"Venality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of these mass-priests, and of the masses themselves? What say ye? Be all things here so without abuses, that nothing ought to be amended? Your forefathers saw somewhat, which made this constitution against the venality and sale of masses, that, under pain of suspending, no priest should sell his saying of tricennals or annals. What saw they, that made this constitution? What priests saw they? What manner of masses saw they, trow ye? But at the last, what became of so good a ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... the Court, and was in 1683, on the discovery of the Rye House Plot, condemned to death on entirely insufficient evidence, and beheaded on Tower Hill, December 7, 1683. Though no charge of personal venality has been substantiated, yet it appears to be certain that he received money from the French King for using his influence against war between the two countries, his object being to prevent Charles II. from obtaining command ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... people from venturing upon any repetition of the late acts. Later on, the commons presented petitions calling for the redress of abuses in administration, attributing this insurrection to the extortions of the tax-collectors, and the venality and rapacity of judges and officers ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... own, too, we were ashamed, as we had good right to be ashamed, of our old crim. con. law. Foreigners, especially Frenchmen, had rung the changes on our coarse venality and corruption; and we had come to perceive—it took some time, though—that moneyed damages were scarcely the appropriate remedy ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... money, and then that of power, began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil. For avarice subverted honesty, integrity, and other honorable principles, and, in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion, and general venality. Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast, and another ready on the tongue;[64] to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... History, he was cheered along by as full and triumphant majorities, as ever followed in the wake of ministerial power. At length, however, the spirit of the people, that last and only resource against the venality of parliaments and the obstinacy of kings, was roused from its long and dangerous sleep by the unparalleled exertions of the Opposition leaders, and spoke out with a voice, always awfully intelligible, against ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... government officials or "impiegati," to whom admirers of the Papacy point with such pride as evidence of the secular character of the administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly administrators. The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best policy, while the extent to which barbers are still employed as surgeons shows that the medical profession is not of sufficient repute to be ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... criminal; very frequently, the superstitions he has adopted, his government, his education, the examples set before him, irresistibly drive him on to evil: under these circumstances morality preaches virtue to him in vain. In those societies where vice is esteemed, where crime is crowned, where venality is constantly recompenced, where the most dreadful disorders are punished, only in those who are too weak to enjoy the privilege of committing them with impunity; the practice of virtue is considered nothing more than a painful sacrifice ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... political affairs. Practice was the touchstone; a theory was useless unless you could prove that it had worked. It followed that he was not a democrat, opposed parliamentary reform, and held that the true remedy for corruption and venality was not to increase the size of the electorate, but to reduce it so as to obtain electors of greater weight and independence. For him a member of Parliament was a representative and not a delegate, and must act ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... under their sanction that jurisprudence, in some of the most important departments of life, reached perfection. If injustice was suffered, it was not on account of the laws, but the depravity of men, the venality of the rich, and the tricks of lawyers. But the laws were wise and equal. The civil jurisprudence could be copied with safety by the most enlightened of European states. And, indeed, it is the foundation of their civil codes, especially in ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... self-opinionated theorists, who know nothing of the Hindoo as he really shews himself to us in daily and hourly contact with him, will ever persuade me that native, as opposed to English rule, would be productive of aught but burning oppression and shameless venality, or would end in anything ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... grave! Had he lived, my friend, he would have brightened that name which rumor has sullied, and I should have doubly gloried in wearing the name he had rendered so worthy of being coupled with the kingly title. Noble was he in soul; but he fell amidst a race of men whose art was equal to their venality, and he became their dupe. Betrayed by friendship, he sunk into the snare; for he had no dishonor in his own breast to warn him of what might be the villainy of others. He believed the cajoling speeches of Edward, who, on the first offense of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... exclusion grew at last so common, that the public tables became an aristocratic instead of a democratic institution. Aristotle, in later times, makes it an objection to the ephoral government that poor men were chosen ephors, and that their venality arose from their indigence—a moral proof that poverty in Sparta must have been more common than has generally been supposed [142];—men of property would not have chosen their judges and dictators in paupers. Land was held and cultivated by the Helots, who paid a certain fixed proportion ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wealth of the nation was fast declining; that the country was depopulated, agriculture neglected, manufactures decaying, and trade undone. Nor have these publications been all party pamphlets, the wretched offspring of falsehood and venality. Many of them have been written by very candid and very intelligent people, who wrote nothing but what they believed, and for no other reason ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... for whom he procured differential favors, and by whose government he was rewarded by gold chains and presents of hard cash, bestowed as secretly as the equivalent was conveyed adroitly. Nevertheless, although his venality was already more than suspected, and although his peculation, during his long career became so extensive that he was eventually prosecuted by government, and died before the process was terminated, the lord of Grobbendonck was often employed in most delicate negotiations, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... transacted in India, the Court of Directors in London, hearing of so many changes, hearing of such an incredible mass of perfidy and venality, knowing that there was a general market made of the country and of the Company, that the flame of war spread from province to province, that, in proportion as it spread, the fire glowed with augmented fierceness, and that the rapacity which originally ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... scarcely made themselves felt till 1866, when a mild attempt to admit the pick of the artisans to the electoral privileges of the middle class woke the panic-stricken vehemence of Robert Lowe. "If," he asked, "you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness, and the means of intimidation; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, and violent people, where will you go to look for them—to the top or to the bottom?" Well might Bishop Wilberforce report to a friend, "It was enough to make ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... apostatized, and the systematic and unblushing manner in which they sold their pens to the highest bidder, and prostituted the press to serve the purposes of their patrons. Mrs. Hutchinson, in the memoirs of her husband, Colonel Hutchinson, gives a curious instance of their venality: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... statecraft and morality, which recognizes force and fraud among the legitimate means of attaining high political ends, which makes success alone the test of conduct and which presupposes the corruption, baseness, and venality of mankind at large. ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... their simple and upright minds; while old Mark, of still more decided and exaggerated ideas of spiritual perfection, distinctly groaned aloud The stranger took a sensible pleasure in this testimony of their abhorrence of so gross and so unworthy a venality, though he saw no occasion to heighten its effect by further speech. When his host stood erect, and, in a voice that was accustomed to obedience, he called on his family to join, in behalf of the reckless ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... that single Passage in Gaguinus's Life of St. Lewis is a sufficient Proof. "As soon (says he) as King Lewis arrived at Paris, he called a General Convention, and therein reformed the Commonwealth; making excellent Statutes relating to the Judges, and against the Venality of Offices, &c." ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... jewels to a very wrong cause, and endeavoured to put as much additional softness into his countenance as he was able. My fears were a little quieted, and I was resolved to be very liberal of promises, and hoped so thoroughly to persuade him of my venality that he might, without any doubt, be drawn in to wait the captain and crew's return, who would, I was very certain, not only preserve me from his violence, but secure the restoration of what you had been so cruelly robbed of. But, alas! I was mistaken." ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had no veneration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient lies. He loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's sake. He saw oppression on every hand, injustice everywhere, hypocrisy at the altar, venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many against ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... against two men, moreover, whose sodden lack of conscience was but heightened by the contrast with their brilliant genius and lofty force of character; two men who were unable to so much as appreciate that there was shame in the practice of venality, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... "Bourrienne," said he, "can you imagine anything more pitiable than their system of finance? Can it for a moment be doubted that the principal agents of authority daily committed the most fraudulent peculations? What venality! what disorder! what wastefulness! everything put up for sale: places, provisions, clothing, and military, all were disposed of. Have they not actually consumed 75,000,000 in advance? And then, think of all the scandalous fortunes accumulated, all the malversations! But are there ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Russian author felt to his cost. "Whilst I was at Moscow," says a pleasant traveller, "a quarto volume was published in favor of the liberties of the people,—a singular subject when we consider the place where the book was printed. In this work the iniquitous venality of the public functionaries, and even the conduct of the sovereign, was scrutinized and censured with great freedom. Such a book, and in such a country, naturally attracted general notice, and the offender was taken into custody. After being tried in ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... abuses of power. Hardly an officer, either of the general or state governments, from the President down to the ten thousand postmasters, and from governors to the fifty thousand constables, escapes the charge of 'abuse of power.' 'Oppression,' 'Extortion,' 'Venality,' 'Bribery,' 'Corruption,' 'Perjury,' 'Misrule,' 'Spoils,' 'Defalcation,' stand on every newspaper. Now without any estimate of the lies told in these mutual charges, there is truth enough to make each party ready to believe ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to the imagination. Its name has been inextricably entangled with literature by Pierre de Bourdeilles, Seigneur de Brantme, author of the famous and scandalous 'Mmoires'—terrible chronicles of sixteenth-century venality, intrigue, and corruption, written in a spirit of the gayest cynicism. Brantme—he is known to the world by no other name now—was the spiritual as well as the temporal lord here, for he was abbot of the ancient abbey which was founded on ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a more favorable opportunity to assail the sensualism of the century, the venality of consciences, and the corruption instituted by the government: instead of that, what does the Academy of Moral Sciences do? With the most automatic calmness, it establishes a series in which luxury, so long proscribed by the stoics and ascetics,—those ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... expression. Nancy noticed the straight line of the heavy brows scarcely interrupted by the indication of the beginning of the nose, and wondering to herself if it were not possible for a person with that eyebrow formation to escape the venality of disposition that is popularly supposed to be its ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... home purchaser. The jealousy with which the Court party regarded the encroachments of these returned Anglo-Indians in their preserves is amusing, especially when we recollect that so great was the venality of the age that a respectable corporation such as that of Oxford did not hesitate to offer the representation of their borough for ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... victim has to be sacrificed as a peace-offering. Too obscure, did Madame say? Ah! that is the very reason! He has secured no protector. He has opposed the Court and the Prince alike, and the magistrates themselves regard him as a dangerous man, with those notions a lui about venality, and his power and individuality, and therefore is factious, and when the Court demands a Frondeur there will be no one except perhaps old Mole to cry out in his defence, and Mole is himself too much overpowered. Some friend ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of sharpers. Given your money, they have resolved the problem of getting it with the least expense to themselves. On all sides are nets and traps, like spider-webs, and the fly that this gentry lies snugly in wait for is you. This is what twenty or thirty years of venality has done for a population once simple and honest, whose contact was grateful indeed to men worn by city life. Home-made bread has disappeared, butter comes from the dealer, they know to an art how to skim milk and adulterate wine; they have all the ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... also been agent to old Topertoe, felt a kind of personal attachment to that good-humored reprobate, so long as he believed him to be honest. Old Tom's venality, however, at the union, made him rather sick of the connection, and the conduct, or rather expensive profligacy of the young absentee Lord, rendered his situation, as an honest and humane agent, one of great ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... very willingly leave to others, who, though true friends to the government, are not inflamed with zeal so fiery and impatient as mine, and, therefore, do not feel the same emotions of rage and resentment at the sight of those infamous passages, in which venality and dependence are represented, as mean in themselves, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... matters in America is generally favorable to the cause of the progress of contemporaneous Art which I hold it an honor to serve and to sustain. It seems that, among you, the cavillings and blunders and stupidities of a criticism adulterated by ignorance, envy and venality exercise less influence than in the old continent. I congratulate you on this, and give you my best wishes that you may happily pursue this noble careerof an artist,—with work, perseverance, resignation, modesty, and the imperturbable ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... rise, progress, and decline of parliamentary corruption in England still remains to be written. No subject has called forth a greater quantity of eloquent vituperation and stinging sarcasm. Three generations of serious and of sportive writers wept and laughed over the venality of the senate. That venality was denounced on the hustings, anathematized from the pulpit, and burlesqued on the stage; was attacked by Pope in brilliant verse, and by Bolingbroke in stately prose, by Swift with savage hatred, and by Gay with festive malice. The voices of Tories and Whigs, of Johnson ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so remarkable for boldness, are directed against those ecclesiastical abuses which touched the interests of the clerkly classes—against simony, avarice, venality in the Roman Curia, against the ambition of prelates and the effort to make princely benefices hereditary, rather than against the real sins of the Church—her wilful solidification of popular superstitions for the purposes of self-aggrandisement, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... traveller of rank, that, at the Court of St. Cloud, want of morals is not atoned for by good breeding or good manners. The hideousness of vice, the pretensions of ambition, the vanity of rank, the pride of favour, and the shame of venality do not wear here that delicate veil, that gloss of virtue, which, in other Courts, lessens the deformity of corruption and the scandal of depravity. Duplicity and hypocrisy are here very common indeed, more so than dissimulation anywhere else; but barefaced knaves and impostors must always ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... precedent it is to be hoped that it has not been followed; for it is obvious that such an arrangement, however advantageous or pleasant to individual members, might throw grave suspicions on the purity of public men, and introduce a wholesale venality into public life. If such a system is permitted, any foreign monarch or any foreign government may secure the services of a British senator as his agent and representative. It is quite appalling to think that the chivalrous Earl of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... class of men. And for this reason, if for no other, it is important to know the limitations under which they work. I leave aside the limitations that come from within the editor himself; for manifestly ignorance, prejudice, venality and the like, in the editor are in no wise different from similar faults ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... desire] — N. covetousness, ravenousness &c. adj.; venality, avidity, cupidity; acquisitiveness (acquisition) 775; desire &c. 865. [greed for money or material things] greed, greediness, avarice, avidity, rapacity, extortion. selfishness &c.943; auri sacra fames[Lat]. grasping, craving, canine ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... finally, St. Diego; besides these seaports, are many cities in the interior, such as St. Juan Campestrano, Los Angelos, the largest town in California, and San Gabriel. Disturbances, arising from the ignorance and venality of the Mexican dominion, very often happen in these regions; new individuals are continually appointed to rule them; and these individuals are generally men of broken fortunes and desperate characters, whose extortions ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the town. But long before the advent of the Kinglakes its glory had departed; its manufactures had died out, its society become Philistine and bourgeois—"little men who walk in narrow ways"— while from pre-eminence in electoral venality among English boroughs it was saved only by the near proximity of Bridgewater. A noted statesman who, at a later period, represented it in Parliament, used to say that by only one family besides Dr. Hamilton Kinglake's could he be received with any sense of social ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... book and she wanted to please Brodrick. Such a desire was the mother of monstrous and unshapen things. In Tanqueray's eyes it was hardly less impure than the commercial taint. Its uncleanness lacked the element of venality; that was all that could be said. She had done violence to her genius. She had constrained the secret ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... grouped, each personifying a type peculiar to the Lithuanian province. The darkest portrait is that of Gaal, the ignorant upstart who rules the whole community, and makes common cause with Rabbi Zadok and his followers. The venality of the officials gives the heartless parvenu free scope for his arbitrary misdeeds, and without let or hindrance he persecutes all who are suspected of modernizing tendencies. He is enveloped in an atmosphere of crime and terror. Mapu was guilty of overdrawing ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... without check or challenge, and the departure of the virtuous La Galissoniere left the Colony to the weak and corrupt administrations of La Jonquiere, and De Vaudreuil. The latter made the Castle of St. Louis as noted for its venality as was the Palace of the Intendant. Bigot kept his high place through every change. The Marquis de Vaudreuil gave him free course, and it was more than suspected shared with the corrupt Intendant in the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... disposed to think that British fastidiousness was not less ingenious than that of the Spaniards, who considered themselves contaminated by a touch of the Gypsies, unless it were to have their fortunes told. Venality and deception meeting with so much encouragement, those propensities of the human heart would be generated and fostered, which at length produced flagrant impositions, ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... good deal of the affair. I was charged with indifference, with cowardice, with venality. Some journals even declared that I had instigated the lynching and participated in it, and said that ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Windsor, cannot have been pleased that Pitt and Dundas had a state secret which was withheld for him; but he replied on the morrow in terms, part of which Earl Stanhope did not publish. "I am so thoroughly convinced of the venality of that nation [France] and the strange methods used by its Directors in carrying on negotiations that I agree with him [Pitt] in thinking, strange as the proposal appears, that it may be ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... which might one day grow after me upon my tomb. They have cried out at the profanation of the inner feeling; at the effrontery of a soul shown naked; at the scandal of recollections made public; at the venality of sacred things; at the simony of the poet selling his own fibers to save the roof and the tree that overshadowed his cradle. I have read and heard in silence all their malign interpretations of an act, the true nature of which had been revealed to you long before it was to the public. I have ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... learning declines with the reputation of its friends. And if we enquire, why the character of an Academy-Keeper is treated with such general contempt, we shall not find the true causes to be either superciliousness, pedantry, ignorance, or venality, as the world maliciously insinuates, but the modesty of these people, and their disinterested probity; by the former of which they have unhappily prevented the world from being acquainted with their merit, and by the latter prevented themselves from emerging out of a state ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... From Americans, for instance, there is a chorus of complaint on the ground of incivility. Not that Americans shine in this matter of passports for their own country. America sets Europe an unenlightened example of red-tape and venality. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... speak freely of the 'painful imbecility of Lincoln,' of the 'venality and corruption' which ran riot in the government, and expressed the belief that no better condition of things was possible 'until Jeff Davis turns out ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... remain in haughty indolence, and dream of nothing but pedigrees and genealogies: the generous and ambitious seek honour and authority, and reputation and favour. Where riches are the chief idol, corruption, venality, rapine prevail: arts, manufactures, commerce, agriculture flourish. The former prejudice, being favourable to military virtue, is more suited to monarchies. The latter, being the chief spur to industry, agrees better with ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... The ferocity, the venality, the profligate expenditure, the delirious excitement of contested elections have made an indelible mark on our political history. In 1780 King George III. personally canvassed the Borough of Windsor against the Whig candidate, Admiral ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... attention on the "high dames and gartered knights" of the days of Elizabeth, the simplicity and earnestness and lofty feeling, which lent grace to prejudice and chastened error into virtue, were exchanged, in the days of Charles II., for undisguised corruption and insatiable venality, for license without generosity, persecution without faith, and luxury without refinement. Grammont's animated Memoires are a complete, and, from the happy unconsciousness of the writer to the vices ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... venality," said Newman. "She has kept your secret all these years. She has given you a long respite. It was beneath her eyes your husband wrote that paper; he put it into her hands with a solemn injunction that she was ...
— The American • Henry James
... Perier, Thiers, Guizot, Rothschild, the Catholic party, the Socialist party, have their turn of satire and appreciation, for Heine deals out both with an impartiality which made his less favorable critics—Borne, for example—charge him with the rather incompatible sins of reckless caprice and venality. Literature and art alternate with politics: we have now a sketch of George Sand or a description of one of Horace Vernet's pictures; now a criticism of Victor Hugo or of Liszt; now an irresistible caricature of Spontini or Kalkbrenner; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... however, that he would burn you like a handful of straw if he were the master. And ah! if I could tell you everything, if I could show you the frightful under-side of this world of ours, the monstrous, ravenous ambition, the abominable network of intrigues, venality, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... this wonderful scheme for the spirits of the dead, having no higher standard, transferred to the authorities of that world the etiquette, tastes, and venality of their correlate officials in the Chinese Government, thus making it necessary to use similar means to appease the one which are found necessary to move the other. All the State gods have their assistants, attendants, door-keepers, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... silence. But he had inwardly and adventurously resolved, if ever Fate should bring him and the Prince together under circumstances more untrammelled, he would not let pass a chance to balance up that ledger of princely venality. For here indeed was an adversary, Durkin very well knew, who was worthy of any ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... without a stain upon his ermine. Millions might have been amassed by venality. He retires as poor as when he entered, owing nothing and owning little, except the title to the respect of good men, which malignant mendacity cannot wrest from a public officer who has deserved, by a long and useful career, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... grandeur, contains an apartment which is called, from its situation, and the opportunities it presents of looking down upon the actors of the scene around, L'OEil de Boeuf. The revelations of the OEil de Boeuf, during the reign of Louis XV., form one of the most amazing pictures of wickedness, venality, power misapplied, genius polluted, that was ever drawn. No one that reads that infamous book can wonder at the revolution of 1789. Let us conceive Saint-Simon to have taken his stand here, in this region, pure in the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... some red feathers, and other valuable articles, to the Toutou's master, who generally accepts the compensation, and permits him to repossess his house and lands. This practice is the height of venality and injustice; and the slayer of the slave seems to be under no farther necessity of absconding, than to impose upon the lower class of people, who are the sufferers. For it does not appear that the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... human nature that few individuals can be safely trusted with despotic power; accordingly we find no Captain-General whose administration will bear the test of rigid examination. Indeed, the venality of a majority of these officials has been so gross as to have passed into a proverb. It is not to be expected that officers from Spain should consult the true interests of the Cubans; they are not sent hither ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... $44,000,000 was issued in 1869; the remainder in previous years. "The only answer made by the roads was that the legislature authorized it," the committee went on. "It is proper to remark that the people are quite as much indebted to the venality of the men elected to represent them in the Legislature as to the rapacity of the railroad managers for this state of ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... of Valens had introduced a nation of warriors into the heart of the empire; the venality of the officials had converted them into enemies; Valens, instead of seeking to remove their causes of hostility, marched with an army against them. We cannot here describe the various conflicts that took place. It will suffice to say that other barbarians ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... has seen. He was a great artist, making use of his scanty materials to the best effect; he had absolute control over the resources of his vernacular tongue, and not only unrivalled skill in composition, but tact and judgment. Thus he was generally successful, in spite of the venality and corruption of the times. The courts of justice were the scenes of his earliest triumphs; nor until he was praetor did he speak from the rostrum on mere political questions, as in reference to the Manilian and Agrarian laws. It is in his political discourses that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... and coming to her apartment I had thrust myself between her and the crass venality of the men of her race, but I had now to wrestle with the problem that such action had involved. If, I reasoned, I could only reveal to her my true identity the situation would be easier, for I could then tell her of the rules of the game of love in the world I had known. Until she knew of ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... theme recurs more insistently and suggestively in Popiana than Pope's wealth. Faced with the nasty fact that if one wrote well enough, there was a public to support one, they could only accuse Pope monotonously of venality and avarice. ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... been a practice indulged in by several other high colonial officials. His salary was totally inadequate to the importance of his office, and quite insufficient to meet the expenditure his exalted position led him into. His speculations, his venality, the extortions practised on the community by his heartless minions: this is what has surrounded his memory with eternal infamy and made his name a by-word ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the governor resided at Poona, inattentive to the misery of the people, whom his duan, or deputy, oppressed in a cruel manner; indeed the system of the Mahratta government is so uniformly oppressive that it appears extraordinary to hear of a mild and equitable administration; venality and corruption guide the helm of State and pervade the departments; if the sovereign requires money the men in office and governors of provinces must supply it; the arbitrary monarch seldom inquires by what means it is procured; this affords them an opportunity ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... fetish worship of numbers, after the gaping optimism which had believed in the sanctity of the majority and had looked to it for the progress of humanity, there came the wind of brute force: the inability of the majority to govern themselves, their venality, their corruption, their base and fearful hatred of all superiority, their oppressive cowardice, raised the spirit of revolt: the minorities of energy—every kind of minority—appealed from the majority to force. A queer, yet inevitable alliance was ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... because he was a Roman Catholic, had deprived the navy of its most influential and able friend. The greedy rapacity with which Charles II. had devoted the money assigned by the Commons for the support of the fleet to his own lustful and extravagant purposes, the favoritism and venality which he allowed in the administration of the Admiralty, and the neglect with which he viewed the representations of Pepys and others as to the condition of his fleets, had reduced the navy of England, which had won such immortal glory ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... historians have hesitated to take them seriously. The laws of the Courts of Love[77] may sometimes seem to us immoral and licentious, but in reality they served to restrain the worst immoralities and licences of the time. They banished violence, they allowed no venality, and they inculcated moderation in passion. The task of the Courts of Love was facilitated by the relative degree of peace which then reigned, especially by the fact that the Normans, holding both coasts of the Channel, formed a link between France ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... courage; and although unacquainted with the tactics of European warfare, said to possess high capacity for the command of an irregular force. He possesses great energy of character, and is free from the taint of venality; but he is at the same time somewhat proud and vindictive. His predecessor in the ministry of the interior was M. Ilia Garashanin, the rising man in Servia. Sound practical sense, and unimpeachable integrity, without a shade of intrigue, distinguish this senator. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... do not, but I may present a few general facts and notions, that will give you some idea of the state of this important feature of society. The forms and modes of English jurisprudence are so much like our own, as to create the impression that the administration of justice is equally free from venality and favour. As a whole and when the points at issue reach the higher functionaries of the law, I should think this opinion true; but, taking those facts that appear in the daily prints, through the police reports and in the form of personal narratives, as guides, I should think that there ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is the fault of the Press. What has rendered it such a pliant tool in the hands of German Imperialism is either credulity or venality; and both are contemptible qualities. Credulity is probably the more prevalent, at least in this country, where shoals of newspapers, blinded by their own prejudices, were the dupes of German duplicity. But there has been venality, too, both crude ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... magnify his claims on others, and in return to under-rate their's on him; a disposition to undervalue the advantages, and over-state the disadvantages, of his condition in life. Thence spring rapacity and venality, and sensuality. Thence imperious nobles, and factious leaders; and an unruly commonalty, bearing with difficulty the inconveniences of a lower station, and imputing to the nature or administration ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... preserved from the dry pan and the slow fire any one of a score of individuals whose only offence against the State was that they would not willingly sacrifice their rights, and become the tools of venality and corruption? In not one solitary instance had it served any such purpose. Such responsibility was a mockery, "a broken reed, which it would be folly ever again to rest upon."[217] Of real, constitutional responsibility ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Patriarch was compelled to be an extortioner himself. The bishoprics in their turn were sold in his ante-chambers, and the Bishops made up the purchase-money by fleecing their clergy. But in spite of a deserved reputation for venality, the Bishops in Greece exercised very great influence, both as ecclesiastics and as civil magistrates. Whether their jurisdiction in lawsuits between Christians arose from the custom of referring disputes to their ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... men who denounced oppression, unscrupulousness, and venality, and who in rhetorical pronunciamentos urged the "people" to overthrow the dictators, were often actuated by motives of patriotism, even though they based their declarations on assumptions and assertions, rather than on principles and facts. Not infrequently ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... case of the press. At the inception of the league it has been supposed that such was the venality and corruption of the city newspapers that it would be necessary to buy one of them. But the word "clean government" had been no sooner uttered than it turned out that every one of the papers in the city ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... was a mere incident on the surface of social life. The national life was more profoundly tainted by the discouragement of all good men, which penetrated every shire and every parish, than by the distant reports of the loose behaviour of Charles II. Servility, meanness, venality, time-serving, and a disbelief in virtue diffused themselves over the nation like a pestilential miasma, the depressing influence of which was heavy, even upon those souls which individually resisted ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... of a maitre des requetes at 150,000 livres, that of a counselor at 90,000 to 100,000 livres. The place of First President was not venal, but held by appointment. Martin, xiii. 53 and n. The general subject of the venality of offices is considered in the chapter on Taxation.] This, while offering no guarantee of capacity, assured the independence of the judges. As the places were looked on as property, they were commonly transmitted from father to son, and became the basis of that nobility of the gown which played ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... was the leading spirit in this disgraceful traffic, and enriched himself by the acceptance of bribes for the nomination to preferments. It was an unedifying state of things; and public opinion was not long in expressing its discontent with such an exhibition of widespread venality and greed. All this was duly reported to Philip by Granvelle, who continued, in his retirement, to keep himself well informed of all ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... than to public opinion. That tyrant of our modern days had already seized the throne, and his legitimate authority and divine right were never doubted by the most anti-monarchical of the sons of liberty. The only check on the insolence of the noblesse, and the only compensation for the venality of the judges, was found in a recourse to the printer. A marquis was made to imitate the manners of a gentleman by fear of an epigram; a defeated party in a lawsuit consoled himself by satirizing the court; and from Voltaire down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the French had been the persistent demands on the part of Talleyrand—the French Minister of Foreign Affairs—for a preliminary money payment, either under the form of a so-called "loan" or as a bribe outright. Such a revelation of venality struck dumb the Republican leaders who had kept asserting their distrust of Adams's sincerity and accusing the administration of injustice toward France. It took all heart out of the opposition members of Congress, and encouraged the Federalists ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... the country as to the venality and chicanery of the "district sergeants" and other subordinate officials, and petty conflicts which I had with the government in Stettin as deputy of the "Circle" and deputy for the provincial president, increased my aversion to the rule of the bureaucracy. I may mention one of these conflicts. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... what is just, what not? In your own Conscience, Gentlemen; not in the conscience of the Attorney for the Plaintiff-Government, or the accused Defendant; not in the conscience of the community; still less in the technical "opinion" of the lawyers, or the ambition, the venality, the personal or purchased rage of the court. Of course you will get such help as you can find from judges, attorneys, and the public itself, but then decide as you must decide—each man in the light of his own conscience, under the terrible and beautiful eyes of God. How does the juror ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... number march out and away home. We could not complain at this—much as we wanted to go ourselves, since there could be no question that these poor fellows deserved the precedence. We did grumble savagely, however, at Captain Bowes's venality, in selling out chances to moneyed men, since these were invariably those who were best prepared to withstand the hardships of imprisonment, as they were mostly new men, and all had good clothes and blankets. We did not blame the men, however, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Gentlemen, on this serious day, when I come, as it were, to make up my account with you, let me take to myself some degree of honest pride on the nature of the charges that are against me. I do not here stand before you accused of venality, or of neglect of duty. It is not said, that, in the long period of my service, I have, in a single instance, sacrificed the slightest of your interests to my ambition or to my fortune. It is not alleged, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... uniqueness. It was, technically, illegal; but, even so, it was remarked that the saloons which Mrs. Nation wrecked, were themselves in brazen defiance of the laws of the state of Kansas—unenforced on account of the fear or venality of public officers. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... share companies. These were written with energy and often with violence. As they attacked many private interests they aroused against their author much hatred, insult, and calumny. He was accused of venality, though he was attacking and driving to despair powerful stock-jobbers, who would have paid him magnificently for silence, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... attached, as this is, to a public function. We, no doubt, know the meaning of the symbols they bear; but how easily might the ordinary man, waiting here, mistake the figure with the mirror for Vanity and that with the scales Venality: 'Pay us what we ask,' she might be saying, 'or else your life is a forfeit,'—so the sword ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... by an extraordinary intellectual and artistic acumen. But taking them by and large, they were too apt to ineffectualize those successes, in the fields of national and political life, by extraordinary venality and instability of character. I shall draw here deeply on Professor Mahaffy, who very wisely sets out to restore the balance as between Greeks and Persians, and burst bubble-notions commonly held. Greek ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to its being so unusual a case, and in part to the influence, as I suppose, of the French at Canton: For they had a countryman and fast friend residing on the spot, who spoke the language very well, and was not unacquainted with the venality of the government, nor with the persons of several of the magistrates, and consequently could not be at a loss for means of traversing the assistance desired by Mr Anson. And this opposition of the French was not merely the effect of national prejudice or contrariety of political interests, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the Treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories—but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... or elegance which never pleased, ought not to be envied or disturbed, when they are known honestly to pay for their entertainment. But there are unmerciful exactors of adulation, who withhold the wages of venality; retain their encomiast from year to year by general promises and ambiguous blandishments; and when he has run through the whole compass of flattery, dismiss him with contempt, because his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... in brilliant contrast to that of the men with whom he was placed. He alone was free from the slightest suspicion of corruption and venality, and he speedily made enemies among his colleagues by the open contempt which he ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... lack of capital, the lack of suitable legislation on the subject of cooperation, the mutual isolation of the educated and wage-earning classes, the lack of business ability among wage earners, and the altogether too frequent venality ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... depravity, improbity, unscrupulousness, iniquity, immorality, turpitude, knavishness, villainy, peccancy, baseness, profligacy, venality, licentiousness, obliquity, pravity, degeneracy, viciousness, wantonness, criminality, libertinism, malevolence, incorrigibility, rascality, malignity, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... moment the French were heavily burdened by the venality of La Barre, who subordinated public policy to his own gains. We have now to record his most egregious blunder—an attempt to overawe the Iroquois with an insufficient force—an attempt which Meulles declared was a mere piece of acting—not designed for real war on behalf ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Antonio Maceo, met this situation with consummate skill. The military problem which confronted them was one which chiefly demanded self-restraint. They were lamentably destitute of arms and munitions of war. Cartridges were a dearly prized acquisition, and it is worth noting, as an indication of the venality which corrupted the Spanish army, that a considerable share of the insurgent ammunition was obtained by direct traffic with the Spanish soldiers. But in the main the Patriots were armed with heterogeneous firearms and the machete—a heavy, sword-like knife, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... he wheedled secrets from the prostitutes of princes; he stood by and egged on human dog-fights; he took part in church-rows about doctrines; he had inside glimpses of the venality of Austrian kept-press-writers, "the scum of the earth," he calls them, "who sell opinions as the petty merchant sells butter and eggs." Bismarck seemed to be the only man in Europe who really was able to grasp the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... him complaining that the administration did not support its friends, and intimating that time and money must be sacrificed to his success. Mr. Adams remarked: "I have observed the tendency of our elections to venality, and shall not encourage it. There is much money expended by the adversaries of the administration, and it runs chiefly in the channels of the press. They work by slander to vitiate the public spirit, and pay for defamation, to receive ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... that a residence of a year or two is necessary for its acquisition. None of the Chinese, rich or poor, understand those who speak plain English. The first intercourse of a foreigner with the natives, displays that imposition and venality which are more strongly exhibited, during every month of his residence among them. He is at once surrounded by persons, called compradors, who offer their assistance in supplying him with provisions of every description; they serve him without wages, although ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the diplomatic relations of the Porte with the Christian powers opened a new political career to the Greeks at Constantinople, and gave rise to the formation of a class of officials in the Othoman service called "phanariots," whose venality and illegal exactions made the name a by-word for the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... himself to Essex, but witnessed against him at his trial, which served him little; became at last in succession Attorney-General, Privy Councillor, Lord Keeper, and Lord Chancellor; was convicted of venality as a judge, deposed, fined and imprisoned, but pardoned and released; spent his retirement in his favourite studies; his great works were his "Advancement of Learning," "Novum Organum," and "De Augmentis Scientiarum," but is seen to best advantage by the generality in his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 150 inches into a health-resort. The yellow-lined faces of the American engineers told their own tale, although they had no longer to contend with the fearful mortality from yellow fever which, together with venality and corruption, effectually wrecked Ferdinand de Lesseps' attempt to pierce the Isthmus ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... of Turkish Progress are for the most part mere delusions. The Sultan is a well-meaning but weak man, and tyrannical through his very weakness. Had he strength enough to break through the meshes of falsehood and venality which are woven so close about him, he might accomplish some solid good. But Turkish rule, from his ministers down to the lowest cadi, is a monstrous system of deceit and corruption. These people have not the most remote conception of the true aims of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... not till August that he hired a little cottage on the New Jersey coast and invited the Arrans to visit him. They accepted the invitation, and the three had spent together six weeks of seashore idleness, during which Stanwell's modest rafters shook with Caspar's denunciations of his host's venality, and the brightness of Kate's gratitude was tempered by a tinge of reproach. But her grief over Stanwell's apostasy could not efface the fact that he had offered her brother the means of escape from town, and Stanwell himself was consoled by the reflection that but for Mrs. Millington's portrait ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... was something very congenial to him in Birkin. But yet, beyond this, he did not take much notice. He felt that he, himself, Gerald, had harder and more durable truths than any the other man knew. He felt himself older, more knowing. It was the quick-changing warmth and venality and brilliant warm utterance he loved in his friend. It was the rich play of words and quick interchange of feelings he enjoyed. The real content of the words he never really considered: he ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Barnave. Power assumed by La Fayette. La Fayette's Proceedings. The King's Parting Address. Manifesto. Proceedings of the Cordeliers and Jacobins. Robespierre's Address. Its Effect. Danton's Oration. His Audacity and Venality. Address of the Assembly. The King's Arrest known. His Hopes. The Queen's Despair. The Royal Family depart for Paris. De Bouille's unavailing Efforts. Indignation of the Populace. Barnave's noble Interference. Barnave gained over. Drouet's ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine |
