"Peculation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Minnesota great pride to know that, under all phases and conditions of our territory and state, whether in prosperity or adversity, the school fund has always been held sacred, and neither extravagance, neglect nor peculation has ever assailed it, but it has been husbanded with jealous care from time to time since the first dollar was realized from it until the present, and has accumulated until the principal is estimated at $20,000,000. The state auditor, in his ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... he said as he drank. "And that reminds me, Tresco—you're wanted in Timber Town, very badly indeed—a little matter in connection with the mails. 'Seems there's been peculation of some sort, and for reasons which are as mad as the usual police tactics, the entire force is searching for you, most worthy Benjamin. The yarn goes that you're a forger in disguise, a counterfeiter of our sovereign's sacred image ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... twelve months. During that time it visited with deserved punishment several of those who, during the preceding six years, had enriched themselves by peculation and monopoly. Mitchell, one of the grasping patentees who had purchased of the favourite the power of robbing the nation, was fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is said, of Massinger's Overreach, was outlawed and deprived of his ill-gotten wealth. Even ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... touch on their own special interests, and that other, the unscrupulous but active professional politician, having been dishonored at home, still astute and determined, seeks new fields for booty, obtain positions of trust and then consummate peculation and outrage under the forms of law. But the necessity for the honest administration of the law eventually asserts itself for the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... a bad end. He got into debt, committed peculation, and had to escape into Turkey and embrace Islam to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... buccaneering; license to plunder, letters of marque, letters of mark and reprisal. filibustering, filibusterism[obs3]; burglary; housebreaking; badger game*. robbery, highway robbery, hold-up* [U.S.], mugging. peculation, embezzlement; fraud &c. 545; larceny, petty larceny, grand larceny, shoplifting. thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia[obs3], den of Cacus, den of thieves. blackmail, extortion, shakedown, Black Hand ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... last night, directly I had news of this atrocious affair. Iskender, poor misguided boy, will bear the punishment. But in my opinion, and in the sight of God, there are others more to blame than he in the matter. I mean those who led him astray, who first suggested to him a life of fraud and peculation." The missionary looked straight into Abdullah's eyes with the sternness of a righteous judge. "It is of no use to deny your own part in it, for I have spoken with the mother of the wretched lad, and ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Baetica[100] he had promptly joined Galba's party, and in spite of his youth had been given command of a legion. Later he was convicted of misappropriating public funds, and, on Galba's orders, prosecuted for peculation. Highly indignant, Caecina determined to embroil the world and bury his own disgrace in the ruins of his country. Nor were the seeds of dissension lacking in the army. The entire force had taken part in the war against Vindex, nor was it until after Nero's death ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... comes to thee for telling thee of the damage done to thy treasury when its resources are being embezzled by a minister, thou shouldst grant him an audience in private and protect him also from the (impeached) minister. The ministers guilty of peculation seek, O Bharata, to slay such informants. They who plunder the royal treasury combine together for opposing the person who seeks to protect it, and if the latter be left unprotected, he is sure to be ruined. In this connection also an old story is cited ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... colonists have no guarantee that his successors will not revert to the same mysterious application of this fund that has been practised by his predecessors. In this case it may be converted into a fruitful source of peculation and plunder, and be at last in a great measure diverted from the public objects for which it was instituted to the satiation of private rapacity, and the colonists become gradually burdened with an overbearing load of taxation, merely for the purpose of enriching their ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... approached with safety, like the Maelstrom at the turn of tide. His profusion was indulged to an extent hazardous to his popularity, for the populace are jealous of a lavish expenditure, as raising their favourites too much above their own degree; and the charge of peculation finds always ready credit with them, when brought against ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... was educated to receive small sums of money for trifling services, to be always looking out for paltry dues or gratuities, to multiply occasions for demanding, and reasons for pocketing petty coins, to invent devices for legitimate peculation. In time the system produced such complications of custom, right, privilege, claim, that no one could say definitely how much a suitor was actually bound to pay at each stage of a suit. The fees had an equally bad influence on the public. Trained to approach the king's judges with costly presents, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... And as Cleon is satirized in the play[615] as having "his hands among the AEtolians, but his soul in Peculation-town," so the soul of the curious man is at once in the mansions of the rich, and the cottages of the poor, and the courts of kings, and the bridal chambers of the newly married; he pries into everything, the affairs of foreigners, the affairs of princes, and sometimes not without danger. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... fix," or "these suckemstances," and all wanted the war to close, that they might return to their families. Indeed, my romantic ideas of rebellion were ruthlessly profaned and dissipated. I knew that there was much selfishness, peculation, and "Hessianism" in the Federal lines, but I had imagined a lofty patriotism, a dignified purpose, and an inflexible love of personal liberty among the Confederates. Yet here were men who knew little of the principles for which ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of the constable. Mr Snobbs, rather confounded at such ungentlemanly behaviour, was, with the others, marched off to Bow Street. Mr T sends for the other two servants in livery, and assures them that he has no longer any occasion for their services, having the excessive vulgar idea that this peculation must have been known to them. Pays them their wages, requests they will take off their liveries, and leave the house. Both willing. They also had always lived with gentlemen before. Mr T takes the key of the butler's ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were only concerned for their shrine, the latter, in spite of their wealth, refusing in any way to assist in finishing the building. Whether from this cause or another, a certain suspicion of the Company began to rise in Florence, and Matteo Villani roundly accuses the Capitani della Compagnia of peculation and corruption. However this may be, by 1355 Andrea Orcagna had been chosen to build the shrine of Madonna, which is still to-day one of the wonders of the city. It seems to have been in a sort of recognition of the splendour and beauty of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... to confirm a certain appointee, he declared that the opposition had "its rise in an overwhelming greed for the patronage which may attach to the place," and that the practical effect of such opposition was to perpetuate "the practice of unblushing peculation." What he said was quite true and it was the kind of truth that hurt. The brusqueness of his official style and the censoriousness of his language infused even more personal bitterness into the opposition which developed within his own party than in that felt in the ranks of the opposing ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... sacrificed the interests of the agricultural community to those of the traders and merchants, by the imposition of direct taxes and the lowering of customs duties; was openly accused, as well as his ministers, of peculation; and as the result of all this malversation the greater part of the population had risen in revolt. The movement against O'Higgins was led by a General D. Ramon Freire y Serrano, who gave formal assurances to the explorers that the political disturbance should ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... perhaps, to a higher degree than could have ever been contemplated. Many of the convicts have been greatly reformed when in the service of considerate and judicious masters; but, with all this abatement, there is so much peculation, so much insubordination, insolence, disobedience of lawful orders, and so much drunkenness, that reference to the magisterial authority is constant, and always attended with loss of time and expense to the settlers. There can be no doubt things appear better in the colony ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... nearly bankrupt, stringent measures were necessary to restore prosperity; official independence and peculation had to be suppressed, and the Regents, who succeeded each other with marked rapidity, had to be watched, while it was necessary at the same time to maintain the executive power. These exigences led to strenuous scenes in the Assembly, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... government—no, not the Rump Parliament on its last legs—ever showed such pitiful inadequacy as our own during the past two months. Helpless beyond measure in all the duties of practical statesmanship, its members or their dependants have given proof of remarkable energy in the single department of peculation; and there, not content with the slow methods of the old-fashioned defaulter, who helped himself only to what there was, they have contrived to steal what there was going to be, and have peculated in advance by a kind of official post-obit. So thoroughly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... men and the facility of secreting a treasure that lies in such a small bulk, that the proprietor of the fishing has had under consideration a suggestion to sell the heaps of shells by auction to the natives, and permit them then to make the best of their bargain. Whether this method of preventing peculation has been actually adopted, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... this class. He ignored the bond of matrimony, yet he remained faithful to the woman he had betrayed; he was undoubtedly careless in the one responsible office with which he was intrusted, yet he cannot be taxed, taking all in all, with deliberate peculation. His drinking and playing were bad—very bad. His improper connection was bad—very bad; but perhaps the worst feature in his career was his connection with 'John Bull,' and his ready giving in to a system of low libel. There is no excuse for this but ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... injunctions of the law, though they are merely positive, and do not contain anything but mere matters of regulation, shall be strictly observed. The reason is this, and a serious reason it is: official tyranny and oppression, corruption, peculation, and bribery are crimes so secret in their nature that we can hardly ever get to the proof of them without the assistance of rules, orders, and regulations of a positive nature, intended to prevent the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... in one degrading particular. His pay was better than his reputation, but his position was isolated, his duties and his actions subject to little official supervision. With opportunity came peculiar temptations to bribery and peculation, and to these he often succumbed. The absence of congenial society frequently weighed heavy upon him and drove him to immoderate drinking. Had he lived a generation or so later the average impress officer ashore could have echoed with perfect ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... General to the camp at Hounslow. It is difficult to blame the new government for continuing to employ him: for, in his own department, his experience far surpassed that of any other Englishman. Unfortunately, in the same school in which he had acquired his experience, he had learned the whole art of peculation. The beef and brandy which he furnished were so bad that the soldiers turned from them with loathing: the tents were rotten: the clothing was scanty: the muskets broke in the handling. Great numbers of shoes were set down to the account of the government: but, two months after the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after session. Like thousands of others, I have been a greyhound in the leash, a bolt in the bow, longing to take my turn on the arena: eager as any Shrovetide 'prentice for a fling at negligence, peculation and injustice, and other the long black catalogue of British injuries. Socialism, Chartism, Ribandism; Spain, Canada, China; freed criminals, and imprisoned poverty; penny wisdom, and pound folly; the universal centralizing system, corrupting all ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... manors in Gillingham, co. Kent, East Court and Twidall. Haslewood is somewhat at a loss to account for these possessions. From documents I have discovered and printed in an Appendix, it becomes only too clear, I fear, that Painter's fortune had the same origin as too many private fortunes, in peculation of public funds. ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... party closed its ranks,—the Commune, the ministers, the Cordeliers, Hebert, Hanriot. Proclamations were issued for a new insurrection. But Paris was getting weary of insurrections, wearier still of the obvious blackguardism and peculation of the Hebertists, weariest of the perpetual drip of blood from the guillotine. No insurrection could be organized. For some days the opponents remained at arm's length. Finally on the 17th of March ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston |
