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Felony   /fˈɛləni/   Listen
Felony

noun
(pl. felonies)
1.
A serious crime (such as murder or arson).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Felony" Quotes from Famous Books



... servant. For Miss Laura honours the Church, no less, with her illegitimate hand, and no less a dignitary than a Canon of Windsor! Is not this to be a receiver of stolen goods? Does not his Reverence compound a felony in taking such a bride? What say you? 'Tis Canon Keppel, brother to Lord Albemarle; and mark you, Kitty—the Honourable Mrs Keppel has the right to be presented where Miss Laura might knock at the door in vain! ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... believe, then you'd be for compoundin' the felony," Daughtry retorted, the habitual obstinate tightening of his brows showing which way his will set. "Me, sir, I'm only a ship's steward, an' it wouldn't mean nothin' at all bein' arrested for dog-stealin'; but you, sir, a captain of a fine steamer, how'd ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... be no monopolies, except for new inventions profitable to the country, and for a short time; no imprisonment without bail except for crimes capital and contempts in open court; freedom of alienation and power to devise; no primogeniture, no escheats on attainder and execution for felony; succor to those fleeing from tyranny; full freedom to advise, vote, give verdict or sentence according to true judgment and conscience; in short, the expression or the indication of those safeguards to liberty, the possession of which enables ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... Justica (consists of nine justices who are appointed by the president and serve at his pleasure; final court of appeals in criminal and civil cases); Regional Courts (one in each of nine regions; first court of appeals for Sectoral Court decisions; hear all felony cases and civil cases valued at over $1,000); 24 Sectoral Courts (judges are not necessarily trained lawyers; they hear civil cases under ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... a man, be patient with wrong and oppression to-day and you will be prospered tomorrow, is to teach him to compound a felony, to wink at the despoiling of the earth by the iniquitous for the consideration of a title to the riches of heaven. It is to lose sight of the fact that unless the life finds itself now it never will find itself, that to dwarf a soul to-day ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... some years, the amalgamation of the conflicting and overlapping diamond interests under the name of the De Beers Consolidated Mines. It was soon found that the new industry was insufficiently protected by the existing criminal law and a new felony was created by ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... settlement was apparently an impossibility. Therefore, Governor William Berkeley and the Council, upon representation from the Burgesses, consented to the opening of the land north of the York and Rappahannock rivers after 1649. At the same time the provision making it a felony for the English to go north of the York was repealed. This turn in policy, based upon the assumption that some intermingling of the white and red men was inevitable, led to the effort to provide for an "equitable division" of land supplemented ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.

... protection of the Government. There is no express provision of law requiring the records and papers of a public character of the several officers of the Government to be left in their offices for the use of their successors, nor any provision declaring it felony on their part to make false entries in the books or return false accounts. In the absence of such express provision by law, the outgoing officers in many instances have claimed and exercised the right to take into their own possession important ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... of Parliament of 1603, which ratified a belief in witchcraft over the three kingdoms. Under Henry VIII., from whose reign the Protestant Reformation in England dates, an act of Parliament made witchcraft felony; this act was again confirmed under Elizabeth. To doubt witchcraft was as heretical under ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... surrendered all claim to the land between the falls of the James and the York rivers downward to Chesapeake Bay. Indians were not allowed on this land unless specially designated as messengers to the English. Similarly it was a felony for an Englishmen to repair to the north side of the York River except temporarily under special conditions ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn

... Sans Terre—having assassinated his nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany, in order to obtain possession of his lands, was summoned by Philip Augustus, King of France, to justify his crime. John did not obey the summons, was declared guilty of felony, and Philip took possession of Normandy. Thus the first step ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... Holmes, character goes for something? Then, again, why should he leave the girl in the street and dart away to commit a felony?" ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the royal presence, and he had intimated that his majesty had a memory; a property of the mind which, as it might prove dangerous to the liberties of Leaphigh, were it left in the keeping of any but a responsible minister, it had long been decided it was felony to impute to the king. By the fundamental law of the land, the king's eldest first-cousin of the masculine gender, may have as many memories as he please, and he may use them, or abuse them, as he shall see fit, either in private or in ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... one for two, the other for five thousand, dollars. He has robbed him of seven thousand dollars, and we have Herresford's permission to prosecute. He signed no such checks, and he desires us to take action. He refuses to make good our loss. We cannot compound a felony." ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley

... Orleans, driving Mdlle. Guimard to the opera in his coronetted and mitred coach, is not an edifying figure, nor is Louis de Grimaldi, Bishop of Mans, saying Mass in his red hunting-coat and breeches. But the Protestant Dean of St. Patrick's thought the execution for felony of another Protestant dean a capital theme for a merry ballad; and at the end of the eighteenth century Arthur Young painted the English rural clergy in very dark colours. The curates, the rectors, the monks of France as a body, showed under the old regime the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... reckoning, or answers for the rest of thecompany: as, Will you stand godfather, and we will take care of the brat; i.e. repay you another time. Jurymen are also called godfathers, because they name the crime the prisoner before them has been guilty of, whether felony, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... be between us and harm!" Asgill responded. "Are you hearing this, Miss Flavia? It's no less than felony that you're accused of, and I'm thinking, by rights, I must arrest you and carry ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... And it is remarkable that, of all the men hanged or expatriated by the Committee, only two had ever been complained of or arraigned before the Courts for any crime of violence; not one of them all had been here accused or suspected of theft or robbery, or other felony. This is more, as I have just above stated, than can be said of some of the forty-one members of the Executive Committee. And among the members of the rank and file of the five thousand or six thousand enrolled upon the lists of the Committee—of natives ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara

... later, in 1353-54, we find Edward III issuing a writ commanding justices of the peace of the county of Cambridge to allow the Chancellor of the University the conusance and punishment of all trespasses and excesses, except mayheim and felony, committed by stationers, writers, bookbinders, and illuminators, as had been the custom. But the question was again in debate in 1393-94, when the Chancellor and scholars petitioned Parliament to declare and adjudge stationers ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... the barons claimed for themselves they claimed for the nation at large. The boon of free and unbought justice was a boon for all, but a special provision protected the poor. The forfeiture of the freeman on conviction of felony was never to include his tenement, or that of the merchant his wares, or that of the countryman, as Henry the Second had long since ordered, his wain. The means of actual livelihood were to be left even to the worst. The seizure of provisions, the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... the presence; there he hears surpriz'd The mortal charge of felony devis'd: Stern did the monarch look, and sharp upbraid For foul seducement of his queen assay'd: The knight, whose loyal heart disdain'd the offence, With generous warmth affirm'd his innocence; He ne'er devis'd seduction:—for the rest, His speech discourteous, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... ecclesiastical offense. The Statute of 1533 (25 Henry VIII, c. 6) made it a felony; and Pollock and Maitland consider that this "affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it, for a very long time past."[82] The temporal law has never, however, proved very successful in repressing homosexuality. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the salvation of the race. A hundred years ago nobody foresaw that Tom Paine's centenary would be the subject of a laudatory special article in The Times; and only a few understood that the persecution of his works and the transportation of men for the felony of reading them was a mischievous mistake. Even less, perhaps, could they have guessed that Proudhon, who became notorious by his essay entitled "What is Property? It is Theft" would have received, on the like occasion and in the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... doctrine, advice, or innuendo, calculated to produce a disorderly, dangerous, or rebellious disaffection among the slaves of the Territory, or to induce such slaves to escape from the service of their masters, or to resist their authority," was pronounced a felony punishable by five years' imprisonment. To deny the right of holding slaves in the Territory, by speaking, writing, printing, or circulating books, or papers, was likewise made a felony, punishable ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... sheep-stealer who had rendered his dog so skilful an accomplice in his nefarious traffic, that he used to send him out to commit acts of felony by himself, and had even contrived to impress on the poor cur the caution that he should not, on such occasions, seem even to recognise his master, if they met accidentally.[II-9] Apparently, Lord ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... fightings, feuds, jealousies, trades, professions, liveries, and common handicrafts of life; "no kind of traffic; letters are not known; no use of service, of riches, poverty, contract, succession, bourne, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none; no occupation, no treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, nor need of any engine." So much the better; thank Heaven, all these were yet to come. But still the die was cast, and in them our doom ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... things advanced in his Life and Reign of Henry IV. She applied to Bacon to see if he could discover any passages that were treasonable, but his reply was, that "for treason he found none, but for felony, very many," which he explained by saying, that the author had stolen many sentences from Tacitus, and translated them ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various

... at any time of the day. It may be added that if any clergyman {121} celebrates a marriage without either Banns or Licence (or upon a Registrar's Certificate), he commits a felony, and is liable to fourteen years' ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes

... first Florentines. I saw The Ughi, Catilini and Filippi, The Alberichi, Greci and Ormanni, Now in their wane, illustrious citizens: And great as ancient, of Sannella him, With him of Arca saw, and Soldanieri And Ardinghi, and Bostichi. At the poop, That now is laden with new felony, So cumb'rous it may speedily sink the bark, The Ravignani sat, of whom is sprung The County Guido, and whoso hath since His title from the fam'd Bellincione ta'en. Fair governance was yet an art well priz'd By him of Pressa: Galigaio show'd The gilded ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... redoubted King, will come upon my lands with Sir Gawaine, to war upon me, I must endure you as well as I may. But as to you, Sir Gawaine, if that ye come there, I pray you charge me not with treason or felony, for if ye ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler

... ingenious British subject to be ingenious at his peril: of harassing him, obstructing him, inviting robbers (by making his remedy uncertain, and expensive) to plunder him, and at the best of confiscating his property after a short term of enjoyment, as though invention were on a par with felony. The system had uniformly found great favour with the Barnacles, and that was only reasonable, too; for one who worthily invents must be in earnest, and the Barnacles abhorred and dreaded nothing half so much. That again was very reasonable; since in a country suffering under the affliction ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... hands the holy water to the ambassador he is receiving, the orchestra reveals the working of his mind by repeating the music of the preceding scene. From beginning to end the work is written in this way. But dissertations on such details have not been given the public; the themes of felony, cruelty, and duplicity, and of this and that, have not, as is the fashion of the day, been underlined, so that the critics are excusable for not ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had been taken up on a charge of felony, committed and thrown into the common gaol. The crime imputed to him was that six years before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of everybody, idiots and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... have been a notion that there is something peculiarly sacred about wool. So we find that in 1337 they made it a felony to carry wool out of England, or to wear cloth made out of England; and no clothes made beyond the seas were to be brought into England. That notion that a man ought to dress on home products lies behind our present McKinley tariff. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... was great hesitation in transacting this affair, in consequence of the dog having on a lock to a steel chain collar with Mr. Lang's name, and which, therefore, induced them to proceed with extreme caution, through fear, as they supposed, of detection for felony. The whole amount paid for recovering this setter was L4 17s., L2 10s. of which went to the men who had him. The rest was divided among others of the "Fancy". The same person who gave Mr. Lang the information, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... Cardinal had time to turn round among his new friends than he wrote a letter to the King announcing his flight—a letter which was such a monstrous production of insolence, of madness, of felony, and which was written in a style so extravagant and confused that it deserves to be thus specially alluded to. In this letter, as full of absurdities, impudence, and of madness, as of words, the Cardinal, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... a felony, Raffles,' said Holmes, after the wedding, 'but for a wife like that, hanged if I wouldn't ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... are too far away from me, and King Pelles of the Lower Folk hath renounced his land for God's sake and entered into a hermitage. But the King of Castle Mortal hath in him as much of wickedness and felony as these twain have in them of good, and enough thereof have they. But neither succour nor help may they give me, for the King of Castle Mortal challengeth my Lord King Fisherman both of the most Holy Graal and of the Lance whereof the point bleedeth every day, albeit ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown

... of felony, manslaughter, robbery, murder, rape, piracy, and such capital crimes as are not reputed for treason or hurt of the estate, our sentence pronounced upon the offender is, to hang till he be dead. For of other punishments ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... you to pass a bill through that Legislature to make it a felony for a widow to marry again. I've drawn up a draft of a bill and I'll leave it with you. I've made it retroactive, so that it'll bring that woman Banger up with a short turn and send her after Smith and the others. I don't care ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... off his boots, and without further disrobing rolled himself into his gray blanket. As he was dropping asleep two phrases flashed across his brain. They were: "compounding a felony," and "accessory ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... freedom (in the sense of being able to work as he likes) is every man's rightful birthright, and (4) that this freedom is to be achieved through the establishment of National Guilds. As to (1) Messrs Bechhofer and Reckitt speak on page 99 of their book of the "felony of Capitalism" as a matter that need not be argued about. Mr Cole makes the same assumption by observing on page 235 of the work already mentioned that "to do good work for a capitalist employer is merely, ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... all the honors leaves me in the same invidious position," he answered. "It compounds my felony. It shows that you do think that we failed by our conduct to show respect for your property. It leaves me feeling that you think that I do not regard this as your veranda, your garden, your home, sacred by more than the laws of war—by ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... or Citizen, or entitled to the Rights or Privileges of a Subject or Citizen, of a Foreign Power: (3.) If he is adjudged Bankrupt or Insolvent, or applies for the Benefit of any Law relating to Insolvent Debtors, or becomes a public Defaulter: (4.) If he is attainted of Treason or convicted of Felony or of any infamous Crime: (5.) If he ceases to be qualified in respect of Property or of Residence; provided, that a Senator shall not be deemed to have ceased to be qualified in respect of Residence by reason only of his residing at the Seat of the Government of Canada while holding an Office ...
— The British North America Act, 1867 • Anonymous

... if calves with one man's brand on are seen sucking another man's cows, it is pretty plain that the brand on the calves has been put on without the consent of the owner of the cows—which is cattle-stealing; a felony, according to the Act 7 and 8 George IV, No. 29, punishable with three years' imprisonment, with hard labour on the roads of the colony or other place, as ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... thy ken that an edict hath been passed making it treason for priests to be found within the kingdom, and felony to harbor them? And, forsooth, there is much reason for such a law. So many have been the plots against the Queen's Majesty that much precaution must be taken ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... non-partisan citizen. He looked upon partisanship as the curse of the Republic, and in his more enthusiastic moments had declared that if he could have his way about it, any man so hopelessly dead to the nobler impulses of the human heart as to confess himself a partisan should be declared guilty of a felony and confined for a proper period of years at hard labor. What the country called for, according to Colonel Sneekins, was Reform. The first step in bringing about the triumph of Reform was to put all the offices in the hands of Reformers. If ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... may be taken as sufficient to convict a Man of Sorcery, which would not be enough to convict him were he charged with another evil worthy of Death, Numb. 35.30. if we may not take the Oath of a distracted Person, or of a possessed Person in a Case of Murder, Theft, Felony of any sort, then neither may we do it in the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... like a snail. He's a-growed so to the shape o' that there rectory that 'a wouldn' think o' leaven it even in name. "'Tis yours, Miss Graye," says he. "No, 'tis yours," says she. "'Tis'n' mine," says he. The Crown had cast his eyes upon the case, thinken o' forfeiture by felony—but 'twas no such thing, and 'a gied it up, too. Did you ever hear such a tale?—three people, a man and a woman, and a Crown—neither o' em in a madhouse—flingen an estate backwards and forwards like an apple or nut? Well, it ended in this way. Mr. Raunham ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... it was some six weeks from the time of that felony, and Osberne was on his legs again, and had gone to and fro in the wood nigh to the hermit's cell, now he began to think he must get him home to the House of Longshaw, and thence away to the Dale with a trusty guide; ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... your worship, I met this couple in the street late, and so, seeing them to be a man and woman, I brought them along with me, upon suspicion of felony together. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... they say, "is a felony—it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... de C.B. at Assizes at Salisbury in Summer 1631 fuit assault per Prisoner la condemne pur Felony; que puis son condemnation ject un Brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist. Et pur ceo immediately fuit Indictment drawn pur Noy envers le Prisoner, et son dexter manus ampute et fixe al Gibbet, sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various

... expiration of about a century, a similar event deprived the Taissons of St. Sauveur. Jane, the last of that family, formed an alliance with the Harcourts, and with them the lordship remained till the middle of the fourteenth century, when the domains of Geoffroy d'Harcourt were confiscated for felony, and the castle would have passed into the hands of a new master, had not the successes of our sovereign, Edward III. interfered, and stopped the effects of ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... thousand times worse than death, because of her own warm-hearted affection. But you, citizens of France, who, above all, are noble, true, and chivalrous, you will not allow the sweet impulses of young and tender womanhood to be punished with the ban of felony. To you, women of France, I appeal in the name of your childhood, your girlhood, your motherhood; take her to your hearts, she is worthy of it, worthier now for having blushed before you, worthier than any heroine in the great roll of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... and all, under the constable as conductor, adjourned to the house of a magistrate in an adjacent street. There the matter seemed so clear a case of felony—robbery in a dwelling-house—that Harvey, all protestations to the contrary, was fully committed for trial at the ensuing March assizes, then but ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... an act of parliament, be, at once, suppressed; and that our posterity be deprived of all means of reviving this corrupt method of education, it may be made felony to teach to read without a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... the murtherer indeed was condemned at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, to die for a felony which he afterwards committed; and when he came to the gallows in which he suffered, he confessed that he did this murther [that of Robert Packington], and till that time he was never ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... don't see how I can hold mine, and you have already told my daughter-in-law. A separation between her and my son is inevitable. The compensation must be offered, and God help me, I'm a magistrate, if only to compound the felony." ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... afterwards showed Mr. Tillington the place where you had set it or seen it set, leading him to believe it was Mr. Ashurst's will, and so involved him in all this trouble. Note that that was a felonious act. We accuse you of felony. Do you mean to confess, and give evidence on our behalf, or will you force me to send for ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... pastime, they cause him to be solemnely arrested, [127] for his appearance before the Maior of Halgauer, where he is charged with wearing one spurre, or going vntrussed, or wanting a girdle, or some such like felony: and after he hath beene arraygned and tryed, with all requisite circumstances, iudgement is giuen in formal termes, and executed in some one vngracious pranke or other, more to the skorne, then hurt of the ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... because she conveyed from one place to another a ball of paper. It was more like a game of passing a ring from hand to hand behind the players' backs, for kisses for forfeits if the ring were caught. Nevertheless, this was treason-felony; yet it was furthering the dear cause of ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... nosing about the place, and then wanted to know where the water-butt was, and the bedclothes. I told him to go to the devil; so would you too, when there was no possible thing to say! And then he said I had pawned them, and did I know it was felony? Then I made a pretty neat stroke. I remembered he was deaf, and talked a whole lot of rot, very politely, just so low he couldn't hear a word. "I don't hear you," says he. "I know you don't, my buck, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... "Jim Crow" car law, and an act to amend the Constitution so as to disfranchise the colored voters. It was noticeable, however, that although the "Jim Crow Car" law got through that body in triumph, yet the "Jim Crow Bed" law, which made it a felony for whites and colored to ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... them? Corrupt M. Dupin? was it possible? and, further, to what purpose? To pay him? Why? It would be money wasted when fear alone was enough. Some connivances are secured before they are sought for. Cowardice is the old fawner upon felony. The blood of the law is quickly wiped up. Behind the assassin who holds the poniard comes the trembling wretch ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... became a main topic of reformers. There, as elsewhere, we have a striking example of traditional modes of thought surviving with singular persistence. The rough classification of crimes into felony and misdemeanour, and the strange technical rules about 'benefit of clergy' dating back to the struggles of Henry II. and Becket, remained like ultimate categories of thought. When the growth of social conditions ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... to be supported by powerful social traditions to enable him to resist the evil influences of prison life. A few men do resist and maintain their sense of self-respect in spite of all indignities and bad influences. Some sink as under a torture; some sink and are enticed and absorbed into felony. These last will plan their future crimes while they are serving their first sentence. Henceforth the prison ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... felony alone were reported throughout the island population of 37,000 souls in the month of July; and no burglary, and three felonies, were last ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Gardener, who was executed at Tyburn, in 1724, the bellman chanted the above verses. This man, with another, being brought to St. Sepulchre's watch-house, on suspicion of felony, which, however, was not validated, they were dismissed. "But," said the constable to Gardener, "beware how you come here again, or this bellman will certainly say his verses over you;" for the dreaded bellman happened to be then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various

... return to the primordial barbaric stage is so much harder for us, who are twenty centuries ahead of them in the history of civilization." To support his, came the quiet utterances of Sonnino (whose every word is a statement of Italian right and a crushing indictment of Austro-German felony) "proclaiming still once the firm resolution of Italy, to continue to fight courageously with all her might, and at any sacrifice, until her most sacred national aspirations are fulfilled alongside with such general conditions ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... "Ah! A minor felony, I judge, from the brevity of your incarceration," replied the Governor, emptying the coffee pot into Archie's cup. "I have never been in jail and to the best of my knowledge I have never been indicted; or if I have the sheriff has never caught ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... men themselves did not at all like the look of accompanying her and this dog through the Park. Had they not already condoned a felony, or done something equally dreadful, in handing to her a dog that had been found keeping watch and ward over a slain buck? They showed her the road to the Roehampton Gate, and then they paused before continuing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... knew before. I have had my eye on you from the time we parted. With all your benevolent schemes respecting myself I am perfectly familiar. The debt which you bought up to arrest me on; your attempt to have me indicted on a false charge of felony; the quiet hint dropped in another quarter, that if I should be found with my throat cut, or a bullet in my head, you wouldn't break your heart; I knew them all; but I did not avail myself of the law. Shall I tell ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... at Large. The Black Act was repealed mainly through the exertions of Sir James Macintosh, early in the present century. Under its clauses the going about "disguised or blackened in pursuit of game" was made felony without benefit of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... be't sae! Let the brandy bide, man, let the brandy bide! But for you and the trust-money ... damned! It's felony. Tutor in rem suam, ye ken, tutor in rem suam. But O man, Deacon, whaur is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Southern courts towards the Negro in this respect is particularly weak. Splendid examples of this may be seen in the "Convict Lease System," prevailing in the States of South Carolina, Arkansas and other Southern States. Under this system a Negro may be convicted of a felony calling for a minimum term of imprisonment, and yet serve out a life-time in prison. It is a system which, instead of reforming the Negro, gradually re-enslaves him. It has become such an outrage upon justice and common decency that the eyes of the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... Act passed finally in the Parliament of 1679. By this great statute the old practice of the law was freed from all difficulties and exceptions. Every prisoner committed for any crime save treason or felony was declared entitled to his writ even in the vacations of the courts, and heavy penalties were enforced on judges or gaolers who refused him this right. Every person committed for felony or treason was entitled to be released on bail unless indicted at the next session ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... all to be an Englishman saving only one or two wrangling Writers, who deserve to be arraigned of Felony for robbing our Country of its due; and no doubt Cambridgeshire was the County made happy by his birth, where the Name and Family of Paris is right ancient, even long before they were setled therein at Hildersham, wherein they still ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... to the usage below. By the very latitude of the charge, the Parliamentary accusation gives the prisoner fair notice to prepare himself upon all points: whereas there seems something insnaring in the proceedings upon indictment, which, fixing the specification of a day certain for the treason or felony as absolutely necessary in the charge, gives notice for preparation only on that day, whilst the prosecutor has the whole range of time antecedent to the indictment to allege and give evidence of facts against the prisoner. It has been usual, particularly in later indictments, to add, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... that the law for which he is generally regarded as showing insufficient respect was not enacted here until more than eighteen hundred years after his death. Moreover, suicide, the one offence with which he is definitely charged, was not in his or his contemporaries' eyes the horrid felony which, I hope, it will always be in yours. That his work—of which this volume forms but a fragmentary part—had made its way into this country, with unusual rapidity, in little more than ten centuries from its publication, is shown by its being frequently quoted ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... same persons who made these calculations of profit and risk, while they only could lose the ship or the money by a seizure, would hesitate before they encountered the hazard of being tried as for a crime. And, surely, if ever these was an act which deserved to be declared felony, and dealt with as such, it was this of slave-trading. Accordingly, in 1810, Mr. Brougham, then a member of the House of Commons, in moving an address to the crown, (which was unanimously agreed to,) for more vigorous measures against the traffic, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... peculiar ideas of crime, entertained, perhaps, for reasons only known to themselves. The chances of escape from detection are, no doubt, seriously weighed and carefully considered by the persons bent upon committing felony as a mode of livelihood, and, undoubtedly, some special line is selected, as the particular branch of the profession to be followed, in accordance with the physical and mental fitness of the man or ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... but his better nature overcame it. "Take thy life unasked," he said; "but, on this condition, that in three days thou shalt leave England, and that thou wilt never mention the name of John of Anjou as connected with thy felony." Then, turning to where the yeomen stood apart, he said, "Let this knight have a steed, Locksley, and let him depart unharmed. Thou bearest an English heart, and must needs obey me. I ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... instrument that deprives a poor man of his mattress that a rich one may lounge on his ottoman. Ca. Sa. is a similar benevolent contrivance for punishing misfortune as felony. ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... had perhaps been suggested by the anticipation of the general pardon which was expected in the following spring. At the coronation of Charles, April 23, 1661, an order was issued for the release of prisoners who were in gaol for any offences short of felony. Those who were waiting their trials were to be let go at once. Those convicted and under sentence might sue out a pardon under the Great Seal at any time within a year from the proclamation. Was Bunyan legally convicted or not? ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... with good reason will not be more hugely troubled in mind, hearing of the news of the rapt, disgrace, ignominy, and dishonour of his daughter, than of her death. Now any man, finding in hot blood one who with a forethought felony hath murdered his daughter, may, without tying himself to the formalities and circumstances of a legal proceeding, kill him on a sudden and out of hand without incurring any hazard of being attainted and apprehended by the officers of justice ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... result of an editorial squib written in Goodman's absence, and went across the Sierras to San Francisco. The duel turned out farcically enough, but the Nevada law, which regarded even a challenge or its acceptance as a felony, was an inducement to his departure. Furthermore, he had already aspired to a wider field of literary effort. He attached himself to the Morning Call, and wrote occasionally for one or two literary ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... judge compound a felony! You greenhorns, he is more likely to send you all to penal servitude if you are fools enough ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw

... of dead-body snatching has become very common in London, and in many cases appears to be winked at by the Magistrates; for although it is considered a felony in law, it is also acknowledged in some degree to be necessary for the Surgeons, in order to have an opportunity of obtaining practical information. It is however, at the same time, a source of no slight distress to the parents ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... and such as will not be reformed of their roguish course of life, may lawfully by the justices in their quarter sessions be banished out of the realm, and all the dominions thereof, and to such parts beyond the seas as shall for that purpose be assigned by the privy council." Return was made felony without benefit of clergy. A brand was affixed upon the shoulder, of the breadth of an English shilling, with a great Roman R upon the iron: "for a perpetual mark upon such rogue, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... finger at the spy, as if his presence poisoned the air, he said: "It is that fellow's fault, great Caesar, if the citizens of my native town dare commit such crimes. He torments and persecutes them in your name. How many a felony has been committed here, merely to scoff at him and his creatures, and to keep them on the alert! We are a light-headed race. Like children, we love to do the forbidden thing, so long as it is no stain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... looking strange when you have a worthy object to accomplish? The information you need is of more importance than mere looks. It thoroughly amazes me to see the awe in which a genuine Parisian is held by the dread of appearing singular! One would imagine that all originality was felony, and that to catch the same key-note of voice, to move with the exact motion, and tread in the precise footprints in which every one else speaks, moves, walks, was the only evidence of honesty. What is a man's individuality worth, if it is to be trodden ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... adventure blew. And the winds of adventure blew the oyster pirate sloops up and down San Francisco Bay, from raided oyster-beds and fights at night on shoal and flat, to markets in the morning against city wharves, where peddlers and saloon-keepers came down to buy. Every raid on an oyster-bed was a felony. The penalty was State imprisonment, the stripes and the lockstep. And what of that? The men in stripes worked a shorter day than I at my machine. And there was vastly more romance in being an oyster pirate or a ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... lawyers are going on furiously and sanguinely against the Duchess of Kingston,(109) who is, they say, at Calais. Feilding also complains of her; so elle s'est bromllee avec la justice au pied de la lettre. Nobody doubts of her felony; the only debate in conversation is, whether she can have the benefit of her clergy. Some think she will turn Papist. All expect some untimely death. C'est un execrable personage que celui ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... possible his fatal lust for crooked money." After this followed the story of Handy's perfidy in the hitching rack case, a petition in disbarment proceedings, and the copy of the warrant for his arrest charged with a felony in the case sworn to by Hedrick himself. But the effective thing was the pictures, showing both sides of the two checks, each carefully inscribed by the two makers "for legal services in the hitching rack case," and each check indorsed by Handy in ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... Any person subject to military law who commits manslaughter, mayhem, arson, burglary, robbery, larceny, embezzlement, perjury, assault with intent to commit any felony, or assault with intent to do bodily harm, shall be punished ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... to make him confesse the trueth. They punish murther with death, and carnall copulation also with any other besides his owne. By his own, I meane his wife or his maid seruant, for he may vse his slaue as he listeth himself. Heinous theft also or felony they punish with death. For a light theft, as namely for stealing of a ram, the party (not being apprehended in the deed doing, but otherwise detected) is cruelly beaten. And if the executioner laies on an 100. strokes, he must haue an 100. staues, namely for such as are beaten vpon sentence giuen ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... vicissitudes; he even took down some fat yellow books, and showed the old man how many curious laws had been made from time to time for the special protection of pigeons in Dovecots, very ancient statutes making the killing of a house-dove felony. Then 1 James I. c. 29 awarded three months' imprisonment "without bail or main price" to any person who should "shoot at, kill, or destroy with any gun, crossbow, stone-bow, or longbow, any house-dove or pigeon;" but allowed an alternative fine of twenty ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... stronger hand than the murderer's back of that felony," murmured a plain man from the ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... His replies, and all his observations were to the same tune; perfect ignorance of everything. Therefore when the Duchess had made her confessions, and they were communicated to him, he cried out against his wife,—her madness, her felony,—his misfortune in having a wife capable of conspiring, and daring enough to implicate him in everything without having spoken to him; making him thus a criminal without being so the least in the world; and keeping him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... treacherous Sir John had recovered, and in due course had become sheriff, and indicted his brother for felony. As Gamelyn did not appear to answer the indictment he was proclaimed an outlaw and wolf's-head, and a price was set upon his life. Now his bondmen and vassals were grieved at this, for they feared the cruelty of the wicked sheriff; they therefore sent messengers ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... prepared by himself. This code was laid before the assembly who rejected it without hesitation, and prepared a body of regulations adapted to their situation. Among these was an act of attainder against William Clayborne, who was charged with felony and sedition, with having exercised the powers of government within the province without authority, and with having excited the Indians to make war ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... any other debt of similar amount. It was plainly the intention of the legislature to provide a just trial for any slave, for they even went so far as to enact that the lawyer appointed by the court for the prisoner should "defend such slave as in cases of free persons prosecuted for felony by the laws of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... trespass on foibidden ground but as little as possible. I am perfectly satisfied that there has not been one fact established or proved that would justify a conscientious and impartial jury in finding me guilty of treason-felony. There is an extreme paucity of evidence against me;—that everyone who has been here while this case has been proceeded with will admit frankly and candidly. We need no stronger proof of this fact than that the first jury that was empanelled to try me had, ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... Westminster, the imprisonment was illegal as well as unjust, in that it was contrary to the privilege of Parliament. The law provides that "no Member of Parliament can be imprisoned either for non-payment of a fine to the King, or for any other cause than treason, felony, or refusing to give security for the peace." It may be questioned whether, in the presence of this law, his first imprisonment, even under the sentence of the Court of King's Bench, was legal. But having been imprisoned, and ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... pavements,' and stand on the offensive; with the best prospects,—had not Patriotism, passing that way, 'fired a volley' into the Felon world; and crushed it down again under hatches. Patriotism consorts not with thieving and felony: surely also Punishment, this day, hitches (if she still hitch) after Crime, with frightful shoes-of-swiftness! 'Some score or two' of wretched persons, found prostrate with drink in the cellars of that Saint-Lazare, are indignantly haled to prison; the Jailor has no ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... Satan then gave his ally a familiar in the form of a dog, ape, cat, or other animal, usually small and black, and sometimes an undisguised imp. To suckle these "familiars" with the blood of a witch was forbidden in English law, which ranked it as a felony; but they were thus nourished in secret, and by their aid the witch might raise storms, blight crops, abort births, lame cattle, topple over houses, and cause pains, convulsions, and illness. If she desired to hurt a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... all that had brought the assembly together? The man was of a name known to comparatively few of those present. His crime was an ordinary felony, and his defence appeared to be hopeless. It was evidently something else than this for which these onlookers had crowded into court, and it was not long before their ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... not guilty. Of course he and Mead pleaded not guilty. The court then adjourned. After it had resumed its functions the prisoners were brought up, but were set aside in order that several cases of common felony might be disposed of; this being done for the purpose of insulting Penn and his friend. Little progress having been made in their case, they were remanded to their abominable dungeons in Newgate, and the court ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... useless; till they were become actual impediments to their exertions in obtaining their daily bread. Can you then wonder that, in times like these, when bankruptcy, convicted fraud, and imputed felony, are found in a station not far beneath that of your Lordships, the lowest, though once most useful, portion of the people should forget their duty in their distresses, and become only less guilty than one of their representatives? But while the exalted offender ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... and insistent as ever. "You have the power! D'ye think I've been a justice of the peace for twelve years without knowing what law is? You've the power to admit to bail in all charges of felony, at your discretion. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... the Land and Water Saints; Where thou might'st stickle without hazard Of outrage to thy hide and mazzard; And not for want of bus'ness come 710 To us to be so troublesome, To interrupt our better sort Of disputants, and spoil our sport? Was there no felony, no bawd, Cut-purse, no burglary abroad; 715 No stolen pig, nor plunder'd goose, To tie thee up from breaking loose? No ale unlicens'd, broken hedge, For which thou statute might'st alledge, To ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... carried through was based on a felony and could not be upheld. The firm you dealt with will go to the courts, and the money, being directly traceable, will be held forfeit as no good ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... moment, good sir," De Whichehalse interrupted him; "but I was about (having heard your case) to mention what need be an obstacle, and, I fear, would prove a fatal one, even if satisfactory proof were afforded of a felony. The mal-feasance (if any) was laid in Somerset; but we, two humble servants of His Majesty, are in commission of his peace for the county of Devon only, and therefore could never deal ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... that check I gave you last night? Mr. Stener says it's illegal, that I shouldn't have given it to you, that he will hold me responsible. He says I can be arrested for compounding a felony, and that he will discharge me and have me sent to prison if I don't get it back. Oh, Mr. Cowperwood, I am only a young man! I'm just really starting out in life. I've got my wife and little boy to look after. You won't let him do that to me? You'll give me that ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... of land, tilth, title, vineyard none; No use of metal coin, or wine, or oil; No occupation—all men idle—all! And women too, but innocent and pure; No sovereignty; All things in common nature should produce, Without sweat or endurance; treason, felony, Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine Would I not have; but nature would bring forth Of its own kind all foison, all abundance, To feed my innocent people. I would with such perfection govern, sir, To ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... a broadcloth coat argues sin, if not felony; If a man has the tact in the world to get well on, he Cannot be else than a thorough-paced scamp; That the "villanous rich" wear a cloak and a mask, all, And the greater the riches, the greater the rascal. That the cardinal virtues only endure, In the atmosphere with the "virtuous ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks

... have confined yourself to gentle felony, shall I not shower blessings on the head of him who has been ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh



Words linked to "Felony" :   graft, offence, theft, capture, bribery, thieving, burglary, extortion, law-breaking, stealing, seizure, larceny, crime, criminal offense, felonious, racketeering, thievery, offense, criminal offence



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