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Disfranchise   Listen
verb
Disfranchise  v. t.  (past & past part. disfranchised; pres. part. disfranchising)  To deprive of a franchise or chartered right; to dispossess of the rights of a citizen, or of a particular privilege, as of voting, holding office, etc. "Sir William Fitzwilliam was disfranchised." "He was partially disfranchised so as to be made incapable of taking part in public affairs."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disfranchise" Quotes from Famous Books



... the real advantage of birth as they were, and was undoubtedly an enhancenent of dignity, though, in appearance, a very singular one. Conversely, several unpopular commoners were ennobled in order to disfranchise them. Nothing was more usual, in subsequent times, than such an arbitrary change of rank, as a penalty or a benefit. (Messer Antonio de Baldinaccio degli Adimari, tutto che fosse de piu grandi e nobili, per grazia era misso tra 'l popolo.—Villani, xii. c. 108.) ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... electorate by law. The Fifteenth Amendment forbade the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and was not submitted to the States until after the inauguration of General Grant. A fear that the South would disfranchise the freedmen, pay the price, and revert to Democratic control seems to have been the prime motive in its adoption. When it was proclaimed, March 30, 1870, the radical Republicans had done everything in their power to save themselves, and had inflicted on the conquered States, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... drill of the League and the Freedman's Bureau, protected by the bayonet, were voting to enfranchise themselves, disfranchise their former masters, ratify a new constitution, and elect a legislature to do their will. Old Aleck was a candidate for the House, chief poll-holder, and seemed to be in charge of the movements of the voters outside the booth ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... closed! The fate of the respondent is in your hands. It is for you now to say, whether, from the law and the facts as they have appeared before you, you will proceed to disgrace and disfranchise him. If your duty calls on you to convict him, let justice be done, and convict him; but, I adjure you, let it be a clear, undoubted case. Let it be so for his sake, for you are robbing him of that for which, with all your high powers, you can yield him no compensation; let it ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... a trying time to all kinds of public men, but it is perhaps most trying of all to Christian ministers. Unless they are to disfranchise themselves and are to detach and shut themselves in from all interest in public affairs altogether, an election time is to our ministers, beyond any other class of citizens perhaps, a peculiarly trying time. How they are to escape the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... she could not be debarred the privilege of sitting at the Lord's table with her mother, three sisters, and brother, as she would be if she united herself with her friend's church. The idea of going to any table of Christ on earth where they could not come, thus seeming to disfranchise her whole family whom Christ had gathered into his fold, and some of them into heaven, did violence to her feelings. At one time, it seemed likely that the engagement of marriage would be terminated, on this ground alone. Some one of the gentleman's persuasion, who thought that she ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... relative position of the two Archbishoprics. In all the elements of power, the region beyond Trent is now at least a third part of England. When in our own time the representative system was adjusted to the altered state of the country, almost all the small boroughs which it was necessary to disfranchise were in the south. Two thirds of the new members given to great provincial towns were given to the north. If therefore any English government should suffer the Convocations, as now constituted, to meet for the despatch of business, two independent synods would be legislating at the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... action in the Waterford and Clare elections, had forced the hand of the government, and achieved catholic emancipation. It may safely be said that after the reform act of 1832 it would have been politically impossible to disfranchise them; and even in the unreformed parliament it would have been scarcely possible if gratitude were a trustworthy motive in politics. On the other hand, the government could never have secured a majority for catholic emancipation, unless it had been distinctly understood to carry with it the extinction ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... observed, "than for a free people in times of heat and violence to gratify momentary passions by letting in principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. If the Legislature can disfranchise at pleasure, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe. The name of liberty ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... or to fine arbitrarily, the rules of fines are laid down with ten thousand times more exactness than with us. If you here find that the magistrate has any power to punish the people with arbitrary punishment, to seize their property, or to disfranchise them of any rights or privileges, I will readily admit that Mr. Hastings has laid down good, sound doctrine upon this subject. There is his own book, a compilation of their laws, which has in it not only good and excellent positive rules, but a system of as enlightened jurisprudence, with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... still be traced. It is now built up to that line. He argues, therefore, that as the founders of our representative institutions gave members to Aldborough when it was as small as it now is, those who would disfranchise it on account of its smallness have no right to say that they are recurring to the original principle of our representative institutions. But does the noble Lord remember the change which has taken place in the country during the last five centuries? Does he remember how much England has grown in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... using his Parliamentary vote, and, as may be seen from the above, a medical woman's signature is as valid as that of a man for this disfranchising certificate of lunacy. The State, therefore, at the present time allows that a medical woman may be sufficiently learned and reliable to disfranchise a man, though she be not sufficiently learned and reliable to ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... inhabitants, and especially when their Charter gave them no authority whatever in the matter of Church organization.[66] They went to New England avowedly for liberty of worship; and on arriving there they claimed the right to persecute and to banish or disfranchise all those who adhered to the worship of the Church to which they professed to belong, as did their persecutors when they left England, and which was the only Church then tolerated ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... intervals he inquired of the men around him, in a great jovial voice, 'Are we down-'earted?' as though the meeting had been called, not for the purpose of rousing interest in the question of woman's share in the work of the world, but as though its object were to humiliate and disfranchise the men. But his exclamation, repeated at intervals, came in as a sort of refrain to the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... such, and as such be impressed with their obligations and privileges, and as such be prepared for, and brought into, the spiritual communion and fellowship of the Church, on coming to the years of accountability, is, it appears to me, to make the Sacrament of Baptism a nullity, and to disfranchise thousands of children of divinely chartered rights and privileges. Mr. Wesley, in his Treatise on Baptism, in stating the third benefit of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... shining, yet in those Are liveliest, which resemble him the most. These tokens of pre-eminence on man Largely bestow'd, if any of them fail, He needs must forfeit his nobility, No longer stainless. Sin alone is that, Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike To the chief good; for that its light in him Is darken'd. And to dignity thus lost Is no return; unless, where guilt makes void, He for ill pleasure pay with equal pain. Your nature, which ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... and avowedly the object of these laws to confer upon Negroes the privilege of voting and to disfranchise such a number of white citizens as will give the former a clear majority at all elections in the Southern States. This, to the minds of some persons, is so important that a violation of the Constitution is justified as a means of bringing it about. The morality is always ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson



Words linked to "Disfranchise" :   disenfranchise, deprive, enfranchise



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