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Spoliation

noun
1.
(law) the intentional destruction of a document or an alteration of it that destroys its value as evidence.
2.
The act of stripping and taking by force.  Synonyms: despoilation, despoilment, despoliation, spoil, spoilation.






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"Spoliation" Quotes from Famous Books



... before the sun." Indeed, it is melancholy to reflect, that the aborigines of both continents of America have, from their first intercourse with Europeans or their descendants, experienced nothing but fraud, spoliation, cruelty, and ingratitude. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... Europe; and what had become of it; and then by one of those illogical jumps—often indulged in by well-informed men discussing any subject that absorbs them—brought up at Voltaire and Taine and the earlier days of the Revolution in which one of the little tailor's ancestors had suffered spoliation and death. ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... to be free for new campaigns in Europe. The First Consul, impressed by our minister's social rank in his own country, no less than by his merciless logic and solid understanding, had given his promise that debts due for the spoliation of our commerce should be paid. This promise, of which he was again reminded, could only be kept by realizing on sale of public lands, as he had no other resource. Small wonder that he wished to be rid of the whole irritating subject ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... country. Yet it is apparent that under this bill the real issue would frequently be between rival claimants, and not between either and the United States. This court, too, is already burdened with business since the reference to it of the Indian depredation claims, the French spoliation claims, etc., and it certainly can not be thought that a more speedy settlement of land claims could be there ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... corrupt Church, and to digest his arguments against the temporal wealth of the clergy. When he lauded the reforms effected by the German princes he was thinking of their secularisation of ecclesiastical revenues. The spoliation (p. 275) of the Church was consistent with the most fervent devotion to its tenets. In 1531 Henry warned the Pope that the Emperor would probably allow the laity "to appropriate the possessions of the Church, which is a matter which does not touch the foundations of the faith; and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... he successfully accomplished by means of his German mercenaries (12th of August 1536), an absolutely inexcusable act of violence loudly blamed by Luther himself, and accompanied by the wholesale spoliation of the church. Christian's finances were certainly readjusted thereby, but the ultimate gainers by the confiscation were the nobles, and both education and morality suffered grievously in consequence. The circumstances ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... Parma and Placentia were given in full propriety to Marie Louise, for herself, her son, and his descendants: yet, after long refusal to put them into possession, the injustice was consummated by an absolute spoliation, under the illusory pretext of an exchange without valuation, without proportion, without sovereignty, without consent; and the documents existing in the office of foreign affairs, of which we have had an account presented to us, prove, that it was ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... would have welcomed. Hay, however, wrote to Paul Dana on March 16, 1899, as follows: "We are, of course, opposed to the dismemberment of that empire [China], and we do not think that the public opinion of the United States would justify this Government in taking part in the great game of spoliation now going on." He felt also that the United States should not tie its hands by "formal alliances with other Powers interested," nor was he prepared "to assure China that we would join her in repelling that ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... years of crime and misery, for which Louis XIV., as the aggressor, is mainly responsible, peace was signed on the 30th of October, 1697. One important thing, indeed, had been accomplished. The rapacious Louis XIV. had been checked in his career of spoliation. But his insatiate ambition was by no means subdued. He desired peace only that he might more successfully prosecute his plans of aggrandizement. He soon, by his system of robbery, involved Europe again in war. Perhaps no man has ever lived who has caused more bloody deaths and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... weariness. Shadows slept under the eyes where the face had fallen into hollows. To-night there seemed no vestige of prettiness in those peaked features. Nothing of health, youth, gaiety, or even girlhood, was written in them, but only a terrible, a brutal record of spoliation and of wreckage, of plunder, and of despair. And the gaslight, striking the flat surface of the mirror, made the record glitter with a thin, cheap sparkle, like the tinsel trappings of the life whose story the mirror revealed ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... Here what are afterwards to become the influences of the plains are nurtured and tended as though in an orchard, and the future life of a whole fruitful valley with its regal towns is determined. Something about these places prevents ingress or spoliation. They will endure no settlements save of peasants; the waters are too young to be harnessed; the hills forbid an easy commerce with neighbours. Throughout the world I have found the heads of rivers to be secure places of silence and content. And ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... Apart from the spoliation of Mexico by the United States, the independence of the Hispanic nations had not been menaced for more than thirty years. Now comes a period in which the plight of their big northern neighbor, rent in twain by civil war and powerless to enforce the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, caused two ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... a weapon which had been a safeguard for the Montorgueils all this while. The papers which compromised a number of influential members of the Committee of Public Safety had been the most perfect arms of defence against persecution and spoliation. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... formidable armament by an inferior body of raw recruits, suddenly improvised for defense from the militia of the country, and but poorly armed and equipped?" "Providence!" was the reply; nothing less than Providence could have baffled and beaten such a powerful foe, bent on conquest and spoliation for a wicked purpose, with a wicked spirit, and in a wicked cause. England's boastful pride and intolerant and cruel insolence toward her American kindred was humbled at last. The God of battle had once again in time punished a strong nation ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... in favour of the church did not yet, however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands of the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again 1410, spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations were made upon the subject to the king.[473] The country, too, continued to be agitated with war and treason; and when Henry V. became king, in 1412, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... account of one who is evidently adverse to the political creed, no less than to the daring violence, of the clan Macgregor. Little can, it is true, be offered in palliation for the extraordinary career of spoliation and outrage which the history of this race of Highlanders presents; and which terminated only with the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... families lived by the profession of arms, and most of them were in the pay of Cesare. When, therefore, the conspirators met at La Magione, they were plotting against a man whose money they had taken, and whom they had hitherto aided in his career of fraud and spoliation. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... driving the English out of the island, we need no better proofs than the words of the English themselves. The Archbishop of Dublin, John Allen, the creature of Wolsey, who was employed by the crafty cardinal to begin the work of the spoliation of convents in the island, and oppose the great Earl of Kildare, dispatched his relative, the secretary of the Dublin Council, to England, to report that "the English laws, manners, and language in Ireland were confined within the narrow compass of twenty miles;" and that, unless the laws were duly ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... themselves have suffered severely as the result of excessive spoliation, which has produced vicious idleness and luxurious indulgence, with the ultimate effect of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... world has already recognized the transaction of the Saar as an act of spoliation and insincerity. So far as compensation for the destruction of French coal-mines is concerned, this is provided for, as we shall see in a moment, elsewhere in the Treaty. "There is no industrial region in Germany," ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... years—three—and though every one resolved himself into a watchman and hunter; though heralds cried rewards in the Emperor's name three times each day on the street corners, and in every place of common resort; though the fame of the havoc, rapine, spoliation, or whatsoever it may please thee to call the visitation, was carried abroad until everybody here and there knew every particular come to light concerning it, with the pursuit, and the dragging and fishing in the sea, never a clew was found. One—two—three years, during ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... answered, "Yes, but is not a diamond cut and polished a more beautiful object than when rough?" I grant it, and more valuable, inasmuch as it has run chance of spoliation in the cutting, but I maintain that the thinking man, the man whose thoughts are great and worth the consideration of others, will "deal in proprieties," and will from the mine of his thoughts produce ready-cut diamonds, or ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... comparative abundance, many of them lived almost entirely on herbs. These wretched creatures congregate in Misratah from all the neighbouring districts, the Gharian and Gibel mountains, the village of Touarghah, and other places. The same system of spoliation by Government is going on here as in other provinces of Tripoli, the inhabitants being reduced gradually to most complete beggary. Every year the number of poor increases, whilst the taxes on land, under the curse of Turkish oppression, as fatally increase, reducing ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... flames. The costly plate and rich furniture were flung into the Thames by the rioters. After this it lay in ruins until King Henry VII., himself a descendant of John of Gaunt, founded here a hospital for 100 poor people, but he hardly lived to see his project carried out. Amid the general spoliation of the religious houses that followed, Henry VIII. seems to have respected his father's wish and left the hospital alone. It is described as a goodly building in the form of a cross. However, it was suppressed under Edward VI., and restored ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... America have described the ravages of the leaf-cutting ants (Oecodoma); their crowded, well-worn paths through the forests, their ceaseless pertinacity in the spoliation of the trees—more particularly of introduced species—which are stripped bare and ragged with the midribs and a few jagged points of the leaves only left. Many a young plantation of orange, mango, and lemon trees has been ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... an edge to its aroma," laughed she. "And besides, the Whites aren't all responsible for our spoliation—some of them are not so white as your fancy paints them. They'd be very decent people, for the most part—if they ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... and make them comrades in preserving the trees and streams of the mountain States against the encroachments of some of their own citizens, who were openly, short-sightedly, and cynically bent upon destruction, spoliation, and misuse. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... not, add the name of Guinigi to his own) is most slender. She has been able to add nothing to it during these last years—not a farthing. But there is one consolation. While she lives, all is safe from spoliation. While she lives, no creditor lives bold enough to pass that threshold. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... says they should all build houses just like his. Mere clap-trap to win political influence—for his own people break the windows, and take no care of their fine new houses. I am sure property is burdened heavily enough without this absurd crotchet for additional spoliation. Old Cross Hall was crazy enough to leave him a lot of money as well as the estate; he certainly might have left the money to the poor girls he had brought up like his daughters, and not have left them to starve, and to be a burden on the country; and young Cross Hall ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... was still dark, and his eye still stern; for his policy confirmed his passions; and it was only by stigmatising, as dishonoured and accursed, the memory and cause of the dead King, that he could justify the sweeping spoliation of those who had fought against himself, and confiscate the lands to which his own Quens and warriors ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to him; that William had taken forcible possession of it, for the abbey, at the time of his marriage; that he, the owner, had been compelled thus far to submit to this wrong, inasmuch as he had, during William's life-time, no means of redress, but now he protested against a spoliation. "The land," he said, "is mine; it belonged to my father. I have not sold it, or forfeited it, nor pledged it, nor given it. It is my right. I claim it. In the name of God, I forbid you to put the body of the spoiler there, or to cover him with ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... this way three times. They acquired the throne by gold, and they could only keep it by gold. All depended upon how much they wore able to squeeze out of the country. The princes soon became past masters in the art of spoliation. They put taxes upon chimneys, and the starving peasants pulled their cottages down and went to live in mountain caves; they taxed the animals, and the peasants preferred to kill the few beasts they possessed. But this often proved no remedy, for we are told that the Prince Constantin Mavrocordato, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... of the spoliation, and have often wondered at your father's meek submission," said the duke, with an almost imperceptible sneer. Like Richard the Lion-hearted, of England, butchery was this duke's trade, and he despised a man who did not practise it on all possible occasions. A pretext for a quarrel is balm ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... become acquainted with it; and he was the more anxious on that account to deliver his sentiments upon it as a peer of Parliament, without reference to any thing he had been called upon to do in the discharge of his professional duty. When he looked at the mode in which this traffic commenced, by the spoliation of the rights of a whole quarter of the globe; by the misery of whole nations of helpless Africans; by tearing them from their homes, their families, and their friends; when he saw the unhappy victims carried away by force; thrust into a dungeon in the hold of a ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... last he will regenerate the earth. He will make it over. He will make all things new. He will set this race of redeemed immortals within it. Perfectly recovered from the spoliation of sin and death, they shall inhabit it forever. God shall get ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... Whitworth could not but observe the meaning of these hints, and answered, as became him, that the King of England had no wish but to preserve his own rights, and scorned the thought of becoming a partner with France in a general scheme of spoliation and oppression. They parted with cold civility, and negotiations were resumed in the usual manner: but England stood firm in the refusal to give up Malta—at least for ten years to come. The aggressions of Napoleon had wholly changed the arrangement of territory and power ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... would willingly purchase thy master's assistance on his own terms, since times leave us no better means of defence against sacrilegious spoliation of heresy; but to take from a poor man ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... the young gentleman ill,' he said, 'but I hope that they that hae got him will keep him, and no let him back to this Hieland border to plague us wi' blackmail, and a' manner o' violent, wrongous, and masterfu' oppression and spoliation, both by himself and others of his causing, sending, and hounding out:—and he couldna tak care o' the siller when he had gotten it neither, but flung it a' into yon idle quean's lap at Edinburgh—but light come light gane. For my part, I never wish to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... while Austria seized on Casimir, part of the palatinate of Lublin, and some lands lying on the right bank of the Bog. Were not these three powers actuated by a spirit of revenge and envy, as well as by a spirit of cupidity, in this spoliation of Poland? Prussia was formerly in a state of vassalage to that country; Russia once saw its capital and throne possessed by Poles; and Austria was indebted to a sovereign of this country for the preservation of its metropolis, if not for its very existence. Stanislaus ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... that his jurisdiction should not be exercised only over slaves (the cultivators of the State domains), some authority was given to him within the City, and by a curious division of labour all charges of incestuous crime, or of the spoliation of graves, were brought before the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... accomplishment. It will readily be understood that if the conspirators were these men,—upon whose grace the Pilgrims must depend for permission to remain upon the territory to which they had been inveigled, or even for permission to depart from it, without spoliation, —men whose influence with the King (no friend to the Pilgrims) was sufficient to make both of them, in the very month of the Pilgrims' landing, "governors" of "The Council for New England," under whose ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... hardly be reckoned a present grievance. South Carolina had quite as long a list of intolerable oppressions to resent in 1832 as now, and not one of them, as a ground of complaint, could be compared with the refusal to pay the French-Spoliation claims of Massachusetts. The secession movement then, as now, had its origin in the ambition of disappointed politicians. If its present leaders are more numerous, none of them are so able as Mr. Calhoun; and if it has now any ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... prove? Nothing whatever, unless it be that protection transfers riches, uselessly and unjustly. Spoliation does the same. ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... the king the plunder of the monasteries, were hard landlords of course; they robbed the people of their rights of common, and swept away homesteads and cottages, to make room for sheep farms, the wool trade being the great source of wealth in those days. By the spoliation of the monasteries, the great alms-houses of the Middle Ages, the poor had also been left for a time without the relief, which was given them again in a more regular form by the Poor Law of Elizabeth. Hence in the reign of Edward VI., armed ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... people were carried off, and thousands of towns, bourgs, and villages were destroyed; after numberless wars, plunders, and devastations by Jazygs, Turks, Muscovites, Crusaders, Wallachians, Transylvanians, Swedes, Brandenburgians, etc., etc.; after a hundred years of the so-called paternal spoliation of Russia, Prussia, and Austria—there could have been no opportunity, even under Graff Pouilly de Mensdorf, to build comfortable chateaux on the mouldering ruins, or for the accumulation of means for an easy life under the oppressions of an Austrian tariff, which exacted that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... share of the spoils for less than his share of the work. The League of Cambrai—a simple combination for robbery without excuse—was formed at the end of 1508. Henry was left out, for which, indeed, he cared little, knowing that the process of spoliation would inevitably result in quarrels among the leaguers. But though he advanced the arrangements for the marriage of Charles and Mary so far as to have a proxy ceremony performed, the marriage project with Joanna ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... morning, Mrs. Dodd left Julia for a few minutes expressly to ask Sampson's advice. After Alfred's conduct she was free, and fully determined, to defend herself and family against spoliation by any means in her power: so she now showed the doctor David's letter about the L. 14,000; and the empty pocket-book; and put together the disjointed evidence of Julia, Alfred, and circumstances, in one neat and luminous statement. Sampson was greatly ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... extinguishing the flames, stood by until it was burned to the ground. It was late at night before all was done, and the officer in charge of the troops who had carried through this shameful deed of murder and spoliation was imprudent enough to camp for the night close to the scene of the outrage. Sentinels were duly posted, and everything was, as this man thought, made perfectly secure; but he was fatally mistaken. The sentinels ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... France toward the United States." The injunction was repeated a few weeks later; but when the emperor's decision upon the decrees was announced, in August, the "indispensable" was dispensed with, and a few months later an absolute refusal of any compensation for the spoliation under the Rambouillet decree was quietly ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... time before the invasion our politicians might have been supposed to be modelling their lives and policy entirely upon those of the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century; particularly with regard to their mercenary spoliation of the nation's defence forces, and their insane pertinacity in clinging to the policy of "cheapness," which killed both the manufacturing and the agricultural industries of the country, by allowing other properly protected ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... deal, I suppose: on the first floor the editor writes that property is robbery, and advocates an equal division of property; on the second floor he spends the money he gets out of the people by holding illusory hopes of an approaching spoliation of the rich, and advocating investment in a fraudulent enterprise like Panama.... You always accuse me of want of humour, but I have sufficient to appreciate The Voice of the People on the first floor and the voice of the ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... provision for the morrow is a practice that suits Rishis. Thou knowest this well. That, however, which has been called the religion of royalty depends entirely on wealth. One who robs another of wealth, robs him of his religion as well.[9] Who amongst us, therefore, O king, would forgive an act of spoliation that is practised on us? It is seen that a poor man, even when he stands near, is accused falsely. Poverty is a state of sinfulness. It behoveth thee not to applaud poverty, therefore. The man that is fallen, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... the wrath of the ambitious Ali. He swore vengeance for the spoliation of which he considered himself the victim. But the moment was not favourable for putting his projects in train. The murder of Capelan, which its perpetrator intended for a mere crime, proved a huge blunder. The numerous enemies of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... State is that it has been from the beginning a predatory State. The Hohenzollerns have ever waged war mainly for spoliation and booty. Not once have they waged war for an ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... walls; his marriage with the dearest woman in the world, Death at the fireside, the bairn crying at night in the arms of her fosterer; his journeys abroad, the short hour of glory and forgetfulness with Saxe at Fontenoy and Laffeldt, to be followed only by these weary years of spoliation by law, of oppression by the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... enclosed the grass with iron hurdles—to rescue it from trampling into unsightly pathways—thus doing a well-intentioned, if somewhat unimaginative, best to safeguard the theatre of long ago Trimmer's beneficence or infamy from greater spoliation. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... not need other vigorous treatment as well, the flame of fanaticism being frightfully ardent; many of the poor Bishops having run nearly frantic at this open spoliation of Mother Church, and snatching of the sword from Peter. So that Imperial Majesty had to decide on picking out a dozen, or baker's dozen, of the hottest Bishops; and carrying them quietly into Russia under lock and key, till the thing were done. Done it was, surely to the infinite relief ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... that he saw his property in the possession of another creature, and resented the spoliation. With an angry snarl he snatched the life-buoy and backed away, while the girl, surprised and a little indignant, followed with extended hands. He raised it threateningly, and though she did not cower, she knew intuitively that he was angry, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... three days, the welcome word was given to leave the trains and march to the camp. This was situated in a beautiful part of France—that is, it had been beautiful before the spoliation by the Huns, and there Ned, Bob and Jerry, with thousands of their comrades, prepared for the last phase of their training. ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... no sentiment too sacred! Anger whirled up in me against this miserable, short-sighted self-seeker who had brought to a climax of spoliation my plans to guide the strong in developing the resources of the country. And I turned upon him, intending to overwhelm him with the truth about his treachery, about his attempts to destroy me. For I was now safe from his and Goodrich's vengeance—they had destroyed themselves with the people ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... my neighbours' backs and feet all the morning. It is a new sensation too when a friend turns up his sleeve and shows the marks of the wooden handcuffs and the gall of the chain on his throat. The system of wholesale extortion and spoliation has reached a point beyond which it would be difficult to go. The story of Naboth's vineyard is repeated daily on the largest scale. I grieve for Abdallah-el-Habbashee and men of high position like him, sent to die by disease (or murder), in Fazoghou, but I grieve still more over the daily anguish ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... Belgium and North-Eastern France as the scenes of her worst devastations, but she has not confined her work of spoliation to them. The Balkan provinces and Russia held great masses of Greek and Slavonic MSS. as yet very incompletely known. The actual invasions of German troops, and the wars and revolutions which Germany has fostered in those regions, can hardly ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... and their blackguardism in dealing with the hostile populations. The Southerners, on the contrary, figured as a chivalrous territorial body driven to fight "for their hearths and homes," (I have even seen "their altars" in print,) waging a noble defensive war against preconcerted spoliation and despotism. To this moment, many people have phrases of the above sort upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... prior age, viz. of the fourteenth century, we find a higher rank of art to be evinced, and the style and combination of architectural and sculptured detail to be more severe and pure, at no period were our churches adorned to greater excess than on the eve of that in which all were about to undergo spoliation, and many ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... possession of Monterey and San Francisco, were alike successful. But when a small party of American soldiers, under General Kearney, entered the country from the west, the rancheros took the alarm, and rushed forth on their fleet horses to defend their private property from spoliation, for they had no idea of regular soldiers disconnected from robbery and cattle-stealing! The Californians fought bravely, and hemmed in the little army of Americans until they were in a suffering condition for provisions, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... March, the father procurator, Antonio de Borja, [40] presented a petition to the governor that he, as vice-patron, should take measures regarding the violent spoliation which the archbishop had inflicted on the Society. The governor referred the petition to the royal fiscal, as being his Lordship's counselor, but the said fiscal excused himself. Then it was referred to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... metal was shipped for St. Malo, where it was expected to bring a high price, but the vessel foundered in leaving the harbour, to the triumph of all good Catholics, who regarded the disaster as a special manifestation of divine wrath at the sacrilegious spoliation. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various

... trouble with the Indians began, not in open hostilities, but in robbery under the guise of beggary. The word had been passed around in our little party that not a cent's worth of provisions would we give up to the Indians. We believed this policy to be our only safeguard from spoliation, and in ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... of Northern Peru at Gran-Chimu was conquered by the Incas after a long and bloody struggle, and the capital was given up to barbaric ravage and spoliation. But its remains exist to-day, the marvel of the Southern Continent, covering not less than twenty square miles. Tombs, temples, and palaces arise on every hand, ruined but still traceable. Immense pyramidal structures, some of them half ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... great fortunes of the wealthy come from the spoliation of the poor. Large profits for the manufacturers mean starvation wages for the workers; the princely revenues of the landlords are derived from excessive rents of the tenants, and the billions of watered stock and bonds crying for dividends and interest are a perpetual ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... continued their work of spoliation, and the next day a reinforcement was sent on shore, so that the Spaniards dared not attempt ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... who knew and attended to even the pettiest details of his varied business. Moreover, the liquor was despatched by his orders direct by ship to New Orleans and from thence up the Mississippi to St. Louis and to other frontier points. The horrible effects of this traffic and the consequent spoliation were set forth by a ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... week. A third of the sum required will not be at our command. How is it to be obtained? and, if obtained, how is it to repair the inroads which, year after year, have been made upon the house, and how secure it from further spoliation? It is useless and absurd to hide from ourselves any longer the glaring fact that we are on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... purged of all notorious abuses, but throughout the economy of the army. He cashiered, upon one occasion, an entire legion: he restored, as far as he was able, the ancient discipline; and, above all, he liberated the provinces from military spoliation. "Let the soldier," said he, "be contented with his pay; and whatever more he wants, let him obtain it by victory from the enemy, not by pillage from his fellow-subject." But whatever might be the value or extent of his reforms ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... Our bows shall be directed only against the power of England; her privileges alone shall we invade, not yours. We do not propose to divest you of a solitary right you now enjoy... We are here neither as murderers, nor robbers, for plunder and spoliation. We are here as the Irish army of liberation, the friends of liberty against despotism, of democracy against aristocracy, of the people against their oppressors. In a word, our war is with the ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... trials and persecution had prepared for a new growth. It was reserved for the age of Pius IX. to behold Spain and Portugal renew their early fervor. They have returned to the centre of Catholic unity; and in both countries arrangements have been entered into for staying the spoliation of ecclesiastical property, appointing learned and edifying bishops to the vacant Sees, restoring seminaries and clerical education. The clergy, who had been infected more or less by the Jansenist heresy, now purified in the crucible of persecution, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... worst enemy that had afflicted them since the Babylonian captivity. Neither Assyrians nor Egyptians nor Persians had so ruthlessly swept away religious institutions. Those conquerors were contented with conquest and its political results,—namely, the enslavement and spoliation of the people; they did not pollute the sacred places like the Syrian persecutor. By the rivers of Babylon the Jews had sat down and wept when they remembered Zion, but their sad wailing was over the fact that they were captives ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... Beauvoir wrote to the Duchess, claiming all the estates of Tholouse, and of his brother St. Aldegonde, as his reward for the Ostrawell victory, while Noircarmes was at this very moment to commence at Valenciennes that career of murder and spoliation which, continued at Mons a few years afterwards, was to load his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of the monastic lands were let on stock and land leases; and the stock was confiscated, with inevitable ruin to the tenant as well as the landlord.[202] And not only was a serious injury wrought to agriculture by the spoliation of a large number of landlords generally noted for their generosity and good farming, but with the religious houses disappeared a large number of consumers of country produce, the amount of which may be gathered from the following ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... willing to pay it by quiescence. Let them both forbear. Such was the language which he held to himself in thinking of his younger son. Augustus was certainly behaving well to him. Not a word of rebuke had passed his lips as to the infamous attempt at spoliation which had been made. The old squire felt grateful for his younger son's conduct, but yet in his heart of ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... the navy. In the end France discontinued her preparations. Her attitude was closely connected with the arrangement by which, in 1772, Austria, Russia, and Prussia divided a large part of Poland between themselves. This act of spoliation, the first partition of Poland, drew forth no remonstrance from England; in itself it did not concern us, and its effect on the balance of power in Europe was regarded with complacency as lowering to France and as an aggrandisement of powers which would act as a counterpoise ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... Mexico achieved her independence, which the United States were the first among the nations to acknowledge, when she commenced the system of insult and spoliation which she has ever since pursued. Our citizens engaged in lawful commerce were imprisoned, their vessels seized, and our flag insulted in her ports. If money was wanted, the lawless seizure and confiscation of our merchant vessels and their cargoes was a ready resource, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk

... under James suddenly resolved upon and carried through the revolutionary measure which is known as the Colonization of Ulster. In 1610 the pacific and conservative policy of Chichester was abandoned for a vast policy of spoliation. Two-thirds of the north of Ireland was declared to have been confiscated to the Crown by the part that its possessors had taken in a recent effort at revolt; and the lands which were thus gained were allotted to new settlers of ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, all opened their gates at their approach, for the terror which they inspired was on every heart. In these towns, and in Milan and Pavia (Ticinum), which followed their example, the Huns enjoyed doubtless to the full their wild revel of lust and spoliation, but they left the buildings unharmed, and they carried captive the inhabitants ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... enjoys the attacks of Lord Northcliffe, to whom he wishes to send a medal for Bolshevik propaganda. Accusations of spoliation, he remarked, may shock the bourgeois, but have an ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... Convention of France, in the year 1793, did, disregarding the sacred rights of property, proclaim the abolition of slavery; but ten years afterwards, on the 28th of May, 1802, that act was declared by the corps legislatif, to be an act of spoliation, and as such illegal; consequently slavery was re-established by decree of the First Consul, and continued for half a century, and would in all probability be still in full vigor, at least for some time, had it not been for the revolution of February. For us, we have the most implicit reliance ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... battle-fields, with the rich gifts of kings, and with rare works of art. Like the temple at Ephesus, the Delphian shrine, after remaining for many years secure, through the awe and reverence which its oracle inspired, suffered frequent spoliation. The greed of conquerors overcame all religious scruples. The Phocians robbed the temple of a treasure equivalent, it is estimated, to more than $10,000,000 with us (see p. 160); and Nero plundered it of five hundred bronze images. But Constantine (emperor of Rome ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... without means of subsistence if Pons should chance to recover, and was better rewarded for all this mischief than for any good that she had done. In a few days' time her treacherous trick would bring about the desired result—Elie Magus would have his coveted pictures. But if this first spoliation was to be effected, La Cibot must throw dust in Fraisier's eyes, and lull the suspicions of that terrible fellow-conspirator of her own seeking; and Elie Magus and Remonencq must be ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... the immense distance, which separate them from Soudan, to resume an authority, which had once escaped I hands, it is reasonable to suppose that the nearer tribes of Arabs would not neglect the opportunity thus afforded them, of returning to their old habits of spoliation, and of exercising their arrogant superiority over their negro neighbours; and that this frontier state would thus become the theatre of continual contests, terminating alternately, in the temporary occupation ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... in his hands smeared with gore, a human heart for the operation of the dissecting knife, Tallyho declaring that he could bear it no longer, rushed out of the theatre, and was followed by his two companions, all disgusted with this spoliation of the dead, however conducive it might prove to the interests of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... have described, the Committee of Public Safety undoubtedly succeeded, for a short time, in enforcing profound submission and in raising immense funds. But to enforce submission by butchery, and to raise funds by spoliation, is not statesmanship. The real statesman is he who, in troubled times, keeps down the turbulent without unnecessarily harassing the well-affected; and who, when great pecuniary resources are needed, provides for the public exigencies without violating ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Island, at the mouth of the St. Marys River, near the boundary of the State of Georgia. As this Province lies eastward of the Mississippi, and is bounded by the United States and the ocean on every side, and has been a subject of negotiation with the Government of Spain as an indemnity for losses by spoliation or in exchange for territory of equal value westward of the Mississippi, a fact well known to the world, it excited surprise that any countenance should be given to this measure by any of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... necessity connected with benefits of compensation, such as continually lurk in evils acknowledged to be such—a necessity under which it becomes lawful to say, that war ought to exist as a balance to opposite tendencies of a still more evil character. War is the mother of wrong and spoliation: war is a scourge of God—granted; but, like other scourges in the divine economy, war purifies and redeems itself in its character of a counterforce to greater evils that could not otherwise be intercepted or redressed. In two different ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Service Reform. Perfecting of Party Organization in the Country. Jackson and the United States Bank. His Popularity. Revival of West Indian Trade. French Spoliation Claims. Paid. Our Gold and Silver Coinage. Gold Bill. Increased ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... seventeenth century little but a tale of destruction is to be recorded; for this period witnessed the dissolution of the monasteries, the beginning of a wholesale system of spoliation urged by self-interest and hypocrisy, and the establishment of "Reformation" methods of procedure in Church and State. By each of these both the fabric and the diocese suffered, even though by some ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... such smaller States might aggrandize one of the great powers too much. In this system humanity is taken for nothing—the mutual jealousy of the powerful is all, and the implicit guarantee for the security of the weaker ceases, wherever the powerful can devise a plan of spoliation which leaves the relative forces of the spoliators the same as before. It is thus the world has seen the partition of Poland—that most iniquitous—most guilty ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... the present passage; of which 1,700 years[571] have failed to obliterate the traces? Had [Symbol: Aleph]B been our only ancient guides, it might of course have been contended that there has been no act of spoliation committed: but seeing that one half of the missing treasure is found with their allies, ACD, Clement Alex., Chrysostom, Cyril, Jerome,—the other half with their allies, Old Latin, Harkleian, Clement, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... done with that brilliant France which I left you? I left you at peace, and I find you at war. I left you victorious and I find you defeated. I left you the millions of Italy, and I find only spoliation and poverty. What have you done with the hundred thousand Frenchmen, my companions in glory? They are dead!... This state of affairs cannot last long; in less than three years it would ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... eighteenth century, when the partition of Poland had become an accomplished fact, the world qualified it at once as a crime. This strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe; the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national conscience at the time. The will of its rulers was always ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... an easy prey to the rapacious hands of spoilers, should such (as was but too likely) swoop down upon the house to strive to recover the jewels and gold taken from them when they were helpless to oppose or resent such spoliation." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... in the days of the Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honored statue overthrown, supports a Christian saint; Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter. Then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from the spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains; while here and there are broken arches and rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a wound. The little town of miserable ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... iron cage in the "Grosse Tour" at Bourges; and the safety of his daughters at the mercy of King Charles VIII., or worse, of his imperious sister, the Regent Anne de Beaujeu, who would have committed some act of spoliation, had not the Chancellor Rochefort saved the duchy by his integrity, declaring to Anne that "a conqueror without right ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... was taken possession of by Cromwell's soldiers, and the work of spoliation carried on. The organ was probably destroyed at this time, for Dean Crofts set up a new organ in 1660, the case of which was re-modelled in 1833, and still remains. It is also perhaps needless to state that the cathedral was repeatedly ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell

... cannibalism on the ground that it is an exaggeration to describe the flesh of a rich man as the flesh of a human being. But he does rage with genius at the continual eating of men that went on in England, especially after the spoliation of the monasteries in the reign of Henry the Eighth gave full scope to the greed of the strong. He sees that the England which Whig and Tory combined to defend as the perfection of the civilized world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... Beatitudes. The poor in spirit are to be made rich as rightful heirs to the kingdom of heaven; the mourner shall be comforted for he shall see the divine purpose in his grief, and shall again associate with the beloved ones of whom he has been bereft; the meek, who suffer spoliation rather than jeopardize their souls in contention, shall inherit the earth; those that hunger and thirst for the truth shall be fed in rich abundance; they that show mercy shall be judged mercifully; the pure ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... their own demi-gods, and of Buddha and his companions. This state of things continued until 1868, when the Shinto cult was chosen to receive the exclusive recognition of the State, many of the Buddhist monasteries at the same time suffering spoliation. Within the last few years, however, Buddhism has been making strenuous efforts to recover its former power and position, and there is little doubt that it still exerts a real influence in Japan; while the collapse of Shintoism is, as certainly, a matter of no distant ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... value for it, and, as was now the commonly accepted course of events, Councillor Garnett supported him. Denis Quirk and the councillors, who now followed him, set resolutely to work to prevent this spoliation. Had Denis not been there, the public would have grumblingly accepted the purchase of the land. As it was, he roused them to such a pitch of resentment that the price was slowly reduced until it finally remained at ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... prices, and Greece and Asia were ransacked for old pictures. The paintings which Aemilius Paulus brought from Greece required two hundred and fifty wagons to carry them in the triumphal procession. With the spoliation of Greece, the migration of artists commenced, and this spoliation of Greece and Asia and Sicily continued for two centuries; and such was the wealth of Rhodes in works of art that three thousand statues were found for the conquerors. Nor could there have ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... coarse brush dabbed it all round and then screwed the lid down. The successors in this ghastly process have not had the decency to treat the instrument as worthy of much care, and so with dirty cloths and glue have again repeated the work, if it may be dignified by such a term, spoliation is perhaps a better one. Now we know that the violin has been separated and left so, being merely tied up, and been in that dirty little den of ravening wolves or tinker dealers for nobody knows how long, with the rays of the sun falling on it for many days; ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... death of Doctor Rouget, Madame Hochon had written to her goddaughter warning her that she would get nothing from her father's estate unless she gave a power of attorney to Monsieur Hochon. Agathe was very reluctant to harass her brother. Whether it were that Bridau thought the spoliation of his wife in accordance with the laws and customs of Berry, or that, high-minded as he was, he shared the magnanimity of his wife, certain it is that he would not listen to Roguin, his notary, who advised him to take advantage of his ministerial position to ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... go mad or commit some great crime," thought his friend, looking at him. "We must move every lever and strain every nerve, to frustrate this scheme, to prevent this spoliation. But if the thieves see money in it who shall stay ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... shoulders and walked away. Between Camilla and her mother, too, there had come to be an almost internecine quarrel on a collateral point. Camilla was still carrying on a vast arrangement which she called the preparation of her trousseau, but which both Mrs. French and Bella regarded as a spoliation of the domestic nest, for the proud purposes of one of the younger birds. And this had grown so fearfully that in two different places Mrs. French had found herself compelled to request that no further articles might be supplied to Miss Camilla. The bride elect had rebelled, alleging ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... had taken two thousand pounds from his victim on the spot? It had no faintest tendency to evoke the ransom. Quite the other way, in fact. Harrogate's friends would be far likelier to fear for his fate if they thought the thieves were poor and desperate. Yet the spoliation on the spot was emphasized and even put first in the demand. Why should Ezza Montano want so specially to tell all Europe that he had picked the pocket before he ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... salt-water Jack is there, and fresh-river Jack is there, and while there is a copper pfennig in their pockets, or a flicker of morality in their hearts, doomed are they equally; for what can escape spoliation or wreck among ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... the events in Spain. Constantly influenced by the hopes by which Napoleon had dazzled him at Tilsit, and haunted by that passion for obtaining Constantinople which had so long been common to all the Russian sovereigns, he had accepted without any difficulty the spoliation of the Spanish Bourbons, in order to justify beforehand the spoliations in which he was interested. The national rising of the Spanish people served his design: the all- powerful conqueror had met with a serious resistance, undergone checks, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... on behalf of the Directors?" Then, without giving him time to answer, he continued: "What have they done with that France I left so brilliant? I left peace; I find war. I left victories; I find reverses. I left the millions of Italy, and I find spoliation and penury. What have become of the hundred thousand Frenchmen whom I knew by name? ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... there to repay him or his for all the risks and annoyances, besides branding himself and his with an indestructible mark, which has been more than once the sign by which they have suffered persecution, spoliation, expatriation, and death? Are there any benefits enjoyed by the Jew that the uncircumcised does not ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... day, and giving no doubtful promise of the tyranny to come; and secondly, in particular, because the national Church was to him the ark of the covenant of his beloved country, and he saw the Whigs about to coalesce with those whose avowed principles lead them to lay the hand of spoliation upon it. Add to these two grounds, some relics of the indignation which the efforts of the Whigs to thwart the generous exertions of England in the great Spanish war had formerly roused within him; and all the constituents of any active feeling in Mr. Coleridge's mind upon ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... was burglarized. Calling on his nearest friend the next morning for even a pair of suspenders, Mr. Andrews was met with regrets of inability, because the burglars had also been there. A third and fourth friend in the vicinity was appealed to with the same disheartening reply of a story of wholesale spoliation. Mr. Callahan began immediately to devise a system of protection for Englewood; but at that juncture a servant-girl who had been for many years with a family on the Heights in Brooklyn went mad suddenly and held an aged widow and her daughter as helpless prisoners for twenty-four hours without food ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... Department) of the printed abstracts of letters received from India, relating to the affairs of Bussahir.[68] She would ask Sir C. Wood to consider, with his Council, whether means could not be found for making acts of confiscation, sequestration, spoliation, transfer of Government, or whatever they may be called, dependent upon some formal and judicial proceeding which should secure the Queen from acts being done in her name—which might not be entirely ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... home ten days before he missed his leadership, and even then he was made aware of its spoliation only by beholding it in the hands of the cabal. Mr. Croker meant Mr. Nixon for the mayoralty; but the plotting eighteen, intriguing with Brooklyn blocked the way with Mr. Coler. The coalition was too strong for Mr. Croker to force, and the logic of that same word pressed to ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... clamoring, there is no shadow of resemblance. They are both founded, it is true, on the will of the majority, but in the States it is the majority of an educated and distinctly law-abiding people—here it is the majority of men who would set the law at defiance, who desire power simply for the purposes of spoliation." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... rifled; yet for all their curious wisdom, their subtle calculations, no suspicion ever seemed to have entered their heads of what was going forward. They did not even try to find a secret place in the woods for their nest; they built obediently in the straw-thatched hives, and the same spoliation continued. A few days before Hugh had visited a church in the neighbourhood, and had become aware of a loud humming in the chancel. He found that an immense swarm of bees had been hatched out in the roof, and were dying in hundreds, in their attempt to escape through ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of sensation led to no oblivion, no last soothing intoxication. Its current beat against her heart until she could have cried out from the mere physical pain, the clamping grip of her trouble. She withered and grew cold under the torture of it all—the ruthless spoliation of everything which made life worth while or the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spaniards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and of the treasures of Montezuma. Thus Catholicism which, in the public mind of Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and oppression, was in the public mind of Spain associated with liberty, victory, dominion, wealth, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... do not mean to go further than just to remind your Lordships of this,—that Mr. Hastings's government was one whole system of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of spoliation of the public, and of suppression of the whole system of the English government, in order to vest in the worst of the natives all the power that could possibly exist in any government; in order to defeat the ends which all governments ought, in common, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... ask, what has this to do with poor Manuel Pereira,—or the imprisonment of free citizens of a friendly nation? We will show him that the complex system of official spoliation, and the misrepresentations of the police in regard to the influence of such persons upon the slave population, is a principal feature in its enforcement. To do this, we deem it essentially necessary to show the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... 25, 1847.—I hope not to want a further remittance for a long time. I shall not, if I can settle myself at Rome so as to avoid spoliation. That is very difficult in this country. I have suffered from it already. The haste, the fatigue, the frequent illness in travelling, have tormented me. At Rome I shall settle myself for five months, and make arrangements to the best of my judgment, and with counsel of experienced friends, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... was the champion of an oppressed people. His two greatest speeches of this period are "The Nabob of Arcot's Debts" and his tremendous "Impeachment of Warren Hastings." Again he apparently lost his cause, though he was still fighting on the side of right. Hastings was acquitted, and the spoliation of India went on; but the seeds of reform were sown, and grew and bore fruit long after Burke's labors ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... to all public organisations, to all honest citizens: to inform the Military Revolutionary Committee immediately of all cases of spoliation, marauding, speculation, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... king could grant, or he could lawfully hold, for part of the booty belonged to English merchants. His conduct was severely and, though with some exaggeration, justly attacked by Burke in parliament, and in after years he was harassed by suits brought against him for unlawful spoliation. The booty sold on the spot fetched far less than its value, and much that was sent home fell into the hands of the French; for while Darby was engaged in the relief of Gibraltar, a French squadron intercepted the convoy which was bringing ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... for the argument's sake, that anti-Semitism in this country develops, as predicted in Mr. Ford's paper, along less brutal lines; that there will be no such orgies of murder and lust and spoliation as some other nations have had to their shame and dishonor. In that case, how will the organized hostility to the Jews be manifested? Specifically, what is the program of the group of anti-Semites in this country with which ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... though wrong of some sort may have had its share in the origin of certain of the sayings ascribed to our Saviour, yet their removal now that they have been consecrated by time would be a still greater wrong. Would you defend the spoliation of the monasteries, or the confiscation of the abbey lands? I take it no—still less would you restore the monasteries or take back the lands; a consecrated change becomes a new departure; accept it and turn it to the best advantage. These are things to which the theory of the ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... herself qualifies it above every other place for that purpose, but particularly because this meeting of the representatives of the great Powers there would protect it and the courageous and faithful country of Neuchatel from indignities, spoliation, and all the horrors which oppress at this moment the unfortunate and far from courageous Fribourg. I am afraid that your Majesty has not a full appreciation of the people and the partisans who fill Switzerland with murders and the miseries of the most abominable Civil War. Your Majesty's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... Israel was over—the bitter centuries of the badge and the byword, slaughter and spoliation; no longer, O God! to cringe in false humility, the scoff of the street-boy, the mockery of mankind, penned in Ghettos, branded with the wheel or the cap—but restored to divine favor as every Prophet had predicted, and uplifted to the sovereignty ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... that legendary night, was adored by his wife. He had a mob of little lusty, barefoot children who marched in a caravan the long miles to school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were marked by acts of spoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the country- side as "fair pests." But in the house, if "faither was in," they were quiet as mice. In short, Hob moved through life in a great peace - the reward of any one who shall have killed ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... original cause of property. It was of no use to secure to the farmer the fruit of his labor, unless the means of production were at the same time secured to him. To fortify the weak against the invasion of the strong, to suppress spoliation and fraud, the necessity was felt of establishing between possessors permanent lines of division, insuperable obstacles. Every year saw the people multiply, and the cupidity of the husbandman increase: it was thought best to put a bridle on ambition ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... clear that the church authorities preferred to be under a government which, even though they regarded it as Protestant, could secure them their property, rather than to be subject to a Roman Catholic republic in which they were liable to constantly recurring spoliation. This I found to be the spirit of the clergy of every grade in all parts of the island: they had discovered that under the Constitution of the United States confiscation ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... Thus exposed to spoliation by its splendour, and obnoxious to infidel invaders from the religious uses to which it was dedicated, it was subjected to violence on every commotion, whether civil or external, which disturbed the repose of the capital; and at the present day, no traces of it remain ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... fallen to his soldier's share should be cooked. The smell of charred flesh stimulated his hunger. Hunger clamored within and silenced his heart, his courage, and his love. He coolly looked round on the results of the spoliation of his carriage. Not a man seated round the fire but had shared the booty, the rugs, cushions, pelisses, dresses,—articles of clothing that belonged to the Count and Countess or to himself. Philip turned to see if anything worth taking ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... of sculptured decoration in certain places only too plainly designed for it is, too, frequently painfully apparent. Such sculptured decoration and glass as were easily to hand met with perhaps the most ready spoliation, while here and there, from some miraculous reason, a gem was left entire, though likely enough in a ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... of the powerful House of Burgundy. Charles left to his only daughter, then eighteen years of age, the inheritance of his extensive dominions, and with them that of the hatred and jealousy which he had so largely excited. External spoliation immediately commenced, and internal disunion quickly followed. Louis XI. seized on Burgundy and a part of Artois, as fiefs devolving to the crown in default of male issue. Several of the provinces refused to pay the new subsidies ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... not merely seeking the money necessary to support the plaintiff and prosecute the case; it was a request that the inferior court should confiscate more than half a million dollars, in anticipation of a decision of the Supreme Court on appeal. It was as bold an attempt at spoliation as the commencement of the suit itself. The Supreme Court of the State had decided that the order of a Superior Court allowing alimony during the pendency of any action for divorce is not appealable, ...
— 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

... dear, you little dream the ecstatic delight that exists in Waste, for the vulgarity of a mind that has never enjoyed Possession, till it comes to riot at one blow in Spoliation!" ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... were directed to the wages of this staff; because, if any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, live upon the spoliation of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble existence by poor mouths and beggarly resources (as too many so- called Mechanics' Institutions do), I make bold to express my Uncommercial opinion that it has no business to live, and had better die. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... It was common, they say, for half a dozen individuals to take upon themselves to represent the fourteen or fifteen hundred other members of a section. But what better proof can we have that if France was to be delivered from restored feudalism and foreign spoliation, the momentous task must be performed by those who had sense to discern the awful peril, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... Manisty's rage over the spoliation of the convent and the ruin of the chapel! He had gone stalking over the deserted place, raving against 'those brigands from Savoy,' and calculating how much it would cost to buy back the place from the rascally Municipio of Orvieto, to whom it now belonged, and return ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Herzegovina, formerly part of Turkey in Europe, were put under the military occupation and administrative rule of Austria after the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-8, and in 1908 were fully annexed by Austria, an act of spoliation which had its ultimate result in the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, and may thus be considered the instigating agency in ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... that my men were, at first, infected by the general spirit of disorder. Left alone by ourselves, I thought that we could not do anything better than save, from spoliation, two fine mansions that happened to be at the spot where we had been left. We had to stand a sharp siege for two or three hours; but we abstained, as far as possible, from using our arms, and I think that only two ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... this instance to copy a polity which they profess to admire is not hard to discover. An enactment which enjoined an Irish Parliament to respect the sanctity of a contract would be fatal to any remodelling of the Irish land law which tended towards the spoliation of landowners. Yet this very fact makes the matter all the more serious. That British statesmen should under these circumstances deliberately decline to insert an injunction to respect the sanctity of plighted good faith is much more than ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... avenging itself, Vera. The People rose like a flood. It had centuries of spoliation to wipe out. The voice of the People is ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... they were then called, coming into his territory with their 'five points,' or rather with their five-and-twenty thousand points and edges too, of pikes namely and battle-axes; and proposing mere Heathenism, confiscation, spoliation, and fire and sword,—Edmund answered that he would oppose to the utmost such savagery. They took him prisoner; again required his sanction to said proposals. Edmund again refused. Cannot we kill you? cried ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... Constance could never more have an heir to bar the road of conquest. Without penetrating her singular feelings, Mathieu fancied that she perhaps wished to sound him to ascertain if he were not behind Blaise, urging on the work of spoliation. She possibly imagined that her request would make him anxious, and that he would refuse to make the necessary researches. At this idea he decided to do as she desired, if only to show her that he was above all ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... security they enjoy in their persons and property, so that they can acquire property without risk, and accumulate and wear the costliest jewels even in the streets of Malacca without fear of robbery or spoliation. This is by no means to write that the Malays love us, for I doubt whether the entente cordiale between any of the dark-skinned Oriental races and ourselves is more than skin deep. It is possible that they prefer being ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... Assyrians; but most emphasis is laid on the restoration of the inner bases of the state, the rottenness of which has brought about and rendered inevitable the present crisis. The collapse of the government, the paralysis fallen on the law, the spoliation of the weak by the strong, these are the evils that call for redress. "How is the honourable city become a harlot; it was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it—but now murderers! Thy princes are rascals and companions of thieves, every one loveth gifts and followeth ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... their invasion of Rajputana. The theft of the cow and desecration of Jamadagni's hermitage by the Haihaya Rajputs would represent the apostasy of the Rajput princes to Buddhist monotheism, the consequent abandonment of the veneration of the cow and the spoliation of the Brahman shrines; while the Hun invasions of Rajputana and the accompanying slaughter of Rajputs would ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... attack the Americans were executed. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sustained Jackson, notwithstanding the protests of Spain, and the latter power concluded to yield to the inevitable, and sold Florida to the United States on the extinction of the various American claims for spoliation, for the satisfaction of which the United States agreed to pay $5,000,000 to the claimants. Thus all foreign authority was extinguished in the Southeast and the American flag waved from the Florida Keys to the boundaries ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... grapples in the conscience, and made obedience impossible, without a degree of baseness that rendered life intolerable. Hence Protestantism was detested, not so much as a religion, as an instrument of spoliation. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... measures. The dispositions of Don John were humane—his manners frank. Aware that the Belgian provinces were exhausted by ten years of civil war, and that the pay of the Spanish troops he had to lead against them was so miserably in arrear as to compel them to acts of atrocious spoliation, the hero of Lepanto appears to have done his best to stop the effusion of blood; and, notwithstanding the counteraction of the Prince of Orange, the following spring, peace and an amnesty were proclaimed. The treaty signed at Marche, (known by the name of the Perpetual Edict,) promised ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... other imperial commanders, but, above all, Holk, had attracted to their standards the very refuse of the German jails; and, allowing an unlimited license of plunder during some periods of their career, had themselves evoked a fiendish spirit of lawless aggression and spoliation, which afterwards they had found it impossible to exorcise within its former limits. People were everywhere obliged to be on their guard, not alone (as heretofore) against the military tyrant or freebooter, but also against the private ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... should be brought into the fold of the Church without a drop of bloodshed; and, until the formal revocation of the edict of Nantz, by which the Huguenots were put without the pale and protection of the laws, spoliation was one of the means, with others, by which to avoid this necessity. These alternatives, however, were of a kind not greatly to lessen the cruelties of the persecutor or the sufferings of the victim. It does not fall within our province to detail them. It is enough ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves, two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of the whole. 'Though that wouldn't quite do,' he considered, growing cooler as he got away. 'That's what would happen to him if he didn't buy us up. We should get nothing ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... their example that the sufferings of this world are not worthy to be put in the balance with the glory which is to be manifested in us. They have endured, in the first place, all the outrages that could be heaped upon them by the multitude, outcries, blows, thefts, spoliation, stoning, imprisonment, all that the fury of the people could devise against hated enemies. Then, dragged to the Forum by the military tribune and the magistrates of the city, they have been questioned before the people and cast into prison until the coming of the governor. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... defeat because of my advocacy of principles everybody concedes to be right, because I'm suspected of an actual intention to act according to my platform pledge; when that man Brassfield, who was preparing to carry out a policy of selfish spoliation, could ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... Chirurgica, and Medicinae-Practicae—were to the eighteenth century. I cannot forget the story that Agassiz was so fond of telling of the king of Prussia and Fichte. It was after the humiliation and spoliation of the kingdom by Napoleon that the monarch asked the philosopher what could be done to regain the lost position of the nation. "Found a great university, Sire," was the answer, and so it was that in the year ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the princes, who had possessions in Germany was settled. The whole of that negociation was conducted at Paris, to the great profit, it was said, of the ministers who were employed in it. Be that as it may, it was at this period that began the diplomatic spoliation of Europe, which was only stopped ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein



Words linked to "Spoliation" :   law, despoliation, plundering, devastation, jurisprudence, destruction, pillaging, pillage



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