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verb
Legislate  v. i.  (past & past part. legislated; pres. part. legislating)  To make or enact a law or laws. "Solon, in legislating for the Athenians, had an idea of a more perfect constitution than he gave them."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Legislate" Quotes from Famous Books



... go into Parliament and legislate for us, and take care that we are not disforested. They have taken away too much already, with their ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850 (commonly called the Compromise measures), is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution"—a change which Benton truthfully characterized as "a stump ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... my line; I must leave that sort of wofsmithing to the romantic novelist. Besides, I have my well-known panacea for all the ills our state is heir to, in a civilization which shall legislate foolish and vicious and ugly and adulterate things out of the possibility of existence. Most of the adsmithing is now employed in persuading people that such things are useful, beautiful, and pure. But in any civilization ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... satisfy their peculiar talents and at the same time get a living with less inconvenience to the mass of citizens. The criminal, being as much a human being as the rest of us, must be known as he is before we can either influence him personally or legislate for him effectually. If we treat him as we would the little girl who stole her brother's candy mice or as the man who under great stress of temptation yields to the impulse to steal against his struggling will, we will fail, for we overlook ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... labourer to soak himself in drink and to spend his money at the public-house. Drink is the root of all our social troubles: it ruins the body and corrupts the mind, it poisons the unborn children, fills our prisons and asylums. You may legislate and equalize opportunities as much as you please; so long as you allow the cursed liberty of drink there can be no health and no human decency. Prohibition is the most urgent ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... the same year, and entitled "A Letter to the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, D.D., on the present position of Church affairs in Scotland, and the causes which have led to it," his Grace vindicated the right of the Church to legislate for itself, condemned the movement then in progress among certain members of the General Assembly to establish the Free Church by a secession from the Establishment, and expressed his dissent from Dr. Chalmers' view that "lay patronage and the integrity of the spiritual ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... so as to qualify Calcutta local associations with other local associations. This plan will be attended of course with some trouble and expense. I intend to make some inquiries to ascertain what the latter is likely to be. I do not see why we should not legislate in camp, if there be difficulty in providing house accommodation.... I should like, if possible, to hit upon a plan which would give us a sufficient range in choosing and varying our places of meeting. More on ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind's range and hospitality. Yet, compared with the cheap professions of ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... soon legislate again on the hastily organized Bureau, which had so quickly grown into wide significance and vast possibilities. An institution such as that was well-nigh as difficult to end as to begin. Early in 1866 Congress took up the matter, when Senator ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... on different readers; according to the extent of prejudice or liberality existing in different minds. They show that even during the most absolute period of ecclesiastical domination, there was one spot in England where attempts to legislate for the priesthood (though perhaps feeble enough) were made. The legislative {101} powers of the corporation were at that time very ample; and the only condition by which they appear to have been limited was, that they should not override an act ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various

... to property, 'tis a tragic farce; 'tis his sovereign pleasure to eat nectarines, grow them who will. Another Alexander, he; the world is all his own! Ay, and he will govern it as he best knows how! He will legislate, dictate, dogmatize; for who so infallible? What! Cannot ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... the peninsula, and divergence of foreign policy no longer weakened its influence in Europe. The absolute monarchy was founded, and whatever there was of ability, enterprise, and wealth in Spain came under its control. The sovereign was in a position to give patronage to voyages of adventure, to legislate for distant dominions, and to make the most remote Spanish possessions contributory to the general objects ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... VICE.—If a prenuptial examination were made compulsory there is no doubt of the very prompt and salutory effect it would have on present-day vice. It has often been said that "You cannot legislate virtue or sobriety into a people." We are familiar too with the maxim that "You can lead a horse to the well, but you cannot make him drink." You can lead a horse to the well, however, and lo! he drinks. If you lead him at the right time he will always drink. If we legislate ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.

... thousands of men take a share in the country's public morality, legislate, build churches, and live and die respectable, who would be jail-birds sooner or later if their sole income was the pay of a banker's clerk, and their eyes, and hands, and souls rubbed daily against hundred-pound notes as his do. I tell you it is ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... this matter in accordance with its own interests. Among the three Slovene parties, for example, the Socialists would naturally work for their own principles, the Christian-Socialist party, whose supporters were chiefly the small farmers, would prefer to legislate for them, while the Liberal party, having in its ranks the larger landowners, would wish that all, except the very largest, should if possible be left intact; the very large landowners, moreover, will with the spread of democratic ideas lose their influence ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... indispensably necessary to the existence of a Parliament. No royal writ had summoned the Convention which recalled Charles the Second. Yet that Convention had, after his Restoration, continued to sit and to legislate, had settled the revenue, had passed an Act of amnesty, had abolished the feudal tenures. These proceedings had been sanctioned by authority of which no party in the state could speak without reverence. Hale had borne a considerable share in them, and had always maintained ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... perform the service at lower rates than two or more, and in the long run will be sure to do so. In some kinds of business competition will keep corporations within bounds in their charges; in others it will not. When it will not, it may become necessary to legislate upon profits." ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... of the administration of the law; and I believe that was never satisfactory. Brandeis told me himself he was never yet satisfied with any native judge. And men say (and it seems to fit in well with his hasty and eager character) that he would legislate by word of mouth; sometimes forget what he had said; and, on the same question arising in another province, decide it perhaps otherwise. I gather, on the whole, our artillery captain was not great in law. Two articles refer to a matter I must deal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... part of the nineteenth century the Social-Democracies of Europe set out to 'legislate capitalism out of office.' The class struggle was to be won in the capitalist legislatures. Step by step concessions were to be wrested from the state; the working class and the Socialist parties were to be strengthened by means of 'constructive' reform ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... himself has originated, that the landlord and tenant question is one on which the most profound ignorance exists in this country, and that there never was a government which had so little local knowledge as the present, and which, consequently, was so ill fitted to legislate on the subject—when he laments other men's ignorance, and glorifies himself on his own particular knowledge—when, we say, a nobleman so circumstanced as the Marquis of Normanby, does all this, and at the same time recommends a guide, by whom the ignorant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... obligation? It seems to me that the time is fully ripe for the clearer perception of the fact, that because women are not men, it does not follow that they are not in an important sense citizens. And this, without any reference to the question whether they should be permitted to vote and to legislate; though, as to the former, I do not know of a single valid objection to the exercise of the privilege, while there are several weighing in its favor; and as to the latter, it seems to me that one single consideration would forever, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... universal against an interference for religious reasons, that a very respectable and numerous subscription could readily have been obtained.—But the report from the Senate represented the subject in so powerful a light—demonstrated so clearly the want of power in the government to legislate for the reasons given by the petitioners, and showed so conclusively, that if they had the power, they certainly had not the ability to determine for all the people of the United States, what God's law was—that we have concluded it would not be necessary at ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... to acquire territory, he continues, arises as "the inevitable consequence" the right to govern it.[10] Subsequently, powers have been repeatedly ascribed to the National Government by the Court on grounds which ill accord with the doctrine of enumerated powers: the power to legislate in effectuation of the "rights expressly given, and duties expressly enjoined" by the Constitution;[11] the power to impart to the paper currency of the Government the quality of legal tender in the payment of debts;[12] the power to acquire territory by discovery;[13] the power ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... unjust, and absurd if it were applied only to the children of the poor. He contended that the Upper and Middle Classes were every bit as much in need of a compulsory system, if their children were to be properly educated, as the working classes for whom it was proposed to legislate. This theme he illustrated, with the most exuberant fun and fancy, in a letter addressed to the Pall Mall Gazette in 1867, and afterwards republished in Friendship's Garland. Arminius, the cultivated Prussian, accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country town, and ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... expense of another part, of a permanently sunken class; while the other holds that history proves that the lot of all persons in a commonwealth is capable of being gradually ameliorated, and that in any case it is our sacred duty to legislate for the poor, on this basis, by allowing them equal rights, and making every exertion to extend the best blessings of education to them, and open to every man, without distinction, every avenue of employment for which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... survey is admirable. He is a large subject; I cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works are true, to blame and praise him, the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil than legislate for good. At all events, he seems to be what Destiny intended, and represents fully a certain side; so we make no remonstrance as to his being and proceeding for himself, though we sometimes must ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... difficulty of inducing the representatives of distant States to turn their attention to projects of laws which are not of the highest interest to their constituents, they are not individually, nor in Congress collectively, well qualified to legislate over the local concerns of this District. Consequently its interests are much neglected, and the people are almost afraid to present their grievances, lest a body in which they are not represented and which feels little sympathy in their local relations should in its attempt to make laws ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... separation of powers can prevent the approach of tyranny. The facts do not bear out such assumption. The division of powers means in the event not less than their confusion. None can differentiate between the judge's declaration of law and his making of it.[6] Every government department is compelled to legislate, and, often enough, to undertake judicial functions. The American history of the separation of powers has most largely been an attempt to bridge them; and all that has been gained is to drive the best talent, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... a district, these committees of the National Lifeboat Association do not, as such, take part in the deliberations—a modesty, which unfortunately the members of elected bodies do not imitate. But, on the other hand, these brave men do not allow those who have never faced a storm to legislate for them about saving life. At the first signal of distress they rush to their boats, and go ahead. There are no embroidered uniforms, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... or wrong, have affected doubts upon that doctrine; and, when parliament will not eventually support him, it matters little that a minister of these days would, for the moment, assume the responsibility of a strong measure. Or, if parliament were to legislate anew for this special case, the Repealer would then split his large mobs into many small ones: he would lecture, he would preach, he would sing, in default of other excuses for meeting. No law, he would observe coolly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... a gallant Irishman, and thus I heard him sing— "To legislate at Westminster's a dull decorous thing: But O in merry Austria's deliberative hall, Bedad, the fun ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... later amendment declared the Compromise to be "inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850," and therefore "inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution." After a long and hard fight the bill was passed with this clause in ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... If, therefore, the distinction between external and internal taxes was untenable, it convinced the American, not that Parliament had a right to tax the colonies, but only that it had no right to legislate for them. And when Englishmen grounded the legislative rights of Parliament upon the solid basis of positive law, the colonial patriot appealed with solemn fervor to natural law and the abstract rights of man. Little wonder that ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories as recognized by the Compromise measures of 1850." The bill further declared that "its true intent and meaning was not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, and not to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." The North was fairly stunned ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... Later, however, it was conceded that in matters of general interest to the whole United Kingdom, Parliament might exercise control, but that concerning all matters of domestic and internal interest, and of concern only to themselves, it was the right of their own legislatures to legislate, and that under this head ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby

... upon our heads the bitter and malignant animosity of the bread-and-butter spoils politicians. They secured the repeal of the Civil Service Law by the State Legislature. They attempted and almost succeeded in the effort to legislate us out of office. They joined with the baser portion of the sensational press in every species of foul, indecent falsehood and slander as to what we were doing. They attempted to seduce or frighten us by every species of intrigue and cajolery, of promise ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... between the foot of the island and Central Park. Beyond the Park, Haarlem Lane, Manhattanville, and Carmansville take up the thread of civic population, and carry it, among metropolitan houses and lamp-posts, quite to the butment of High Bridge. It has been seriously proposed to legislate for the annexation of a portion of Westchester to the bills of mortality, and this measure cannot fail to be demanded by the next generation; but for the present we will consider High Bridge as the north end of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... would offer a few remarks. They will be ungrateful to that small but active faction which has laboured so long and so hard to misinform the English public concerning Africa, and which is as little fitted to teach anything about the African as to legislate for Mongolian Tartary. It has prevailed for a time to the great injury of the cause, and we cannot but see its effects in almost every step taken by the Englishman, civilian or soldier, who lands his British ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... SUFFRAGE. The Fact of Sex How will it Result? I have all the Rights I want Sense Enough to Vote An Infelicitous Epithet The Rob Roy Theory The Votes of Non-Combatants Manners repeal Laws Dangerous Voters How Women will legislate Individuals vs. Classes Defeats ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... of the same kind exist, such as that which empowers the Union to legislate on bankruptcy, to grant patents, and other matters in which ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... clip the enormous expenditure on soldiers and ships; reduce our overweening army of diplomatic spies and busybodies; abstain from meddling in everybody's quarrels; redeem from taxation the workman's necessaries—a free breakfast-table; peremptorily legislate against the custom of primogeniture; encourage the distribution and transfer of land; and, under the aegis of the ballot, protect from the tyranny of the landlord and employer ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... extent," both confessed, on the floor of Congress, that in their individual judgments, it was UNCONSTITUTIONAL,—that is, that the constitution, as they expounded it, imposed upon the States severally, the obligation to surrender fugitive slaves, and gave Congress no power to legislate on the subject. The Supreme Court, however, having otherwise determined, these gentlemen acquiesced in its decision, without being convinced by it. It is well known how grossly Mr. Webster, in his subsequent canvass for the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... restrictions of England. It was in 1781 that the first convention of volunteer delegates met, and some months after Mr. Grattan moved an address to the throne asserting the legislative independence of Ireland. 'The address passed; the repeal of a certain act, empowering England to legislate for Ireland, followed; and the legislative independence of ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth

... reverse of what is just and righteous, Socrates, God forbid! for scarcely could any other legislate aright, of ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... hereby ceded and lying in Minnesota until otherwise directed by congress or the president of the United States." I mention this feature of the treaty because it gave rise to much litigation as to whether the treaty making power had authority to legislate for settlers on the ceded lands of the United States. The power was sustained. These treaties practically obliterated the Indian title from the lands composing Minnesota, and its ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... glaring, and the dangers in the future so imminent, that the good sense of the people saved the young nation in time, by sheltering it under that broad, strong roof, the present national Constitution. Thus the individual States legislate and act for themselves in all that concerns themselves alone. But in that which concerns themselves in connection and in common with other States, and where, if each State were absolutely independent, such State action would come into conflict with the wants or rights of other States, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... slightest service to us. I make you an offer which you yourself must consider a wonderful one. You come to this country as an enemy, and I offer you my hand as a friend. I offer you not only a seat in Parliament but a share in the counsels of my party. I ask you to teach us how to legislate for the people ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the proverb, is catching: and, however in my sober moments, among sober people, reasoning on objects at a distance, I might systematise and legislate for the conduct of myself and others, being an actor in the scene, whether its atmosphere were healthy or contagious, I never yet found that I could wholly escape imbibing a part of the effluvia. I gave toasts, made speeches, sung songs, ay and wrote ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... the great question."[254] In other words, he invited the Senate to act without creating a precedent; to extend the Missouri Compromise line without raising troublesome constitutional questions in the rest of the public domain; to legislate for a special case on the basis of an old agreement, without predicating anything about the future. When this amendment came to vote, only Douglas and ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... sixty members, fifteen appointed by the president of the republic, and the others appointed by the board itself whenever vacancies occur. This body meets once a year to hear reports, to pass upon the general school policy, and to legislate for the schools. Out of its membership is chosen an executive committee that meets once a week, and upon which devolves the chief management of educational affairs. This committee is answerable to the general board, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... liquor is a personal proposition, and nothing else. It is individual in every human relation. Still, you cannot make the reformers see that. They want other people to stop drinking because they want other people to stop. So they make laws that are violated, and get pledges that are broken and try to legislate or preach or coax or scare away a habit that must, in any successful outcome, be stopped by the individual, and not because of any law or threat or terror ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe

... them were thus enlightened! But how many sons and daughters of free-born Americans are unable to read their native language! How many go to the polls who are unable to read the very charter of their liberties! How many, by their votes, elect men to legislate upon their dearest interests, while they themselves are unable to read even the proceedings of those legislators whom they have empowered ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... fail to profit by these exceptional circumstances. It accepted the decrees of Basel, yet not absolutely, but after critical examination and with certain modification; a course which, by implication, asserted a right to legislate for the concerns of the French Church even independently of a general council acknowledged to be orthodox. The following explanation of this proceeding was inserted in the preamble of the celebrated statute agreed upon by the authorities ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... first convents—the outcome of Christian individualism and asceticism—were founded; and the anti-social extreme of this individualism acquired such ominous proportions that the Emperor Valens in the year of grace 365, was forced to legislate ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... sure. The hereditary—principle, did you say? My dear fellow, the House of Lords never had such a principle. The hereditary right to legislate slipped in by the merest slant of a side wind, and in its origin was just a handy expedient of the sort so dear to our Constitution, logically absurd, but in practice saving no end of friction ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... was no moral sense ai all, no weight of public opinion to uphold standards, no measures to protect innocence and punish crime. This we should call barbarism or savagery, and feel proud of our Christian civilization, where we legislate so profusely and punish so severely—when we can lay hands on individual offenders, whose crimes, though small, are at least whole ones. But we are in precisely that state of barbarism in regard to the fractional crimes ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... regard to International Legislation is the conflicting national interests of the different States. As International Statutes are only possible when the several States come to an agreement, it will often not be possible to legislate internationally on a given matter, because the interests of the different States will be so conflicting that an agreement cannot be arrived at. On the other hand, as time goes on the international ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... popularity and his life. The Italian provinces had furnished their share of the armies which had beaten Jugurtha, and had destroyed the German invaders. They now demanded that they should have the position which Gracchus designed for them: that they should be allowed to legislate for themselves, and no longer lie at the mercy of others, who neither understood their necessities nor cared for their interests. They had no friends in the city, save a few far-sighted statesmen. Senate and mob had at least one point of agreement, that the spoils of the Empire should be fought for ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... to purchase or mislead; that even the ignorant may vote more honestly than the educated; that more knowledge and judgment can be added through ten million electors than through five; and also that by this universal male suffrage it is made impossible for one class of men to legislate against another class, and thus all excuse for anarchy or a resort to force is removed. Added to these advantages is the developing influence of the ballot upon the individual himself, which renders ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... appeared to clash both with the interests of the employers and the ancient principles of English freedom and independence, behind which the employers consequently sheltered themselves. The early attempts to legislate on these lines were thus fruitless. It was not until a distinguished aristocratic philanthropist of great influence, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, took up the question, that factory legislation began ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... been so limited by interpretation by the Supreme Court of the United States that they have hardly added anything to the powers of the general Government or impaired the powers of the States. The legislation following the war when Congress seemed to have run mad with the theory that it could legislate outside of the Constitution has to a large extent fallen under the decisions of that high tribunal. One would have supposed that it could have been certain that, considering the fact that the war was waged to extend the extremest proposition of State sovereignty, that the triumph of the Federal ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... though for ourselves there be in it no latent evil or lurking danger. This, however, is a matter in which each person must determine his duty for himself alone, and in which no one is authorized to legislate for others. It may seem to a conscientious man a worthy enterprise to vindicate and rescue from its evil associations an amusement or indulgence in itself not only harmless, but salutary; and there may be an equally strong sense of right on both sides of a ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... time will come, I tell thee, when every one will be his own guide and dragoman. The time will come when it will not be necessary to write books for others, or to legislate for others, or to make religions for others: the time will come when every one will write his own Book in the Life he lives, and that Book will be his code and his creed;—that Life-Book will be the palace and cathedral of his Soul in ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... sober habits of observation and the positive acquirements that must give him the stamina to attempt the higher flights of thought. The eagle's wings are nothing without his pectoral muscles. It is not Swedenborg and his disciples that legislate for the scientific world; they may suggest truth, but they rarely prove it, and never bring it into such systematic forms as narrow-minded Nature will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... sinners by the arbitrary decree of Jehovah. Third, the Father put this decree-load of guilt upon an innocent one, and executed the real penalty upon him. How is this? Suppose a legislative body legislates a man a murderer because his great great grand-father killed a man, should it not also legislate him free from the penalty of murder and never in cruel injustice inflict it upon him or any other innocent one simply as a satisfaction to justice? Law ought to always place us where we are in fact, otherwise it is detestably unjust. Why ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... Indian tribes within the limits of the United States under subjection to the white race; and it has been found necessary, for their sake as well as our own, to regard them as in a state of pupilage, and to legislate to a certain extent over them and the territory they occupy. But they may, without doubt, like the subjects of any other foreign Government, be naturalized by the authority of Congress, and become citizens of a State, and of the United States; and if an individual ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... it was not easy for him to get them to be all in a story. Poor fellows! each one of them had his own peculiar views and his own peculiar troubles too closely pressing on his brain. The Dictator was never impatient—but he kept asking himself the question: 'Suppose I had the power to legislate, and were now called upon by these men and in their own interests to legislate, what on their own showing should I ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... home, and let him understand the ways of life among the humbler classes of the nation—so that, if ever he went into parliament, he might have the advantage of knowing the heart of the people for whom he would have to legislate. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... news, Philibert!" replied the Governor in at one of despondency. "It needs the wisdom of Solon to legislate for this land, and a Hercules to cleanse its Augean stables of official corruption. But my influence at Court ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... commerce in behalf of the ship-builders of Maine. If he were a judge, as a celebrated namesake of his once was, he would do it by hanging a majority of members of the House he had the honor of addressing. In default of that he wanted them to legislate sensibly upon it. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... was it for Congress to apply this simple rule, that the will of the majority shall govern, to the settlement of the question of domestic slavery in the Territories. Congress is neither "to legislate slavery into any Territory or State nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... person was a party, might be repealed so as to allow them to testify in such cases. At that time there was a great deal of feeling throughout the country on the subject of slavery, and any attempt to legislate in behalf of the colored people was sure to excite opposition, and give rise to suggestions that its promoter was not sound on the slavery question. The presentation of the petition accordingly stirred up angry feelings. It created a perfect ...
— 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

... the alarm. But in cases where the same feeling pervades the bosoms of multitudes of men, this imaginary evil grows up at once into a gigantic reality, and must be dealt with as such. It is at all times difficult to legislate against a possibility. The committee have reported a proposition intended to meet this case. It is a form of amendment of the Constitution which, in substance, takes away no rights whatever which the free States ever should attempt to use, whilst it vests exclusively in the slave States the right ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... Mavor said there was a difference between the law officers of the Crown and the Canadian law officers with respect to the rights of Canada to legislate for copyright in Canada, and there was no doubt that publishers on both sides held extreme views. When his Society turned their attention to it, they considered whether some middle path might not be arrived at which would satisfy reasonable people ...
— The Copyright Question - A Letter to the Toronto Board of Trade • George N. Morang

... thing are equal to each other." This mathematical axiom, which is well enough in its place, has been extended into the field of morals and social life, confused the perception of human relations, and raised "hob," as the saying is, in political economy. We theorize and legislate as if people were things. Most of the schemes of social reorganization are based on this fallacy. It always breaks down in experience. A has two friends, B and C—to state it mathematically. A is equal to B, and A is equal to C. A has for B and also for C the most cordial ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... will develop its own characteristic standards of art and literature and conduct in accordance with its new necessities. It is, I believe, the mankind of the future. And the last thing it will be able to do will be to legislate. The history of the immediate future will, I am convinced, be very largely the history of the conflict of the needs of this new population with the institutions, the boundaries the laws, prejudices, and deep-rooted traditions established during the home-keeping, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... inflict is, in their intention, good or bad, they become equally frivolous. The case against the governing class of modern England is not in the least that it is selfish; if you like, you may call the English oligarchs too fantastically unselfish. The case against them simply is that when they legislate for all men, they always ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... law, so that they may speak without fear of arrest, and beg them to plainly and boldly state their grievances. Let a commission of the best and wisest amongst Irishmen, with some of our highest English judges added, sit solemnly to hear all complaints, and then let us honestly legislate, not for the punishment of the discontented, but to remove the causes of the discontent. It is not the Fenians who have depopulated Ireland's strength and increased her misery. It is not the Fenians ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... knick-knacks, which they disposed of in the United States. The incoming goods were duly entered at our frontier custom-houses, but the outgoing silver was not. Mr. Greeley, unaware of this fact, detects an over-importation of $25,000,000, and is waiting to be elected to Congress in order to legislate the matter right. ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... highest class. They have most to guard. In every other country they are the champions of patriotism. They feel there is no honour for them separate from their fatherland. Its freedom, its dignity, its integrity, are as their own. They strive for it, legislate for it, guard it, fight for it. Their names, their titles, their very pride ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... than yours, to our species,' I replied, 'can hardly be conceived. I cannot but look upon man as something more than a part of the state. He is, first of all, a man, and is to be cared for as such. To legislate for the state, to the ruin of the man, is to pamper the body, and kill the soul. It is to invert the true process. The individual is more than the abstraction which we term the state. If governments cannot exist, nor empires hold their sway, but by the destruction ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... our recreated and regenerated Republic, after it has passed through this fiery furnace of war, these gates of death, shall be permanently installed. We shall yet tread its meadows and pastures green, trade in its marts, live in its palaces worship in its temples, and legislate in its Capitol. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... North Carolina Convention had adjourned without action, and Rhode Island had rejected the Constitution by a popular vote of 2708 to 232. Had a Congress representing eleven States the right, even if it had the power, to legislate for thirteen sovereign States? Many felt that important questions like amendments to the Constitution should be postponed until the United States were united in fact as well as in name. Even eleven States were insufficiently represented. Delaware had only one Senator and no ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... could ascertain the images called up by the terms "the people," "the masses," "the proletariat," "the peasantry," by many who theorize on those bodies with eloquence, or who legislate without eloquence, we should find that they indicate almost as small an amount of concrete knowledge—that they are as far from completely representing the complex facts summed up in the collective term, as the railway images of our non-locomotive gentleman. How little the real characteristics of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... the women whose votes these defendants received, being citizens of the United States, and in every other way qualified to vote, possessed the right to vote, and their votes were rightfully received. If it is not, then the fourteenth amendment confers no power upon Congress, to legislate, on the subject of voting in the States. There is no other clause or provision of that amendment which can by any possibility confer such power—a power which cannot be implied, but which, if it exist, must be expressly ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... legislation of the United States under this power would be adapted to such circumstances. For example, there might be a demand for Chinese labor in the South and a surplus of such labor in California, and Congress might legislate in accordance with these facts. In general the legislation would be in view of and depend upon the circumstances of the situation at the moment such legislation became necessary. The Chinese commissioners said this ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... insisted upon by philosophers as well as poets. The street music has quite broken away from all control, both of the educator and the patriot, and we have grown singularly careless in regard to its influence upon young people. Although we legislate against it in saloons because of its dangerous influence there, we constantly permit music on the street to incite that which should be controlled, to degrade that which should be exalted, to make sensuous that which might be lifted into the ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... woman's favour, and that woman my own wife. Nor could I conscientiously take the line of, "If she desires to go to the Devil let her," for a man has as much responsibility for his wife as for his children, and it is equally his duty to guide and control her and them. Women may vote and may legislate for men—but on men they will ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... colonies in question. Canada soon availed herself of this privilege, which was granted to her as the logical sequence of the free-trade policy of Great Britain, and, from that time to the present, she has been enabled to legislate very freely with regard to her own commercial interests. In 1849 the imperial parliament repealed the navigation laws, and allowed the river St. Lawrence to be used by vessels of all nations. With the repeal of laws, the ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... usurpation is aggravated by the almost universal admission that Congress does possess the constitutional power to legislate on the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia and the Territories. No wonder that a distinguished statesman refused to sanction the right of the House to pass such a resolution by even voting against it[A]. The men who perpetrated this outrage had sworn to support the Constitution, and will ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... other men would be willing to do the work and board themselves. The suggestion I would make is that you pass a law letting the offices of United States Senator and Judges of the Supreme Court to the lowest bidder. This method will be economical and will secure to the state men who can legislate and judge things well enough for all practical purposes. The way times are now we must get things at panic ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... hence there may not be, on the shore of some desolate and silent bay in the Hebrides, another Liverpool, with its docks and warehouses and endless forests of masts? Who can say that the huge chimneys of another Manchester may not rise in the wilds of Connemara? For our children we do not pretend to legislate. All that we can do for them is to leave to them a memorable example of the manner in which great reforms ought to be made. In the only sense, therefore, in which a statesman ought to say that anything is final, I pronounce this bill final. But in what sense will your bill be final? Suppose that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... is so much better or wiser than others that he can permanently stand the test of irresponsible power over them. On the contrary, the best and wisest is he who is ready to go to the humblest in a spirit of inquiry, to find out what he wants and why he wants it before seeking to legislate for him. Admitting the utmost that can be said for the necessity of leadership, we must at the same time grant that the perfection of leadership itself lies in securing the willing, convinced, open-eyed support ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... to their slaves on account of any charters, which they may be able to produce, though their charters are the only source of their power. It is through these that they have hitherto legislated, and that they continue to legislate. Take away their charters, and they would have no right or power to legislate at all. And yet, though they have their charters, and though the slavery, which now exists, has been formed and kept together entirely by the laws, which such charters have given them ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... think different. Other times, other ways. But if it hadn't been for the methods of twenty years ago we wouldn't be doin' things so peaceably now. It was the attitude of Irishmen in Ireland that made them legislate for us. It wasn't the Irish members in Westminster ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... Senate; the assault on Sumner by Brooks. In the midst of this carnival of ferocity came the Dred Scott decision, cutting under the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, denying to the people of a Territory the right to legislate on slavery, and giving to all slave-holders the right to settle with their slaves anywhere they pleased outside a Free State. This famous decision repudiated Douglas's policy of leaving all such questions to local autonomy and to private enterprise. For a time Douglas made no move ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... this question was distinct from any question or questions of political reform; that parties and parliaments who differed on other questions of public policy, agreed nearly unanimously in this. He expressed his opinion that the Colonial Legislature had a right to legislate on it, and asked me why our House of Assembly had not done it. I told him it had, but the Legislative Council had rejected the Bill passed by the Assembly on ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... what we have never been—a united people; but God renders this possible only by "proclaiming liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." By what miracle can Freedom and Slavery be made amicably to strike hands? How can they administer the same Government, or legislate for the same interests? How can they receive the same baptism, be admitted to the same communion-table, believe in the same Gospel, and obtain the same heavenly inheritance? "I speak as unto wise men; judge ye." Certain propositions have long since been ceded to be plain, beyond ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... settle them with new men and exterminate or drive out the present rebels as exiles." Congress in dealing with these provinces was not bound even by the Constitution, "a bit of worthless parchment," but might legislate as it pleased in regard to slavery, the ballot, and confiscation. With regard to the white population, he said: "I have never desired bloody punishments to any great extent. But there are punishments quite as appalling, and longer remembered, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... scientific method in the investigation of philosophical questions. Human ethical notions, as Chuang Tz[)u] perceived, are essentially anthropocentric, and involve, when used in metaphysics, an attempt, however veiled, to legislate for the universe on the basis of the present desires of men. In this way they interfere with that receptivity to fact which is the essence of the scientific attitude towards the world. To regard ethical notions as a key to the understanding of the world is essentially ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... declared that they were entitled to life, liberty, and property, and to the rights and immunities of free and natural born subjects within the realm of England. They denied the right of the British Parliament to legislate in cases of "taxation and internal polity," but "cheerfully consent to the operation of such Acts of the British Parliament as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce." They protested against "the keeping up a standing army in these ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... enforce the act without bloodshed was impossible. In March, 1766, therefore, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. [9] But at the same time it enacted another, known as the Declaratory Act, in which it declared that it had power to "legislate for the colonies ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... iniquitous scheme of oppression, pragmaticas, or royal proclamations, were issued, containing provisions repugnant to the acknowledged law of the land, and affirming in the most unqualified terms the right of the sovereign to legislate for his subjects. [5] The commons indeed, when assembled in cortes, stoutly resisted the assumption of such unconstitutional powers by the crown, and compelled the prince not only to revoke his pretensions, but to accompany his revocation with the most humiliating concessions. [6] ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... rights of a human being are the gift of Nature, and not the gift of the law. Who authorized men to make laws for one another? In making men different from each other, Nature has made it impossible for one man to legislate wisely for another. The majority have a right to rule themselves, but they have no fight to rule the minority. All rights are the rights of individuals, and the rights of individuals composing a minority, are the same as the rights of individuals composing ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... powers attached to the office, as his father from disease. Mr. Pitt denied that a Prince of Wales simply as such, and apart from any moral fitness which he might possess, had more title to the office of regent than any lamp-lighter or scavenger. It was the province of Parliament exclusively to legislate for the particular case. The practical decision of the question was not called for, from the accident of the king's sudden recovery: but in Ireland, from the independence asserted by the two houses of the British council, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... reverence for the actual historical development of human societies, with their institutions. Such institutions are the embodiment of reason—not pure reason, but reason struggling to get itself expressed as it can. He who would legislate for man independently of such institutions has left the solid earth and man far behind. He is ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... for their God, and the God of their seed, and then the naturalness and propriety of using an ordinance to express and to assist it. People need instruction on the subject; instruction which will commend itself to their Christian feelings. We cannot legislate them into a spiritual observance of the Lord's ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... up every gooseberry where Satan winks his eye— We will make the sinful earth a credit by and by: Europe may be stubborn, but we'll legislate her dry, And then we'll ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... ingress of slavery, Douglas had pleased the South, but greatly alarmed the North. He had sought to conciliate Northern sentiment by appending to his Kansas-Nebraska Bill the declaration that its intent was "not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." This he called "the great principle of popular sovereignty." ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... resentment. The moment women get the vote in any community, the first thing they proceed to do is to close the saloons. In a thousand generations to come men of themselves will not close the saloons. As well expect the morphine victims to legislate the sale of morphine ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... so for thee, that thou shouldst in this narrow island be under my authority. But because of thy wondrous humility and thy perfect charity, Christ thy Lord giveth thee a half of Ireland as thine inheritance." Here there is another version of the claim of Clonmacnois to legislate ecclesiastically for half of the island. They then erected a cross as a token of their fraternal bond, putting a curse upon whomsoever should make a breach in their agreement. In a Life of Saint Enda, quoted by the Bollandists (September, vol. iii, p. 376 C), it is further ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... suggestion to imitation, some liberty must not be given at the lines whence the rays are supposed to diverge to the two eyes from two different surfaces. Every advance in art and science removes something from the realms of opinion, and this appears to be a question on which science must some day legislate for art. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... of the majority of its members, who perform their functions with pipes in their mouths, while drawn up in semi-circle around a couple of fire-places built expressly for their accommodation—"one on each side of the speaker's desk," Who wouldn't legislate, (and early, too,) if he could do it with his feet on the fender, his well-flavored Havana or best Virginia leaf in his mouth, and the privilege of cracking jokes and telling naughty stories ad interim? Go it, ye Buckeye ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... other bodies than colonial legislatures; and county councils, borough councils, district councils, and parish councils share with it in various degrees the task of legislating for the country. They can, of course, only legislate, as they can only administer, within the limits imposed by Act of Parliament; but their development, like the multiplication of central administrative departments, indicates the latest, but not the final, stages in the growth and specialization of English government. A century ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... suffering and heroism which we boast of to-day because those modest martyrs were working people, proud that by the sweat of their brows they wrung from a niggardly soil the food they ate, proud also that they could leave the plough to govern or to legislate, able also to survey a county or ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... 1782, Pitt arose merely in order to challenge this statement and to read the letters of the Duke of Portland to Lord Shelburne of May-June 1782; they refuted Russell's contention only in so far as to show that Ministers then designed to legislate further on the subject. The Irish Parliament certainly regarded the legislative independence then granted as complete and final. The House of Commons supported Pitt by a ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... form a band called the court, 'The court!" exclaims D'Argenson. "The entire evil is found in this word, The court has become the senate of the nation; the least of the valets at Versailles is a senator; chambermaids take part in the government, if not to legislate, at least to impede laws and regulations; and by dint of hindrance there are no longer either laws, or rules, or law-makers. . . . Under Henry IV courtiers remained each one at home; they had not entered into ruinous expenditure to belong to the court; favors were not thus due to them ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... navy, received on terms of courtesy criminals whose lives were forfeited, and negotiated with them as with equals—when the Government submitted to demands which it evidently feared to resist—and the Parliament hastened to legislate at the bidding of triumphant mutineers, the navy was taught a fatal lesson. The fleet at the Nore mutinied almost immediately after, without the shadow of a pretext; and the idea of mutiny once become familiar, the crews of the best ordered ships thought little of seeking redress ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... to grasp the fruits of its long apprenticeship. Some time ago I believe the Canadas sought to annex this broad expanse to their own jurisdiction. There are about two hundred members in the Hudson's Bay Company. The charter gives them the power to legislate for the settlement. They have many persons in their employ in England as well as in British America. A clerk, after serving the company ten years, with a salary of about $500 per annum, is considered qualified for membership, with the right to vote in the deliberations of the company, and one ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... advocate such legislation, between legal marriage and procreation. The persons who fall into such confusion have not yet learnt the alphabet of the subject they presume to dictate about, and are no more competent to legislate than a child who cannot tell A from B ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Territorial government for Alaska, they could confer upon it such powers, judicial and executive, as they deemed most suitable to the necessities of the inhabitants. It was unquestionably within the constitutional power of Congress to withhold from the inhabitants of Alaska the power to legislate and make laws. In the absence, then, of any law-making power in the Territory, to what source must the people look for the laws by which they are to be governed? This question can admit of but one answer. Congress is the only law-making ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... framed the Constitution, and to the want of legal knowledge and skill among those who had worked it, and was aggravated by the fact that the legislature consisted of one Chamber only, which was naturally led to legislate by way of resolution (besluit) because the process of passing laws in the stricter sense of the term involved a tedious and cumbrous process of bringing them to the knowledge of the people throughout the country. Upon this point there arose a dispute with the Chief Justice which led to ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... Parliament, still dragging out its date, under the shadow of Cromwell's great name, declared in its session of 1652, the rebellion in Ireland "subdued and ended," and proceeded to legislate for that kingdom as a conquered country. On the 12th of August, they passed their Act of Settlement, the authorship of which was attributed to Lord Orrery, in this respect the worthy son of the first Earl of Cork. Under this Act, there were four chief descriptions ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... made all dependent upon reason. A natural consequence of this was the reassertion of the position which Plato held or wished to hold, namely, that virtue can be taught. But the part played by nature in virtue cannot be ignored. It was not in the power of Zeno to alter facts. All he could do was to legislate as to names. And this he did vigorously. Nothing was to be called virtue which was not of the nature of reason and knowledge, but still it had to be admitted that nature supplied the starting points for the four cardinal virtues—for the discovery ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock

... superstition that ever clouded the intellects, or degraded the morals of mankind. From this it is evident, that up to the period of their independence, having been so long destitute of education, so long unaccustomed to think or legislate for themselves, and so long under the complete dominion of their liberty-hating Priests, they must have been totally unacquainted with the plainest principles of self-government. Let us examine what their subsequent opportunities of ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton

... prejudice of the coroner's jury been on the other side, their tormentors were gratuitously declared to be blameless. There was only one virtue, pugnacity: only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war; but the Government had not the courage to legislate accordingly; and its law was set aside for ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw

... Governor-Generals in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Germans would be appointed as District Commissioners to collect revenue, try cases, and control the police. A Council of Germans, with a proportion of nominated British lords and squires, would legislate for each province, and perhaps, after a century or so, as a great concession a small franchise might be granted, with special advantages to Presbyterians, so as to keep religious differences alive, the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... ceasing to be used for breaches of the peace, and the trade is going down in consequence by leaps and bounds. The fact is you cannot now-a-days put a stop to any grave abuse without seriously damaging some trade-interest. If 'trade' is to decide matters it would be much better not to legislate at all." ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... law, which the Popes, at various times, had wisely adapted to their age and the circumstances of their people. There are certain points of great delicacy, with regard to which, in Christian communities, religious authority only can legislate. These excepted, the Justinian code, with some necessary modifications, prevailed. Few changes have been made since Gregory the Sixteenth's time, and they are codified with such perfect scientific lucidity as to be available to practitioners. This is one of the special labors of the Council of ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... foregoing description. The bill having reduced potash prices, the mine owners threatened to recoup themselves by reducing wages. But the members of the Reichstag were not to be balked by such threats; they could legislate about wages just as easily as about prices and allotments. So they amended the bill by providing that if any owner should reduce wages without the consent of his employees, his allotment should be ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... experimental 'change of places,' which the Poet recommends to those who occupy the upper ones in, the social structure, as a means of a more particular and practical acquaintance with the conditions of those for whom they legislate, new views of the common natural human relations; new views of the ends of social combinations are perpetually flashing on him; for it is the fallen monarch himself, the late owner and disposer of the Common Weal, it ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... politics. He became the leader of the Home Rule members of the House of Commons, who sought, by obstructing the progress of business, to compel the English government to withdraw its measures of coercion, and to legislate in accordance with the views of himself and his associates. The "obstructionists," by joining the Tories, effected the retirement of the Gladstone Cabinet (1885). In Ireland a system of "boycotting" was adopted for the punishment of landlords guilty of evicting tenants. This led to deeds ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... purpose. But there is a danger that the specialist advice may never reach the heads of the Staff. Human nature being what it is, the safest procedure is to place the specialist officer where his voice must be heard, i.e. to give him a position on the Staff, for one must legislate for the average individual and for ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... colonists should increase in population and influence the King reserves to himself the right to legislate for them; but condescends to restrict his law-making energies to such action as might be "consonant to the law of England or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... and penniless parasites, but most respectable toad-eaters, fathers of honest families, gentlemen themselves of good station, who respected this young gentleman as one of the institutions of their country, and the admired wisdom of the nation that set him to legislate over us. When Lord Farintosh walked the streets at night, he felt himself like Haroun Alraschid—(that is, he would have felt so had he ever heard of the Arabian potentate)—a monarch in disguise affably observing ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to legislate for our newly-acquired territory, it is doubted whether the Louisianians can be received into the Union without an amendment to the Constitution. Consider of this. Again, are they citizens of the United States, or can Congress make ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... and the people of the colonies, but not to Parliament, since they denied its right to pass any such laws as those under complaint. The Congress further drew up a declaration of rights which stated sharply the colonial claims, namely, that Parliament had no right to legislate for the internal affairs of the separate colonies. It also adopted a plan for putting commercial pressure on England by forming an Association whose members pledged themselves to consume no English products, and organize committees in every colony to enforce this boycott. ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... only to recall the previous attempts made by former administrations to legislate upon the currency question, especially the efforts of the Harrison and Cleveland administrations, to understand and appreciate the difficulties that lay in the path of Woodrow Wilson in his efforts to free the credit of the country from selfish control ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... Fairbairn of Saltoun belong. The organ that advocated Dr. Cunningham's and Dr. James Buchanan's views of the College question, would be diametrically opposed to the view of Dr. Brown of Aberdeen and Mr. Gray of Perth. The organ that contended for an ecclesiastical right to legislate on the temporalities according to the principle of Mr. Hay of Whiterig, would provoke the determined opposition of Mr. Makgill Crichton of Rankeillour. The organ that took part with the Evangelical and Sabbath Alliances in the spirit of Dr. Candlish of St. George's, would have to defend its position ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... milder way than the captain and crew of a pirate ship; and if a like measure of justice had been constantly served out to both, it is but natural to suppose that slavers would now have been as scarce as pirates are, if not a good deal scarcer. How the wiseacres who legislate for the world can make a distinction between the two sorts of ruffians is beyond my logic to understand, and why a slaver should not be hanged as soon as caught is equally a ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... reproach in his power against it. But this was the description of all others which recommended it to the Irish race—for it was, in truth, the only policy which could compel British statesmen to give ear to the wretched story of Ireland's grievances and to legislate in regard to them. It is sad to have to write it of Butt, as of so many other Irish leaders, that he died of a broken heart. Those who would labour for "Dark Rosaleen" have a rough and thorny road to travel, and they are happy if the end of their journey is not to be found in despair, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... been moss-trooping in their ancient way, were also reduced, and new fortresses and garrisons bridled the fighting clans of the west. With Cromwell as protector in 1654, Free Trade with England was offered to the Scots with reduced taxation: an attempt to legislate for the Union failed. In 1655-1656 a Council of State and a Commission of Justice included two or three Scottish members, and burghs were allowed to elect magistrates who would swear loyalty to Cromwell. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... the grave and mighty Senate Full of statesmen wise and great, With profound deliberations Ere they choose to legislate: But with all their stores of wisdom They are slow at doing things, For they only do the voting While the Third House pulls ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... Presbyterian Church on the whole subject of slavery was sounded at its General Assembly in Cincinnati in 1845, when a resolution was adopted, as submitted by Nathan L. Rice, of Kentucky, stating that it was not competent for the church to legislate where Christ and his apostles had not legislated. This, at least for the time being, proved acceptable to the churches south of the Ohio and avoided a breach in the Presbyterians such as had just taken place among the Methodists ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... these when you come back to authority that you had about yourselves when in exile. For under these conditions you will bring about the greatest harmony, and the state will be increased, and you will legislate to the greatest ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias

... or third generation, every dollar to which they can establish a just claim,—I trust we shall not, in the strong current of our sympathies, forget what becomes us as the descendants of such men. They would teach us to legislate upon our judgment, upon our sober sense of right, and not upon our impulses or our sympathies. No, sir; we may act in this way, if we choose, when dispensing our own means, but we are not at liberty to do it when dispensing the means ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... justice, to exercise the same powers to suppress the slave-trade between the states of this Union. The slave-trade within the states is, undoubtedly, beyond the control of Congress; as the 'sovereignty of each state, to legislate exclusively on the subject of slavery, which is tolerated within its limits,' is, I believe, universally conceded. The Constitution unquestionably recognises the sovereign power of each state to legislate on the subject within its limits; but it ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Filipinas, besides those who are not Catholics (one and one-half millions, counting idolaters and Moros yet to be civilized), not to permit or encourage freedom of worship, the government which rules the destiny of these islands ought to legislate along those lines, since the laws ought to be adjusted to the needs of the majority of their inhabitants. The Americans themselves who shall take up their residence here ought to accommodate themselves to that law. No temporal or spiritual harm would result to them, for they could privately profess ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... political schemers, leaders of men, have always slipped into the error of assuming that they can think out the whole—or at any rate completely think out definite parts—of the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution, training, pruning, secretive education; and all the stupidities of self-sufficient ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... wars and congresses and the general rasping they get for it all by a hard squeeze in the press at the end of every week, to keep them from forgetting their own discomforts or their neighbours' ills, for Parliament being dispersed in vacation, there is the fourth estate to legislate ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... droll that though the middle class entirely govern the melancholy Albion, it is the only country in Europe in which the middle class seem to have no amusements; nay, they legislate against amusement. They have no leisure-day but Sunday; and on that day they close all their theatres, even their museums and picture-galleries. What amusements there may be in England are for the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the currency revision and the tariff reform. It is recorded that the President was somewhat taken aback when Miss Paul addressed him during the course of the interview with this query, "But Mr. President, do you not understand that the Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any other reform without first getting the consent ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... a lover of the noble art of self-defence, and to my way of thinking few greater blunders have been made by those who legislate for our well-being than was fallen into by the moral people who abolished the Prize-Ring. It should be admitted at once that the Ring was full of abuses at the time at which an end was made of it; but it was not beyond mending, and a marked ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... To legislate men into mechanical relations with one another may keep the peace temporarily, but it is not a final solution of the intricate problem of living together in our huddled civilization. The day has gone by when we could ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... Christchurch is built, are thickly fringed with weeping willows, interspersed with a few other trees, and with clumps of tohi, which is exactly like the Pampas grass you know so well in English shrubberies. I don't think I have ever told you that it has been found necessary here to legislate against water-cress. It was introduced a few years since, and has spread so rapidly as to become a perfect nuisance, choking every ditch in the neighbourhood of Christchurch, blocking up mill-streams, causing meadows to be flooded, and ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... Ireland to be regulated by special Acts. The power of the Privy Council over legislation was abolished. The appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords was restored, and, above all, the sole competence of the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to legislate for Ireland was recognised. The Irish Parliament nearly at the same time made great steps towards uniting the people by relieving the Presbyterians from the Test Act and from the restrictions on their ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... he still legislate in favor of this mysterious suitor whose identity you have never ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... interfered with, but since the accession of Freemasons and Freethinkers to power, ecclesiastical property has suffered violence from the hands of the State, and the nomination and appointment of priests and bishops to place has been arrogantly wrested from those appointed by God to legislate in spirituals, and assumed by a class of irreligious despots. Though the State pays the clergy, still it owns the church property, and entirely cripples the power of the bishop, who cannot remove a bad and refractory priest, if it suits not the pleasure of the civil authorities. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... said, "Mr. Balfour, I have never known of a body of men capable of legislating for the generation ahead, and in some cases those who attempt to legislate even for their own generation are not thought to ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... vote who does not own property, or who can not do considerably more than read and write. The voter makes the laws, and why should the laws regulating the holding of property be made by a man who has no interest in property beyond a covetous desire; or why should he legislate on education when he possesses none! Then again, women do not bear ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... usage, the legislator was bound to institute uniformity and to make things symmetrical; having placed universal suffrage in political society, he was likewise determined to place it in local society. He had been ordered to apply an abstract principle, that is to say, to legislate according to a summary, superficial, and verbal notion which, purposely curtailed and simplified to excess, did not correspond with its aim. He obeyed and did nothing more; he made no effort outside of his instructions. He did not propose ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... to be reactionary in any despotic way. Given that his monarchy and the spirit that informs it are secure, that Caesar gets all that is due to Caesar, and that he and his Government are left the direction of foreign policy, he is quite willing that the people should legislate for themselves, enjoy all the rights that belong to them under the Rechtsstaat established by Frederick the Great, and, in short, enjoy life as ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... baronage in the organization of the Church. Its old dependence on the royal power was strictly enforced. Prelates were practically chosen by the King. Homage was exacted from bishop as from baron. No royal tenant could be excommunicated save by the King's leave. No synod could legislate without his previous assent and subsequent confirmation of its decrees. No papal letters could be received within the realm save by his permission. The King firmly repudiated the claims which were beginning to be put forward ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... of people in the Southern states do not consider slavery as an evil. Let the gentleman go and travel in that quarter of the Union; let him go from neighborhood to neighborhood, and he will find that this is the fact. Some gentlemen appear to legislate for the sake of appearances.... I should like to know what honor you will derive from a law that will be broken every day of your lives."[29] Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf of his state of Rhode ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... did a half century ago! They are in the North virtually slaves, without masters. The half starved, ill-clad free negro will soon have no foot hold in the North; for Irish and German laborers will supersede them; or otherwise Northern men will legislate them out of the free states. Pennsylvania has already taken from them the privilege of voting, and Indiana and Illinois will not suffer them to enter their borders; and I judge from present indications, that Ohio will soon ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... perfect knight of the Church was the Templar, the soldier living under the rule of a religious order and devoting his whole energies to the cause of the Holy Sepulchre. It was a remarkable innovation when St. Bernard, the mirror of orthodox conservatism, undertook to legislate for the Order of the Temple; for the primitive Church had hardly tolerated wars in self- defence. From one point of view it was a wholesome change of attitude in the moral leaders of society, that they should ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... man look into Lord Devon's blue-book, and he will find ample evidence in support of our assertion; unhappily, the dicta of those least worthy of credit are generally adopted, because they pander to the popular feeling; and the country is called upon to decide a disputed point, and Parliament to legislate, on evidence[4] to which no private individual would pay the slightest attention, merely because it has been adopted and sanctioned by the report ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various



Words linked to "Legislate" :   legislative, pass, legislator



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