all the military officers of the state to be appointed to the command. They each felt sure that they should conquer in the contest, and they could enrich themselves still more rapidly by the spoils of victory in war, than by extortion and bribes in the government of a province in peace. Then, besides, a victorious general coming back to Rome always found that his military renown added vastly to his influence and power in the city. He was welcomed with celebrations ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... Mr. Martin! Guilty all the way down the line—conspiracy, extortion, kidnapping, and all the others. The only 'not guilty' verdict was a minor one. They decided that Hedgepeth wasn't involved in the actual kidnapping itself, and therefore wasn't guilty of the physical assault ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the parish of St. Peter, Saffron Hill. Hatton Garden derives its name from the family of Hatton, who for many years held possession of house and grounds in the vicinity of Ely Place, having settled upon the Bishops of Ely like parasites, and grown rich by extortion from their unwilling hosts. The district was separated from St. Andrew's in 1832, and became an independent ecclesiastical parish seven years later. As the Liberty of Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, and Ely ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... mismanagement, negligence, or connivance of the supreme magistrates. Of the conduct of the officials in the provinces, of their luxurious living at the expense of the public purse, of their embezzlement more especially of the spoil, of the incipient system of bribery and extortion, we shall speak in the sequel. How the state fared generally as regarded the farming of its revenues and the contracts for supplies and buildings, may be estimated from the circumstance, that the senate resolved in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... alone knew the channels by which this money was to flow. His exhausted personal fortune, his costly tastes, his attachment to a seductive woman, Madame de Beauvert, sister to Rivarol; his intimacy with men of unprincipled character and irregular habits,—reports of extortion charged on his ministry, and falling, if not on him on those he trusted, tarnished his character in the eyes of Madame Roland and her husband. Probity is the virtue of democrats, for the people look first at the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... denarii. This fixes the value of the denarius as .4352 cent, or approximately four-tenths of a cent. It is implied in the introduction that the purpose of the law is to protect the people, and especially the soldiers, from extortion, but possibly, as Buecher has surmised, the emperor may have wished to maintain or to raise the value of the denarius, which had been steadily declining because of the addition of alloy to the coin. If ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... which are really male brothels, the inmates being sexually normal working men and boys, out of employment or in quest of a few marks as pocket money; these places are regarded by inverts as very safe, as the proprietors insist on good order and allow no extortion, while the police, though of course aware of their existence, never interfere. Homosexual cafes for women are ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... be followed by the flood of luxury and extravagance, which will drive them from place to place to the very Land's End; and there, I suppose, they will be obliged to ship themselves to some other country. Bath is become a mere sink of profligacy and extortion. Every article of house-keeping is raised to an enormous price; a circumstance no longer to be wondered at, when we know that every petty retainer of fortune piques himself upon keeping a table, and thinks it is for the honour of his character to wink ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of her paternal inheritance. Unsuccessful in schemes of conquest, and in political intrigue, as an oppressor of the Netherlands, he nearly carried out his plans. Those provinces he regarded merely as a bank to draw upon. His immediate intercourse with the country was confined to the extortion of vast requests. These were granted with ever-increasing reluctance, by the estates. The new taxes and excises, which the sanguinary extravagance of the duke rendered necessary, could seldom be collected in the various cities without tumults, sedition, and bloodshed. Few princes were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... money or labor being previously fixed at as low a rate as possible. That the officers, viz., Patingi, Bandar, and Tumangong, were to receive stated salaries out of this revenue, in order to prevent any extortion, either by themselves or in their name; and that they were to be answerable for the whole revenue under my superintendence. That the Dyaks were to be treated the same as the Malays, their property ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... intention of resorting to this method of earning a subsistence, but had drifted into his evil practices by degrees. In the first instance he had quitted the bar in consequence of having been connected with a scandalous case of extortion and blackmailing, in which he had been suspected of constructing forged documents for his client, though the crime had not been proved against him. His reputation, however, had been ruined, and he had been forced to seek his bread elsewhere. It chanced that the former librarian of the Montevarchi ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... cherished by the Common People Cruelties of the Soldiers in the West; Kirke Jeffreys sets out on the Western Circuit Trial of Alice Lisle The Bloody Assizes Abraham Holmes Christopher Battiseombe; The Hewlings Punishment of Tutchin Rebels Transported Confiscation and Extortion Rapacity of the Queen and her Ladies Grey; Cochrane; Storey Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson Jeffreys made Lord Chancellor Trial and Execution of Cornish Trials and Executions of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt Trial and Execution of Bateman ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Hamilton, does not invite competition from abroad, but is based on the controlling principle that competition at home will always prevent monopoly on the part of the capitalist, assure good wages to the laborer, and defend the consumer against the evils of extortion. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... announced) had been caused in Perth and its neighborhood, by the exposure of an anonymous attempt at extortion, of which a lady of distinction had lately been made the object. As her name had already been publicly mentioned in an application to the magistrates, there could be no impropriety in stating that the lady in question was Mrs. Glenarm—whose approaching union with the Honorable Geoffrey Delamayn ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... against Charles I., who, we may observe, may have had something to do with the death of his father, just as Marie de Medicis may have had something to do with the death of her husband. There was a rupture between Charles I. and the peerage. The lords who, under James I., had tried at their bar extortion, in the person of Bacon, under Charles I. tried treason, in the person of Stratford. They had condemned Bacon; they condemned Stratford. One had lost his honour, the other lost his life. Charles I. was first beheaded in the person of Stratford. The Lords lent their aid to the Commons. The king ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... pockets, but all the coins I had were a sixpenny and a threepenny piece—not enough to pay for a night's lodging, I was sure. The cabman's extortion, and a half-crown I had given to the porter at Paddington in my haste, had ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... that so much severity should be used to so little purpose. They did not see the justice of robbing one set of rogues to fatten another. In a few months all the more guilty had been brought to punishment, and the Chamber of Justice looked for victims in humbler walks of life. Charges of fraud and extortion were brought against tradesmen of good character in consequence of the great inducements held out to common informers. They were compelled to lay open their affairs before this tribunal in order to establish their innocence. The voice of complaint resounded from every side; and at the expiration ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the better order of guests; they seemed to delight in the opportunity of humbling a European—all along the road when the king is expected the people are patiently waiting as for some dreadful disaster; plague, pestilence or famine are nothing to the misery of being subject to the violence and extortion ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... creditors his territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and mines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the false names of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... evening, in the midst of a pouring rain, I reached a little hamlet opposite Santa Cruz. The market-vessel had left; our attempts to get a boat to take us across to the village only led to barefaced attempts at extortion, so I entered one of the largest of the hamlet's houses, which was occupied by a widow and her daughter. After some delay my request for a night's lodging was granted. I sent for some oil, to give me a little light, and something ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... had managed to disrupt the Jewish communal organization and rob the Kahal of all its authority by degrading it to a kind of posse for the capture of recruits and extortion of taxes. But while the Jewish masses hated the Kahal elders, they retained their faith in their spiritual leaders, the rabbis and Tzaddiks. [1] Heeding the command of these leaders, they closed their ranks, and offered stubborn resistance to the dangerous cultural influences ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... people were frightfully overtaxed, illegal fees were charged for every service, juries were packed, and costs of suits at law made exorbitant. The officers of the law were insolent and arbitrary, and by trickery and extortion managed to rob many settlers of their property. And this was the more hateful to the people from the fact that much of the money raised was known to go into the pockets of officials and much of it was used by Governor Tryon in building ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Essie Scofield. Stephen would advise him shrewdly, taking advantage of the law, or skilfully overcoming its obstacles. He had unbounded faith in the power of money where Essie was concerned; at the same time he had no intention of laying himself open to endless extortion, threats, almost inevitable, ultimate scandal. What a bog he had strayed into, a quagmire reaching about him in every direction. He must discover firmer ground ahead, release from the act of that other man, his youth. The ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... provinces the change from senatorial to imperial government at Rome was a great gain, inasmuch as it substituted an orderly and responsible administration for irregular and irresponsible extortion. For a long time, too, it was no part of the imperial policy to interfere with local customs and privileges. But, in the absence of a representative system, the centralizing tendency inseparable from the position of such a government proved to be irresistible. And the strength of this ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... law can be adopted, no impost established, without the consent of those whom this law is to govern, the public cannot be robbed without being first deceived. Our ignorance is the "raw material" of all extortion which is practised upon us, and we may be sure in advance that every sophism is the forerunner of a spoliation. Good public, when you see a sophism, clap your hand on your pocket; for that is certainly the point at which ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... to have anything to say in the matter. In our hands it will be a very valuable possession, and certainly our stay here would be of inestimable advantage to the natives, as we should govern Egypt as we govern India, and do away with the tyranny, oppression, and extortion of the native officials." ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... representative had ridden him down; not, he alleged, by misadventure, but from a deep-rooted malignity against all poor but honest men struggling for a livelihood. No butcher, observe, answers this description. Butchers are a class apart, whose motives are extortion, grease, and blood. They wallow in the last with joy, and practise the first with impunity. If they can get a chance to run over you, they'll do it! Trust them for that! Nevertheless, so hopeless would this butcher's case be if his victim went ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Castlereagh's young diplomatists was despatched into a village in quest of donkeys for their accommodation. The attache returned by and by with a face of disappointment, complaining that the charge the people made was so extravagant, {p.063} he could not think of yielding to the extortion. "Marshal Forwards" said nothing, but nodded to an aide-de-camp. They had passed a Prussian picket a little while before;—three times the requisite number of donkeys appeared presently, driven before half-a-dozen hussars, who were ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... night, as one day in the place will afford all the time absolutely necessary to visit and enjoy its most notable objects. A prepared luncheon basket should be taken from Madrid. This will obviate the necessity of encountering the dirt, unsavory food, and extortion of the fifth-rate hotels of Toledo. It has been said that banditti have been suppressed in Spain; perhaps so, on the public roads. It may be they have gone into the hotel business, as a safer and less conspicuous mode of robbing travelers. At Toledo the rule ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... troops. The latter, from their intolerable insolence and rapine, became formidable only to their friends; and the approach of Fairfax was hailed, even in the best-disposed districts, as a signal of deliverance from the galling yoke of military extortion. Goring, the soldier's darling, who combined all the alluring qualities of a demi-god, was found to want the distinguishing marks of a Christian hero. Possessed neither of self-command, obedience, nor fortitude, he was ever ready to dash ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... in Western City, beginning with a "Bolshevik stump speech" to a mob of striking tailors. It appears that the prophet had gone to the Hebrew quarter of the city, and finding a woman railing at a butcher because of "alleged extortion," had begun a speech, inciting a mob, so that the police reserves had to be called out, and a riot was narrowly averted. From there the prophet had gone to the Labor Temple, announcing himself to the reporters as "fresh from God," with a message to "Mobland," his name for what he prophesied ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... were turned to the north-east. Yussuf rode behind Rupert and Edgar by turns, so as to divide the labour between the two heiries. A few villages were passed, but the inhabitants fled into their houses or into the fields on seeing the approach of the party, the arrival of strangers meaning extortion and demands for tribute. So they journeyed for several days, until one afternoon they came to a large village, which was evidently inhabited. They alighted and knocked at the door of the principal house. No answer was at first returned, ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... as a chastisement for an injustice committed by that monarch, who, according to an old chronicle, had deprived a woman, who had vowed herself to a religious life, of a cow, which was her only means of support. It is more probable, however, that the motive was not quite so chivalric, and that extortion of a tribute to which he had no right was the real cause. The high character for probity unanimously attributed to Guaire, makes it extremely unlikely that he should have committed ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... gigantic step. In the early disturbances of the Peninsula, the Jews, by those habits of trade, and mutual communion, which still make them the lords of commerce, had acquired the chief wealth of the country. The close of the Moorish war in the 15th century had left the Spanish monarch at leisure for extortion; and he grasped at the Jewish gains in the spirit of a robber, as he pursued his plunder with the cruelty of a barbarian. The inquisition was the great machine, the comprehensive torturer, ready to squeeze out alike the heart and the gold. In 1481, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... are more particularly informed by Col. Hawker, is reduced to a perfect system in London, and carried on by a set of fellows who, by their cunning and peculiar knack, are enabled to avoid all detection in their nefarious traffic, and thus, by extortion of rewards or sales of stolen dogs, reap a rich harvest for the whole fraternity from the well-stored pockets of the numerous ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... patient Bering. One can easily believe that the God-speed from the Siberians was sincere; for the local governors used the orders for tribute to enrich themselves; and the country-side groaned under a heavy burden of extortion. The second winter was passed at Yakutsk, where the ships that were to chart the Arctic coast of Siberia were built and launched with crews of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... prodigality during the course of the great emergency and after it was over, the Office of Works perhaps, upon the whole, took precedence over all rivals. Its prodigality was, to do it justice, tempered by extortion. Did the system of commandeering hotels and mammoth blocks of offices create new Departments of State? Or did the creation of new Departments of State precede the commandeering of the hotels and blocks of offices? Were the owners and occupiers of the blocks of ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Christianity, whose corruptions had converted the most beneficent of religions into the most baneful of superstitions, perpetuated every abuse of Roman tyranny, and added new oppressions and new methods of extortion to those invented by older despotisms. The burdens in question fell most heavily on the provinces that had been longest colonized by the Latin race, and those are the portions of Europe which have suffered ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... many a promising young fellow's hopes. There are two tariffs for everything—one for natives, the other for the British subaltern and the British tourist; and the British subaltern and the British tourist are foolish enough to submit to the extortion in most cases. With some half-dozen honourable exceptions, the traders are what is popularly known as "Jews" in their mode of dealing. They cozen on principle, sell articles that will not last, and charge preposterous prices for them; they impose upon the young officer's ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of such extortion in the peace with Austria and with Bavaria that he was complained against by those Powers and therefore removed—it was he who advised the war with Spain, and prevented N. from seeing the Duke d'Enghien, whom he thought a "brave jeune homme," and ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... life: not that it is dull to me, a curious spectator, but how the men with nothing to do can endure it is a wonder. I went yesterday to call on a Turk at Karnac; he is a gentlemanly man, the son of a former Moudir, who was murdered, I believe, for his cruelty and extortion. He has 1,000 feddans (acres, or a little more) of land, and lives in a mud house, larger but no better than any fellahs, with two wives and the brother of one of them. He leaves the farm to his fellaheen altogether, I fancy. There was one book, a Turkish one; ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... departed, and he was deprived of his lordly estates, began to engage in business of all kinds, and, finding in the Jewish trader a rival with whose skill and diligence he could seldom compete, he became embittered against the entire race. This was the cause of the innumerable restrictions, the extortion, and exploitation in Russo-Poland, which surpassed ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... some had no sewers, and where sewers existed they were generally choked up. Great numbers died of gaol-fever and small-pox. In about half the county gaols debtors had no allowance of bread. Everywhere prisoners were exposed to extortion, and were sometimes detained in gaol after acquittal for non-payment of the gaolers' fees. Such was the state of things in 1773 when John Howard began to inquire into the condition of the prisons. He roused the attention of parliament and of the public to these ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... their fee. After spending at least L500 in this way, found there was an additional fee of a hundred guineas for "induction into the temporalities." As there are no temporalities nowadays, this is simply extortion. Remarked so to the Dean, who replied (nastily, I think), "Oh, it's for the interest of the Church not to have paupers for Prelates." I retorted at once, rather ably, that "I could not conceive a better plan for bringing Prelates to pauperism than the exaction of extortionate fees ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... should perform sacrifices with such wealth as is willingly paid into his treasury by prosperous and unpersecuted subjects. Sacrifices should never be performed with wealth acquired by severity and extortion. The king should then perform great sacrifices with large presents in the shape of Dakshina, when in consequence of his being devoted to the good of his subjects, the latter bathe him with copious showers of wealth brought willingly by them for the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... civil discord was composed, he preferred a charge of extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, a man of consular dignity, who had obtained the honour of a triumph. On the acquittal of the accused, he resolved to retire to Rhodes [13], with the view not only of avoiding the public odium (4) which ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... ones done, Of Edward's youths, and Clarence hapless son, O Jane, why didst thou dye in flow'ring prime? Because of royal stem, that was thy crime. For bribery, Adultery and lyes, Where is the nation I can't parallize? With usury, extortion and oppression, These be the Hydraes of my stout transgression. These be the bitter fountains, heads and roots, Whence flowed the source, the sprigs, the boughs, and fruits, Of more than thou canst hear or I relate, That with high hand I still did perpetrate; For these were threatened ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... to these expedients an eligible plan could be devised for promoting civilization among the friendly tribes and for carrying on trade with them upon a scale equal to their wants and under regulations calculated to protect them from imposition and extortion, its influence in cementing their interest with ours could ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... to get a salary of 400l. annexed to it,[13] though all the records there are not worth half-a-crown, either for curiosity or use. And we lately saw a favourite secretary descend to be master of the revels, which by his credit and extortion he hath made pretty considerable.[14] I say nothing of the under-treasurership worth about 8000l. a year, nor the commissioners of the revenue, four of whom generally live in England; For I think none of these are granted ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... punishment of the Sepoys took place, however, in Clive's absence (1760-1765). Marshman, I, p. 305, says of this Munroe only that he was "an officer of undaunted resolution"! Clive himself was acquitted by his own countrymen of theft, robbery, and extortion; but the Hindus have not acquitted him or Hastings; nor will Christianity ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... kidnap babies and carry them up into trees. But these are never harmed and the apes are ever ready to exchange them for bananas. The robbery is, no doubt, for the purpose of extortion. If perchance one of their children is stolen, the entire forest sets up a scream and wail until it is returned. Old hunters and travellers say that they would rather steal the child of a native savage than to take one of the sokos. If one of the soko children ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... had it?' said Percy, ironically. 'So you approve her marrying an old rogue and miser, who had heaped up his hoards by extortion of wretched Indians and Spaniards, the very scum of Mammon, coming to ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... many have already been hired, and how many are left in the stable. He must then inscribe his name, the hour of his departure, and the number of horses he requires. By this arrangement deception and extortion are prevented, as every thing is open, and the prices ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... him!" cried the people.— "Now as we ourselves have suffered Quite enough by this sad war, and Many lost their goods and chattels; And because 'tis pledged in writing As one of our privileges, That there shall be no new taxes E'er imposed upon this country, Many this demand consider As a most unjust extortion, Think we should stand up most firmly For our ancient rights by charter, And should never pay a farthing." —"Not a farthing!" cried the people.— "So we summoned you together For ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... progress. The importance of good roads as a source of wealth, and a mark of civilization, is just beginning to be understood by agricultural people, and by rural populations generally. Oppressed on every hand by the universal extortion of railroad monopoly, they are slowly awakening to a realization of the fact, that the question of cheap transportation, is for them, the one, overshadowing question, which demands ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... made a demand upon me for anchorage in the river, amounting to no less than 6000 tahel, and, to quicken the payment, annexed a penalty to this extortion of 500 tahel for every day the payment was delayed. There were no means to avoid this gross imposition; and though a day necessarily elapsed before I could send up the money, I had to add the penalty of that day, so that he received 6500 tahel, or L. 2166:13:4 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... have set the example, when they thought themselves aggrieved. The Tyranny, Oppression and Extortion of the Spaniards in the higher Ranks, will dispose the Native Descendants of the original Inhabitants, and doubtless, many of the Native Spaniards, in the lower Ranks, to imitate ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... was informed was four crowns. No sooner had the desired information been given than the proprietor of the opposite shop rushed in, and offered him the same article for three crowns. The original merchant, not at all surprised at the intrusion, and not the least apologising for his former extortion, then demanded two. His rival, being more than his match, he courteously dropped upon his knee, and requested his customer to accept the article gratis, for his sake. The generous dealer would infallibly ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... took the execution of the law in his own hand, and horsewhipped the party. Thus he involved himself in several law-suits, that drained him of pretty large sums of money. He seemed particularly incensed at the least appearance of oppression; and supported divers poor tenants against the extortion of their landlords. Nay, he has been known to travel two hundred miles as a volunteer, to offer his assistance in the cause of a person, who he heard was by chicanery and oppression wronged of a ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... a wicked piece of extortion, as the same article in the town, where, of course, it was in greater request, only brought three-pence ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... employed in, industry it earns its rate of interest or profit. There are nowadays many wise and earnest people who think that this interest or profit taken by capital is not earned at all but is wrung out of the workers by a process of extortion. If this view is correct then all finance, international and other, is organized robbery, and instead of writing and reading books about it, we ought to be putting financiers into prison and making a bonfire of their bonds and shares and stock certificates. But, with all deference to ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... point some thought, and decided that the attempted extortion need not make any difference with Clementina, if she could get the right terms. He said he did not believe the padrone was a bad fellow, but he liked to take advantage of a stranger when he could; we all did. When he came to talk with him he found him a man of heart if not of conscience. He entered ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Western Europe to CIS; vulnerable to money laundering despite improved legislation due to nascent enforcement capabilities and comparatively weak regulation of offshore companies and the gaming industry; organized crime (including counterfeiting, corruption, extortion, stolen cars, and prostitution) ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... very simple, gentlemen, and it is this: Take with you a man who knows the country well, who can act as guide, and from his frequent travels there can speak two or three languages—a faithful trusty fellow who will watch over you, guard you from extortion, and be ready to fight, if needs be, or force the people he comes among to give you or ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... whether, as an honest man, he could render political support to any one who had participated in its corruption or recognized the justice of those principles on which it had been carried. All this gave M'Clutchy that imperturbable insolence which is inseparable from petty tyranny and licensed extortion. Day after day did his character come out in all its natural deformity. The outcry against him was not now confined to this portion of the property, or that—it became pretty general; and, perhaps, at the time ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the Money-Lenders.—A Rouleau, or two, would prove a pretty sort of an Expedition. I hate Extortion. ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... private corporations as may be allowed to occupy this field. Unreasonable restrictions upon the borrowing power of cities by placing obstacles in the way of municipal ownership of public utilities tend to deprive the people of the most effective safeguard against the extortion of private monopolies. ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... Temple was seized by a profligate governor of Asia. The Roman aristocrats during the last years of the Republic were a degenerate body; they regarded a governorship as the opportunity of unlimited extortion, the means of recouping themselves for all the gross expenses incurred on attaining office, and of making themselves and their friends affluent for the rest of their lives. And Judea ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... ascribed to the trusts were social or political. In a social way they were believed to check individualism and to create too large a proportion of subordinates to independent producers. As monopolies, they were believed to threaten extortion through high price. It was strongly suspected of the largest trusts that having destroyed all competition they could fix prices at pleasure. Economists pointed out that such price could hardly be high and yet remunerative ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... defending his friends. Hortensius, when Consul elect, had undertaken to defend Verres. Cicero defended Murena when he was Consul. He defended C. Calpurnius Piso also, who was accused, as were so many, of proconsular extortion; but whether in this year or in the preceding is not, I think, known.[156] Of his speech on that occasion we have nothing remaining. Of his pleading for Murena we have, if not the whole, the material part, and, though nobody cares very much for Murena now, the oration is very ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... another and with Europeans is scrupulously honest; a present is divided equally amongst many, without a syllable of discontent or grudging look or word: each, on receiving his share, coming up and giving the donor a brusque bow and thanks. They have learnt to overcharge already, and use extortion in dealing, as is the custom with the people of the plains; but it is clumsily done, and never accompanied with the grasping air and insufferable whine of the latter. They are constantly armed with a long, heavy, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the intervention of good spirits; if, therefore, you will permit this unworthy individual to wear, while making the venture, the ring which he perceives upon your finger, and which he recognizes as a very powerful charm against evil, misunderstandings, and extortion, he will ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing, and MORE than the right thing, the GENEROUS ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... meet the northbound herds and to try to divert them to this or that market as a shipping-point. The Kiowas and Comanches, not yet wholly confined to their reservations, sometimes took tribute, whether in theft or in open extortion, of the herds laboring upward through the long slow season. Trail-cutters and herd-combers, licensed or unlicensed hangers-on to the northbound throngs of cattle, appeared along the lower trails—with some reason, occasionally; for in a great northbound herd ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... enterteined, and at their departure princelie rewarded. [Sidenote: A prudent consideration of the king.] The king thus returned into England, punished the shiriffes of the land very greuously for their extortion, briberie, and rapine. After this, studieng how to assure the estate of the realme vnto his sons, vpon good consideration remembring that no liuing creature was more subiect to the vncerteintie of death than ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed
... hastened to explain that their passage would involve no additional expense to anybody, and added, tactfully, that he was glad to enable them to oppose extortion. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in favor with King Fernando II., Conrad, Manfred, and Conrad'ine. The French invaded the island, put the last two monarchs to the sword, usurped the sovereignty, and made Charles d'Anjou king. The cruelty, licentiousness, and extortion of the French being quite unbearable, provoked a general rising of the Sicilians, and in one night (Sicilian Vespers, March 30, 1282), every Frenchman, Frenchwoman, and French child in the whole island was ruthlessly butchered. Proc[)i]da lost his only son Fernando, who ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... his princes, Lords, and others of the commontee, Who was oppressour, and who to pouertee Was drawen and brought, and who was clene in life, And was by mischiefe and by strife With ouer leding and extortion: And good and badde of eche condition Hee aspied: and his ministers als, Who did trought, and which of hem was fals: Howe the right and lawes of the land Were execute, and who durst take in hand To disobey his statutes and decrees, If they were well kept in all countrees: Of these he made ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... selling-price remaining the same. So that, there being nothing seemingly to distinguish net product from a sum withheld in paying wages or, what amounts to the same thing, from an assessment laid upon the consumer in advance, net product has every appearance of an extortion effected by force and without the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... day's work. As a rule, the villagers had few complaints to make but, at the place he went to on this occasion, the headman had been behaving as in the old times; and Stanley had to listen to a long series of complaints on behalf of the villagers. The case was fully proved, both as to extortion and ill treatment. Stanley at once deprived the man of his office, and called upon the villagers to assemble and elect another ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... more expedient than alive, extortion from a living victim too risky an enterprise. Their plans were carefully prepared. Gabrielle was to hire a ground-floor apartment, so that any noise, such as footsteps or the fall of a body, would not be ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... action of the Central Road in buying up the stock of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad, to control that road, was ultra vires. He had conducted the case of Arnold DuBose against the Georgia Railroad for extortion ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Dannhaverus (Acad. Homilet. p. ii.), that a certain Albertus Pericofcius in Muscovy was wont to tyrannize over and harass his subjects in the most unscrupulous manner. One night when he was absent from home, his whole herd of cattle, acquired by extortion, perished. On his return he was informed of his loss, and the wicked man broke out into the most horrible blasphemies, exclaiming, "Let him who has slain, eat; if God chooses, let him ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... to all manner of extortion and annoyance, being repeatedly brought before the authorities on the most absurd charges. The fear that her husband would be put to death so haunted her, that she was willing to meet the most exorbitant demands, hoping thereby to conciliate ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... lengthily that a bystander ejaculated he had 'a good mouth in a cry, but was nothing single.' He expressed repentance for his offence against the King. He corroborated all he had said against Sir Walter Ralegh as true 'upon the hope of his soul's resurrection.' The extortion of that confirmation of his calumnies had been a main object of the whole disgraceful farce. When he had thus bought his worthless life, the Sheriff brought back upon the scaffold Grey and Markham to stand beside him. All three were asked if their offences were not heinous, and if they had not been ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... blackmail, it's not extortion. If I came to you and said out and out, flat, tear up that account of mine or I'll boycott you—that, Al, that would ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... against property, simple in their effects, whether by breach of trust or otherwise, the genera are: wrongful non-investment, interception, divestment, usurpation, investment, of property; wrongful withholding of services, destruction, occupation, or detainment, embezzlement, theft, defraudment, extortion. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... and by proclamation forbade the export of provisions in order to prevent the seeking of exorbitant prices in other markets. Davis wrote to various Governors urging them to obtain state legislation to reduce extortion in the food business. In the provisioning of the army the Confederate Government had recourse to impressment and the arbitrary fixing of prices. Though the Attorney-General held this action to be constitutional, it led to sharp ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... perceive the justice of his encomiums on the French; and the disappointed governor could say nothing in his own vindication, but that they were debauched by their intercourse with the inhabitants of Dover. His pupil, however, was so much offended at their extortion, that he absolutely refused to employ them, even when they abated one half in their demand, and swore he would stay on board till the packet should be able to enter the harbour, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett |
