"Precedent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... These forms are adapted to ordinary occasions; and therefore persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well as long as things go on in their common order; but when the high roads are broken up, and the waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things, is requisite, than ever office gave, or than office can ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... wore them.... But, the tale runs, the Governor looked——He certainly did establish a precedent at that dinner. Mockers say that Judge Pat McCarran ran a close second, because his Excellency is lean and lank, while Judge McCarran would make two of him one way, and almost half of him the other, and because what happened ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... had happened. Yancoo's reputation had been grimly asserted. Every one now dreaded him anew. Again he was king. Though it was contrary to all precedent to point the death-bone at a member of the tribe, yet had Yan-coo made a law unto himself and his own justification, and the proudest testimonial to his skill was ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... prefect, Macrinus, who reigned for a short time (217-218), but perished in consequence of his attempts to reform the discipline of the army. Heliogabalus (218-222) was not more cruel than others had been, but his gross and shameless debauchery was without a precedent. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... legislation, and you will find no precedent for such a profligate act of tyranny, exercised by a majority over their fellow legislators, nor for such an impudent contempt of the rights of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... not, like Shelley's, a defiance of them. All through his life he had a scholar's respect for learning, and for the great tradition of literature which it is the true business of scholarship to maintain. Radical and rebel as he was in politics and theology, contemptuous of law, custom and precedent, he was always the exact opposite in his art. There he never attempted the method of the tabula rasa, or clean slate, which made his political pamphlets so barren. The greatest of all proofs of the strength of his individuality is ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... wife only two days before this. At that time she was quite sick, but was thought to be improving. With a heart filled with sadness I now prepared for my journey home. The warden was absent, and the deputy warden said, "There was no precedent for permitting a prisoner to go home on a visit, as such a thing had never occurred before in the history of the State, but," continued he, "if you will give me your word that you will return to the prison I will let you go." I told him to set the time for my return and ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... of 1852 Northerners generally reflected that they wanted quiet and had an instinct, curiously falsified, that the Democratic party was the more likely to give it them. The Whigs again proposed a hero, General Scott, a greater soldier than Taylor, but a vainer man, who mistakenly broke with all precedent and went upon the stump for himself. The President who was elected, Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, a friend of Hawthorne, might perhaps claim the palm among the Presidents of those days, for sheer, deleterious insignificance. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... spokesman of the council: "We have found a precedent. We find that one hundred and ninety years ago a like case confused the council of that day. They finally agreed that she must submit to two ordeals with wild beasts of the jungle. If she survived she was to be permitted ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... spot, against the express advice of her educational superiors, who implied that, in their own case, refinement and self-respect had always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passions at bay. The experience of the guardian's widow having been precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of Laura's career being present to all their minds, none of these ladies felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy's affairs; and she was accordingly left to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... of the impressment, service and sufferings of Fernando Stevens and his friends are no exaggerations. Well authenticated history shows that there were thousands of cases similar, and even worse than theirs. The conduct of England was without precedent and unbearable. Their great need of men might have been some excuse for impressment of Americans; but there was a spice of hatred in their cruel ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... of contemporaries, including Lord John's own closest political allies. That a Minister should run away from a hostile motion upon affairs for which responsibility was collective, and this without a word of consultation with a single colleague, is a transaction happily without precedent in the history of ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... news of the attack on M. CLEMENCEAU reaching the Commons there was a general desire that the House should pass a resolution of sympathy. But Mr. BONAR LAW deprecated the proposal as being, in his opinion, "against all precedent"—not a little to the surprise of some of the new Members, who thought that in a case like this the conseil du precedent might bow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... headway. He read all that had been written on the curing of the raisin; several enterprising men went to Spain to study the subject at first hand; but despite all this no progress was made. Finally several of the pioneer raisin men of Fresno cut loose from all precedent, dried their grapes in the simple and natural manner and made a success of it. From that time, not over ten years ago, the growth of the industry has eclipsed that of every other branch of horticulture in the State, and the total value ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... carriage, and haughtiness for dignity: his study is his toilet, and his mind, like his face, is a vacuity neither sensible, intelligent, nor agreeable. He has few associates, for few will accept him for a companion. With his superiors in rank, his precedent honorary distinction yields him no consideration; with his equals, it places him upon too familiar a footing; while with his inferiors, it renders him tyrannical and unbearable. His mornings, between school hours, are spent in ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... not religious in subject, that it could not possibly be interpreted otherwise than as a secular history, makes remarkable its place in the cathedral. This is explained by the suggestion that while Bishop Odo established that precedent, all ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... administration thereof from the most important trust downward committed to men who have highly merited and in whom the people of the United States place unbounded confidence. Yet even in this circumstance, in itself so fortunate, they have apprehended danger by way of precedent. Can it be thought strange, then, that with these impressions they should wait to see the proposed system organized and in operation, to see what further checks and securities would be agreed to and established, by way of amendments, before they could adopt ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... hoped it would succeed, but hoped rather faintly. "If it succeeds," she goes on, "it will be the true, the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants, that they have broken down a 'Chinese wall of prejudices,' religious, social, professional, and have established a precedent which will, indeed, multiply the good to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... of a circulating library. Every tyro is aware that this Sams or Ebers of antiquity lent out to Ptolemy of Egypt, for a first-rate subscription of fifteen talents, the works of Euripides, Eschylus, and Sophocles; thereby affording a precedent for the abominable practice, fatal to bookmakers and booksellers, which has converted the waters of Castalia into their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... chansons, though a very important chapter in the histories both of poetry and of fiction, form one which is strangely marked off at both ends from all connection, save in point of subject, with literature precedent or subsequent. As to their own origin, the usual abundant, warm, and if it may be said without impertinence, rather futile controversies have prevailed. Practically speaking, we know nothing whatever about the matter. There used to be a theory that ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... appear. For my own part, I am quite of another mind; and hitherto I am sure, in farther demonstrations of kindness and civility, he followeth suit with the forwardest, if in that he was the single unfollowed precedent. I am, my Lord, your Excellency's most faithful, and ever most obedient Servant, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... preparation for the funeral. All was changed. Mr. Povey kindly slept for three nights on the parlour sofa, in order that Mrs. Baines might have his room. The funeral grew into an obsession, for multitudinous things had to be performed and done sumptuously and in strict accordance with precedent. There were the family mourning, the funeral repast, the choice of the text on the memorial card, the composition of the legend on the coffin, the legal arrangements, the letters to relations, the selection of guests, and the questions of bell-ringing, hearse, plumes, number ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... pleasure of the Meer. The reader will believe that this intelligence was any thing but satisfactory; I could not help conjuring up visions of a long and wearisome captivity—of hope deferred and expectations disappointed—with Stoddart's melancholy situation as a near precedent. I managed to make myself for a short time as thoroughly uncomfortable as if I were already a prisoner, but soon a sense of the great foolishness of indulging in this tone of thought came over me, and making a strong effort to shake off the gloomy shadows of an imaginary ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... agricultural people, who had fled to these shores with the instinct, divinely implanted, of building a state such as the sun never shone upon before; how we had conquered the wilderness and the savage; how we had flung off, in our struggle with the mother-country, the trammels of tradition and precedent, and had settled down, a free nation, to the practice of the arts of peace; how the spirit of commercialism had stolen insidiously upon us, and the infernal impulse of competition had embroiled us in a perpetual warfare of interests, developing the worst ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rule. Nobody knew when it first came into vogue. Mr. Eames, bibliographer of Nepenthe, had traced it down to the second Phoenician period, but saw no reason why the Phoenicians, more than anybody else, should have established the precedent. On the contrary, he was inclined to think that it dated from yet earlier days; days when the Troglodytes, Manigones, Septocardes, Merdones, Anthropophagoi and other hairy aboriginals used to paddle across, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Supreme Court in constitutional interpretation has, for all but special students, fallen into something like obscurity owing to the luster of Marshall's achievements and to his habit of deciding cases without much reference to precedent. But these early labors are by no means insignificant, especially since they pointed the way to some of Marshall's most striking decisions. In Chisholm vs. Georgia, * which was decided in 1793, the Court ruled, in the face of an assurance ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... interruption, in the style of ordinary conversational gossip. There are curious precedents on record for the printing of unspoken speeches. Rejecting, however, all the higher ones, we shall be quite content to take our precedent from the famous speech which the 'indigent philosopher' addresses, in one of Goldsmith's Essays, to Mr. Bellowsmender and the Cateaton Club. The philosopher begins, it will be remembered, by telling his imaginary audience, that though Nathan Ben Funk, the rich Jew, might feel ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... belonging, which was grown or manufactured in England or her colonies, should be a lawful prize to French cruisers. This extravagant claim, which not only seized goods that had been heretofore and by all others accounted free, but also, contrary to precedent, confiscated the vessel as well as the cargo, broke down the patience of the United States, where the Government was then still in the hands of the Federalists, whose sympathies were rather British than French. Nearly ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... from her bed and took her seat by the open window, according to precedent. She had seen herself, during the evening, sitting there looking out on to the moonlit garden, asking herself quietly, "What am I going to do?" weighing the pros and cons, stiffening her mind, and her courage. And she tried now to come to a decision, but could not come anywhere ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... a few, throw them outboard and sail away, comes pretty near constituting piracy. Of course the air-rules and laws aren't wholly settled yet; but we're in a fair way of giving the big-wigs a whacking precedent to govern the future. I fancy a good many cases will be judged as per the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... use to me, as the other correspondents occupied it, relieving each other like sentries on guard duty. I had to pin a sign on it, reading, "Don't sit on me," but no one ever saw the sign. Once, in order to rest in my own chair, I weakly established a precedent by giving George Lynch a cigar to allow me to sit down (on that march there was a mess contractor who supplied us even with cigars, and occasionally with food), and after that, whenever a man wanted to smoke, he would commandeer my chair, and unless bribed refuse to budge. This ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... facts to show how Reade had allowed himself, as a writer of fiction, to exaggerate and distort them, and had at the same time taken the airs of an historian of facts and bragged of his resolution to brand all judges who should dare to follow the precedent which he denounced. This article, I may notice, included an injudicious reference to the case of the Post Office and Rowland Hill, which was not, I believe, due to Fitzjames himself, and which enabled Dickens to reply ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... objection, and enim introduces an explanation of it. See Zumpt, S 349. [264] Caesar means to say that the present senate, which, as he flatteringly says, consists of worthy men, will not abuse the power of putting Roman citizens to death; but that a subsequent senate, taking such an example as a precedent, might abuse its power. It must be observed that the Roman senate possessed the power over the life and death of citizens, not by virtue of legal enactments, but only by ancient custom. This power legally belonged only to the ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... needs. Private charities can undertake a large expenditure for one family, when a large expenditure will put the family beyond the need of charity; but official relief must always be hampered by the fear of establishing a precedent, and inadequate relief is often the result of this fear. Moreover, public relief comes from what is regarded as a practically inexhaustible source, and people who once receive it are likely to regard ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... rather than to coin a new one, has only been done rarely. The Latin substitution of the combination th for the simple single [theta], was exceptionable. It was a precedent, however, which now ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... cannot possibly combine violence with a spiritual weapon like non-co-operation. We do not offer spotless sacrifice if we take the lives of others in offering our own. Absolute freedom from violence is therefore it condition precedent to non-co-operation. But I have faith in my country to know that when it has assimilated the principle of the doctrine In the fullest extent, it will respond to it. And in no case will India make any headway whatsoever until ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... so ignorant of their business, that, though pensioned for nothing but to register lords and ladies, and what belongs to them, they advertised in the newspaper for the Christian names and places of abode of the peeresses. The King complained of such omissions and of the want of precedent; Lord Effingham, the Earl Marshal, told him, it was true there had been great neglect in that office, but he had now taken such care of registering directions, that next coronation would be conducted with the greatest order imaginable. The King was so diverted with this flattering ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... fought and won the great battle, and thus executed the command laid upon him,—"the certain capture of the city of New Orleans." The victory was accomplished with the loss of but one ship, and 184 men killed and wounded,—"a feat in naval warfare," says his son and biographer, "which has no precedent, and which is still without a parallel, except the one furnished by Farragut himself, two years later, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Macbeth. But he little understands him. To Macbeth's tormented mind Banquo's conduct appears highly suspicious. Why has this bold and circumspect[237] man kept his secret and become his chief adviser? In order to make good his part of the predictions after Macbeth's own precedent. Banquo, he is sure, will suddenly and secretly attack him. It is not the far-off accession of Banquo's descendants that he fears; it is (so he tells himself) swift murder; not that the 'barren sceptre' will some day droop from his dying ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... supplicating to our gods, though he be suspected to have been so formerly, let him be pardoned upon repentance. But in no case, of any crime whatever, may a bill of information be received without being signed by him who presents it, for that would be a dangerous precedent, and ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... listen for the first on-rush of winter, then it is that the rangeland takes on a certain intoxicating unreality, and range-wild blood leaps with desire to do something—anything, so it is different and irresponsible and not measured by precedent or prudence. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... be easier to carry on the business of the country on the understanding that the present state of things is to be called Socialism, I have no objection in the world to call it Socialism. There is the precedent of the Emperor Constantine, who saved the society of his own day by agreeing to call his Imperialism Christianity. Mind: I must not go ahead of the electorate. You must not call a ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... thing was without precedent in my experience, and yet why should it not be? Our bodies are not ourselves. We are distinct from the flesh, the bone, the sinew, why then might not the spirit have liberty to go home to ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... example, in the grim intensity of her political method, in her maritime and commercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in the lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vast sections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possible for whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged between street and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst in which the official police never set foot. She was an ethnic whirlpool. The flags of all nations flew in her harbour, and ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... with the suggestion that "the practice of these sagacious and warlike Romans might be advantageously followed in a land which, being so far away from its sovereign, must trust for existence to the strength, of its own arms." In keeping with the same precedent, Talon located the military seigneuries in that section of the colony where they would be most useful as a barrier against the enemy; that is to say, he placed them in the colony's most vulnerable region. This was the area along the Richelieu from Lake Champlain to its ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... is with rare exceptions one of non-interference in their internal affairs," and he pointed out that, as owing to the varying conditions of different States "any attempt at complete uniformity and subservience to precedent" must be dangerous, he had endeavoured "to deal with questions as they arose with reference to existing treaties, the merits of each case, local conditions, antecedent circumstances, and the particular ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... difficult to see what other interests may not be subjected to similar action on the part of the Executive. In all such cases, it is the first step that is most difficult, and before making the one now proposed, you should, as I think, weigh well the importance of the precedent about to be established. No one can hold in greater respect than I do, the honorable gentleman who negotiated this treaty; but in thus attempting to substitute the executive will for legislative action, he seems to me to ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... concerning the growth of the city of London was entitled "Another Essay," intimating that some other essay had preceded it, which was not to be found. I having been much importuned for that precedent essay, have found that the same was about the growth, increase, and multiplication of mankind, which subject should in order of nature precede that of the growth of the city of London, but am not able to procure the essay ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... arriving in the country of the People of the Rocks. Sometimes, though rarely, black men had come here, and from them they had heard of the existence of men much whiter than themselves, who sailed on the sea in ships, but for the arrival of such there was no precedent. We had, however, been seen dragging the boat up the canal, and he told us frankly that he had at once given orders for our destruction, seeing that it was unlawful for any stranger to enter here, when a message had come from "She-who-must-be-obeyed," saying that our lives were ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... perpendicular shafts instead of following the direction of the veins. He perfected a plan for working them in this simple and reasonable way, and no earthly power could make the Spanish miners obey his orders. There was no precedent for this new process, and they would not touch it. They preferred starvation rather than offend the memory of their fathers by a change. At last they had to be dismissed and a full force imported from Germany, under whose hands the mines ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... doit donner en cas pitoyable et non par authorite ou faueurs de seigneurs, comme aussi ne se doit estendre, sinon a ceux qui sont trouuez actuellement prisonniers sans fraude, et non a ceux qui s'y rendent le soir precedent comme estans asseurez d'obtenir ce priuilege, combien qu'ils ayent commis tous crimes execrables et indignes d'un tel pardon, voire et que les Ecclesiastiques n'ayent eu loisir d'avoir veu et bien ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... barons over the cities and towns held in demesne. The burgesses, however, did not sit with the knights of shires, but apart by themselves, and, through loyalty or obsequiousness, assessed themselves in a contribution nearly one third greater than that granted by the barons and knights. The convenient precedent was not overlooked, and it became henceforth customary to expect the like liberality from subsequent parliaments. At this period, also, the principal divisions of the city were first denominated wards; these ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... decide. Our situation is not without a precedent. A few months ago the Count de Lavalette was condemned to death. The King wished to pardon him, but his ministers and friends opposed it. Though the King was master, what did he do? He seemed to be deaf to all the supplications made in the prisoner's behalf. The scaffold ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... German seems to have an undeniable freshness of outlook on the Roman alphabet. He treats it with a freedom and variety and a certain disregard of precedent—induced, perhaps, by his schooling in Blackletter—that often produces delightful, though sometimes, be it added, direful results. But if the extreme and bizarre forms be thrown aside the designer may obtain suggestions of great benefit and value from the more restrained examples ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... hand impatiently. "Let's drop him," he said. "Dropping one's biographer isn't without precedent. As soon as any man ever got to know Napoleon well enough to write him up he sent him to the front, where he could get a little lead in ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... and honorable part; the venerable and beautiful Lucretia Mott gave her benign presence to the gatherings; Lydia Maria Child made heavy sacrifices in the good cause. In the common ardor, and with a Quaker precedent, women took part as speakers. Women's rights was closely united with anti-slavery; and hence came a fresh odium from conservative quarters, while the admirable bearing of the leading women won growing favor for both lines of emancipation. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... is quite the most complete and remarkable ever recorded in dog annals. His lifetime of devotion has been witnessed by thousands, and honored publicly, by your own Lord Provost, with the freedom of the city, a thing that, I believe, has no precedent. All the endearing qualities of the dog reach their height in this loyal and lovable Highland terrier; and he seems to have brought out the best qualities of the people who have known him. Indeed, for fourteen years hundreds of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... of another, that it was a farewell composed by one of the Islanders that was going, in this epidemical fury of emigration, to seek his fortune in America. What sentiments would arise, on such an occasion, in the heart of one who had not been taught to lament by precedent, I should gladly have known; but the lady, by whom I sat, thought herself not equal to the work ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... condones the oft-repeated offences of his friend. And there could be few more interesting psychological studies than to trace how, from the sentiments of love and admiration he once entertained for Douglas, he was wrought to such indignation and wrath as to yield to the weird fascination of that precedent which must have been so burnt in upon his childish memory, and to repeat the tragedy which within the recollection of all men had marked the Castle of Edinburgh with so ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... civil and religious rights of a people trampled on! But his praaetorship in Sicily has crowned his career of wickedness, and completed the lasting monument of his infamy. His decisions have violated all law, all precedent, all right. His extortions from the industrious poor have been beyond computation. Our most faithful allies have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. Men the most ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... that every breach of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country, and forms a precedent for other breaches where the same plea of necessity does not exist at all, or is ...
— The Federalist Papers
... logical shape to sciences which do not admit of any such treatment. Nor can it be denied, on the other hand, that men of science often show a special irritation at theologians for going by antiquity, precedent, authority, and logic, and for declining to introduce Bacon or Niebuhr into their own school, or to apply some new experimental and critical process for the improvement of that which has been given once for all from above. Hence the mutual jealousy of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... unnecessary delay. They oppose the bishop's desire to permit the collection of a larger part of the tributes from small encomiendas than from large ones, because this would be not only unjust, but a dangerous precedent and a source of intolerable confusion and uncertainty. The tributes should be considered not as the means of support for the encomendero, but as the right and revenue of the king—a consideration which must shape all conclusions reached upon this subject. The ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... official by spending much time in the midst of so much power and unhampered authority should become haughty and plunge headlong into a passion for sole leadership. This was what happened later to Julius Caesar, when contrary to lawful precedent he had been ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... he, "since unwisely, Miss Westfall, for eugenic reasons, we grant a certain freedom of marital choice to our princes—since wisely or not as you will, the Salic Law does not, by an ancient precedent, obtain with us, and a woman may come in the line of succession, the danger to Ronador's little son, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... from the mission to the people themselves. As a general rule, the missionaries do not now take the lead in the building of school-houses and places of worship. They aid as may seem necessary; but the responsibility and chief pecuniary burden are left with the people; except where the power of precedent, from a different course, is too strong to be overcome ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... the shrinkage of their income was a remarkable phenomenon, without explanation or precedent—that it could happen at all within the space of five years seemed almost an intended cruelty, conceived and executed by a sardonic God. When they were married seventy-five hundred a year had seemed ample for a young couple, especially when augmented by the expectation of many millions. Gloria ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Volunteers, but the old name had been kept and something of the old loose organization. There were also two four-gun batteries of volunteer artillery, but these were out on the western skirts of the Wolkberg following Beyers's historic precedent. Several companies of regulars were on their way from Pietersdorp, but they did not arrive till the next day. When they came they went to the Wolkberg to join the artillery. Along the Berg at strategic points were pickets ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... production, population was streaming steadily in from the country-side and concentrating in hitherto unthought-of masses about a few city centres, food was coming to them over enormous distances upon a scale that made the one sole precedent, the corn ships of imperial Rome, a petty incident; and a huge migration of peoples between Europe and Western Asia and America was in Progress, and—nobody seems to have realised that something new had come into human life, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... sang of the marriage of Prithwi Raj, king of Delhi, that the bride's father emptied his coffers in gifts, but he filled them with the praises of mankind. A lakh of rupees [291] was given to the chief bard, and this became a precedent for similar occasions. "Until vanity suffers itself to be controlled," Colonel Tod wrote, [292] "and the aristocratic Rajputs submit to republican simplicity, the evils arising from nuptial profusion will not cease. Unfortunately those who should check ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... old wine into new bottles, which betrays a want of confidence in the expansive power of God. I hate with a deep-seated hatred all such attempts to bind and confine the rising tide of thought. I want to see religion vital and not formal, elastic and not cramped by precedent and tradition. And thus I love to see worship enshrined in noble classical buildings, which seem to me to speak of a desire to infuse the intellectual spirit of Greece, the dignified imperialism of Rome into the more ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... French National Convention, couched in these terms. "It was reserved for the Gallic Republic to break the accursed knot which has leagued Kings for ages past against the rest of the world. Reason and Philosophy are making great strides; and precedent and hereditary notions go fast to decline. By teaching mankind that they are all equal in rights, you have dedicated a glorious edifice to Liberty, which must hereafter prove the dungeon of tyrants and the asylum of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... apt to sway the private man. The mere pecuniary amount saved to the nation by his scrutiny into affairs of this kind, though great, was, after all, but a minor consideration. The danger lay in establishing a corrupt system, and placing a wrong precedent upon the statute book. Instances might be adduced, on the other hand, which show him not less scrupulous of the just rights of the claimants than careful ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... natural rights of man may seem to comprise only those which he enjoys in a state of nature; but he carries several of those with him into society, which is based upon the very principle of their preservation. The great precedent which so many subsequent revolutions have acknowledged and confirmed is that which we now record. The states-general assembled at Antwerp early in the year 1580; and, in spite of all the opposition of the Catholic deputies, the authority ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Germany, it conforms to the standards of the old system rather than to the rules of the new, and I cheerfully admit that it is abundantly supported by precedents—precedents written in characters of blood upon almost every page of human history. Austria furnishes the most recent precedent; it was Austria's firmness that dictated the ultimatum against Serbia, which set the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... States since the adoption of the Federal Constitution has in this particular followed the precedent established by the mother country. In the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States following the Revolutionary war, the former not only relinquished the right of government, but renounced and yielded to the ...
— Cessions of Land by Indian Tribes to the United States: Illustrated by Those in the State of Indiana • C. C. Royce
... defiance of plighted faith, been sent prisoners into France. The Prince whom they serve would be wanting in his duty to them if he did not retaliate. His Majesty might with perfect justice have detained all the French who were in Namur. But he will not follow to such a length a precedent which he disapproves. He has determined to arrest you and you alone; and, Sir, you must not regard as an affront what is in truth a mark of his very particular esteem. How can he pay you a higher compliment than by showing that he considers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... their splendid robes of office, looked in amazement to see their Queen forget her state in such a presence, and outrage every precedent by crying out in the unlearned language of the people, before this stately company; and the face of the dignified Primate flamed with wrath at this unseemliness. But Caterina, noting nothing, turned to receive ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... by the study of English history. That history, in all its parts, shows the passion of the English people for continuity of development. The first care of the practical Englishman who desires change is to find some precedent, which may serve to give to change the authority of ancient usage. Our laws have always been administered in this spirit; we are willing to accept, and even to hasten, change, if we can show that the change is no real change, but is only a reversion to an older practice, or a development ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... cabinet: Council of State elections: president elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 14 April 2002 (next to be held NA April 2007); after the first legislative elections, the leader of the majority party was appointed prime minister by the president, suggesting a precedent for the future election results: Jose Alexander GUSMAO elected president; percent of vote - Jose Alexander GUSMAO 82.7%, Francisco ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... going to the Lord's Table for a year, that all the Church might by that time have knowledge and proof of their consistent Christian life, though so young in years. This discipline, I thought, would be good for them; and the Lord might use it as a precedent for guidance in ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... the "big fence" unfortunately set a bad precedent. Major Bach, flushed with the success of his first speeding-up tactics, grew more and more inexorable in this connection. For every job a rigid time-limit was now set, and he did not hesitate to reduce the period to an almost impossible point. The cause was perfectly obvious. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Jeffersonian Democracy with France. The Federalists, who distrusted the sweeping abstractions of the French Revolution, and clung to the conservative notions of a checked and balanced freedom, inherited from English precedent, were accused of monarchical and aristocratic leanings. On their side they were not slow to accuse their adversaries of French atheism and French Jacobinism. By a singular reversal of the natural order of things the strength of the Federalist party ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... suppositions. And 'tis true they say, according to optic principles, the visible appearances of the planets do so indeed answer to their magnitudes and orbs, and come nearest to mathematical observations and precedent calculations, there is no repugnancy to physical axioms, because no penetration of orbs; but then between the sphere of Saturn and the firmament, there is such an incredible and vast [3105]space or distance (7,000,000 ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... The marvel is for each of us, individually, an exception to evolution; it is a special creation, like all the rainbows seen in one's life—a thing to be reverently absorbed by sight, by scent, by touch, absorbed and realized without precedent or limit. Only ultimately do we find it necessary to adulterate this fine perception with definitive words and phrases, and so attempt to register ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the quiet little village of Cardiff, which lies in the valley about twelve miles south of Syracuse, was thrown into an excitement without precedent, by the report that a human body had been exhumed in a petrified state, the colossal dimensions of which had never been the fortune of the inhabitants of the little village to behold, and the magnitude of which was positively beyond the comprehension or the understanding ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... should give up the duchy of Burgundy to Charles, and marry Eleanor of Portugal, Charles's sister; that Francois should also abandon his claims on Flanders, Milan, and Naples, and should place two sons in the Emperor's hands as hostages. Following the precedent of Louis XI. in the case of Normandy, he summoned an assembly of nobles and the Parliament of Paris to Cognac, where they declared the cession of Burgundy to be impossible. He refused to return to Spain, and made alliances wherever he could, with the Pope, with Venice, ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... imagine that seeding a new heap with tiny amounts of superior microorganisms could speed initial decomposition and result in a much better product. That could be a business. Such an approach is not without precedent. Brewers, vintners, and bread makers all do that. And ever since composting became interesting to twentieth-century farmers and gardeners, entrepreneurs have been concocting compost starters that are intended to be added by the ounce(s) to ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... [17] This precedent from Germany is good authority, because the trial by jury was in use, in the northern nations of Europe generally, long before Magna Carta, and probably from time immemorial; and the Saxons and Normans were familiar with it before they settled ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... the principle that there is an art or at least a craft of teaching is a condition precedent to any attempt to make teaching a profession in reality as well ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... that you and I, my boy, have probably never met a specimen. And if you ever find, my love, that any person in whom you have any tender interest has ever behaved in a way similar to the conduct of Brassfield, you should give the prisoner the benefit of every doubt, and accord full weight to the precedent contained in this history, and to the fact that it was Brassfield and not Amidon who did this. A man can not be blamed for lapsing into the Brassfield state. A man should be acquitted—eh? Defending some one? Why, certainly not! And how long this paragraph is growing! Yes, I feel sure Clara ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... precedent at home, I shall refer to the Synopsis of the contents of the British Museum. The first edition of that interesting work, with the {512} valued autograph of G. Shaw, is now before me. It is dated in 1808. I have also the sixtieth edition, printed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qua philosopher, is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete emergency than other men. He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most men, what the question always ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... called Ventriloqui, who speak from their bellies, on make the voice seem to come from some other part of the room than that where they are. But these Ventriloqui speak very distinctly and intelligibly. The only thing, then, that I can find like a precedent for your way of speaking (and I would willingly help you to one if I could) is the modern art 'de persifler', practiced with great success by the 'Petits maitres' at Paris. This noble art consists in picking out some grave, serious man, who neither understands nor expects, raillery, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated, that in proportion to the strength of character required for the effort, and to the absence of distracting sentiments, whether respect for precedent, or affection for ideal beauty, would be the energy exhibited in the pursuit of the special objects which the youths proposed to themselves, and their success ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that it was against all precedent to hang an unconscious man and send him off to perdition without a chance to enter a plea for his soul, and he argued soberly, in the manner of a man who had a spirit of fairness in him, and a little gleam of reason and morality left. To Morgan's relief and hope this man went further as he ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... experiment they are now making, that which the Right Honourable Baronet called a fair trial, they were running considerable hazard that the most useful prerogatives of the Crown would lose that dignity and respect in which they had formerly been held.' It is clearly true that this most dangerous precedent of interference has occurred because the Government has not strength to prevent it, and because we have the anomaly of a Government beating up against a hostile majority. The man was utterly unfit, and ought never to have been appointed, but the case against him (such ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Selkirk, as I am aware, commences his entertaining history with his birth and parentage, and as I am also a Crusoe, although a very minor adventurer, I may as well follow the precedent and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... already puts restrictions on numerous classes of people, as has been noted—minors, criminals, and the insane, for example. Even though this restriction is usually based on legal, rather than biological grounds, it is nevertheless a restriction, and sets a precedent for further restrictions, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... weakening always the vital power of the gospel. It rests on custom, on cowardice, on the fear of change, not on any positive insight or substantial knowledge. But, as Tertullian declared of another doctrine defended by precedent, "Christ did not say, 'I am the Custom,' but, 'I am ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... grew weak-minded, his relatives, after a long palaver, decided that for once the time-honoured customs of the land should be overridden, and since there was no other method of treating the blind but that prescribed by precedent, he should be allowed to live in a great hut at the edge of the village with his birds and snakes and wild cats, and that the direction of village affairs should pass ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... the contingencies of the future tense, they imbibe at least half-a-crown for the exigencies of the present. The society soon rises into a condition of astonishing prosperity. The terms being liberal beyond all precedent, the Charitable Chums' becomes wonderfully popular. A guinea a week during sickness, besides medical attendance, and ten pounds at death, or half as much at the death of a wife, are assured for half the amount of subscription ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland bills have been introduced dividing the States into single-membered electorates, and some of the smaller States are inclined to use the Block Vote. In Victoria a bad precedent has been established by giving the party in power the duty of determining boundaries. From time to time it will be necessary to rearrange the boundaries, not only on account of movements of population within the State, but also because the number of representatives which the State is entitled ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... Vigilantius,—men who may be called, by some sort of analogy, the Luther, Calvin, and Zwingle, of the fourth century. And they have been so considered both by Protestants and by their opponents, so covetous, after all, of precedent are innovators, so prepared are Catholics to believe that there is nothing new under the sun. Let me, then, briefly state the history and tenets of these ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... that if all that occurs is inquiry and report and the report is not in law a condition precedent to some further step the rules of natural justice are automatically excluded. That was the premise, for instance, of the High Court of Australia in Testro Bros. Pty. Ltd. v. Tait (1963) 109 C.L.R. 353. A contrary approach is to be found in the judgement of Schroeder ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... now represented Elizabeth, was fired at, and fled to Berwick; James Stewart was created Earl of Arran. In March 1581 the king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty foreknowledge of Darnley's death. He was executed deservedly, and his head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth. The death of this avaricious, licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to the ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... had several brilliant colors, one would take off his coat, another his shirt, and insist that he should exchange the shell for the garment. When he declined the exchange, but on the contrary presented the coveted article, he soon found he had established a dangerous precedent. Immediately they all commenced to beg for everything in the vast collection which they happened to take a liking to. This cost Barnum many valuable specimens, and often "put him to his trumps" ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... published in London in folio, The History of the Parliament of England, which began November 3, 1640, with a Short and Necessary View of some precedent Years, written by Thomas May, Esq; Secretary to the Parliament, and published by their authority. In 1650 he published in 8vo. A Breviary of the History of the Parliament of England. Besides these works, Mr. Philips tells us, he wrote ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... and the manners of antiquity are frequently brought upon the stage, and dramatic authors faithfully observe the rules of antiquated precedent, that is enough to warrant a conclusion that the democratic classes have not yet got the upper hand of the theatres. Racine makes a very humble apology in the preface to the "Britannicus" for having disposed of Junia amongst the Vestals, who, according to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... choice and unbounded confidence, to harbor machinations against the adored principles of our constitution, as for gravity to change its direction, and gravid bodies to mount upwards. The fears are indeed imaginary: but the example is real. Under its authority, as a precedent, future associations will arise with objects at which we should shudder at this time. The society of Jacobins, in another country, was instituted on principles and views as virtuous as ever kindled the hearts of patriots. It was the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... point of view, that the committee imagines it ought first to examine this production, which has no precedent in the annals of diplomacy, and in which Frenchmen, men invested with the most respectable of public characters, begin with a sort of outlawry, with a provocation ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... abilities. His vital energy, his impressive personality, his gift for courting the influences that counted, whether man's or woman's, his astute readiness in stooping to some measures that were in keeping with the times but not with army precedent, had won for him the goal of his ambition. He had passed over the heads of older men, whom many thought his betters, rather ruthlessly. Those who would serve loyally he drew around him; those who were bitter he crowded out ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... prevailed at the time; Gillespie had been deposed only four years previous, for refusing to assist in the disputed settlement of Inverkeithing; and four of the Nigg Presbytery, overawed by the stringency of the precedent, repaired to the parish church to conduct the settlement of the obnoxious licentiate, and introduce him to the parishioners. They found, however, only an empty building; and, notwithstanding the ominous absence ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... doing they say a great deal in a small way; but the Mallory case made his fortune about ten years ago. That was a barony by writ of summons which had been claimed a century before, and failed. Hatton seated his man, and the precedent enabled three or four more gentlemen under his auspices to follow that example. They were Roman Catholics, which probably brought him the Mallory case, for Hatton is of the old church; better than that, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... constructed, some of them certainly not so high in the scale of construction as an ordinary bird's nest. There is a certain interest that attaches to these rude attempts, as they exhibit the working of the human mind practically untrammeled by precedent. ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... I can assure you it is," said Dunham, with a certain lady-like sweetness of manner which he had. "According to precedent, we ought to be ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... Abramson came to visit me, affected to be infinitely concerned and enraged, and affirmed he had strongly protested against the illegality of this proceeding to the magistracy, as I was actually in the Austrian service; but that they had answered him the court of Vienna had afforded them a precedent, for that, in 1742, they had done the same by the two sons of the burgomaster Rutenberg, of Dantzic, and that, therefore, they were justified in making reprisal; and likewise, they durst not refuse the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... Privilege case, he obtained permission to appear without a wig; but this concession to a counsel—who, on that occasion, spoke for sixteen hours—was accompanied with an intimation that "it was not to be drawn into precedent." ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... tactfully, yet very firmly, bent upon saving the meeting from any possibility of scandalising itself and the Wesleyan community. Bishop Colenso must not be approved beneath those roofs. Evidently Edwin had been more persuasive than he dreamt of; and daring beyond precedent. He had meant to carry his resolution if he could, whereas, it appeared, he ought to have meant to be defeated, in the true interests of revealed religion. The chairman kept referring to his young friend the proposer's brilliant brains, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... predominate, upon the authority of those whom we do not in general think wiser than ourselves. Very few have abilities requisite for the discovery of abstruse truth; and of those few some want leisure, and some resolution. But it is not so easy to find the reason of the universal submission to precedent where every man might safely judge for himself; where no irreparable loss can be hazarded, nor any mischief of long continuance incurred. Vanity might be expected to operate where the more powerful passions are not awakened; the mere pleasure of acknowledging ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... and 1662 did not disturb them. And therefore, although neither law nor custom recognise the modern Roman sequence of colours, still there is precedent for the use of colours not specified in the rubric of Sarum, on days not mentioned therein, especially in Churches which ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... considering your ignorance of salt-water custom and your agreement to start anew. The law defines your allowance of food, but not your duties or your working- and sleeping-time. That is left to the discretion of your captain and officers. Precedent—the decision of the courts—has decided the privilege of a captain or officer to punish insolence or lack of respect from a sailor with a blow—of a fist or missile; but, understand me now, a return of the blow makes that man a mutineer, and his prompt ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson |
