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Malefactor   Listen
noun
Malefactor  n.  
1.
An evil doer; one who commits a crime; one subject to public prosecution and punishment; a criminal.
2.
One who does wrong by injuring another, although not a criminal. Opposite of benefactor. "Malefactors of great wealth."
Synonyms: Evil doer; criminal; culprit; felon; convict.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Malefactor" Quotes from Famous Books



... looked as if he was gouty, and seemed as if he could not stir without great difficulty, and never without the assistance of a companion, who never moved an inch from him. At last Lord Longford discovered that this gentleman's gouty overalls covered fetters; that he was a malefactor in irons, and his companion a Bow Street officer, who treated his prisoner with the greatest politeness. "Give me leave, sir—excuse me—one on your arm and one on mine, and then we are sure ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... of a milk-walk in the most fashionable part of Battersea; to all practical purposes a public man. Was he to recognize, in broad daylight and in open street, a girl who walked with a policeman because she had to, a malefactor, a girl ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... I confess I was the malefactor and deserve Th'extremity of Lawe; but woonder much Howe hee in such a short tyme after death Should purchase horse ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... it is due to his person, as he is sacred; and to the successors, as being next related to him: there are opportunities enow for men to hiss, who are so disposed, in their absence; for when the king is in sight, though but by accident, a malefactor is reprieved from death. Yet such is the duty, and good manners of these good subjects, that they forbore not some rudeness in his majesty's presence; but when his Royal Highness and his court were only there, they pushed it as far as their malice had power; and if ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... me to tip the wink to the police to look the other way while you smuggle this young malefactor out of the clutches of ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome

... shows that, even in the world, some trace of the true conception lingers. It was sadly true, at that time, that power was used for selfish ends, and generally meant oppression. One Egyptian king, who bore the title Benefactor, was popularly known as Malefactor, and many another old-world monarch deserved a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the Lord thinketh good to delay the answer to our desires, and the execution of justice on the malefactor and traitor, or to deliver us from his tyranny and trouble, we would beware of thinking to capitulate with the enemy for our peace and quiet, or to enter into a cessation of arms with him; that is, our enmity against him should never abate; nor should our desire ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... had been condemned by unjust judges. In almost every generation have been those who, while seeking to elevate the people of their time, have been reproached and cast out, but who in later times have been shown to be deserving of honor. Christ Himself was condemned as a malefactor at an ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... s] to a word in a place which it has no right to fill, the harmony of the heavenly choir has been marred effectually, and a sentence produced which defies translation[98]. By omitting [Greek: to] and [Greek: Kyrie], the repenting malefactor is made to say, 'Jesus! remember me, when Thou comest ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... time to come? Did we not then witness that Christ is not perished? that he has been ever, and still is, mighty to save? That command given to twelve persons, in an obscure chamber in Jerusalem, by one who, the next day, was to die as a malefactor, has been, and is obeyed from one end of the world to another; and wherever it has been obeyed, there, in proportion to the sincerity of the obedience, has been the ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... marshal takes the hobbles off this Caribou Sam—he's been held a captif off some'ers an' is packed into Lido onder gyard to be tried a lot—this yore malefactor comes bulgin' into the Sunflower an' declar's for fire-water. The barkeep deals to him, an' Caribou ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... too discreet for such an excess, and he looked to history for the demonstration of his law. He had come upon it in his theological studies. He renounced them soon after, saying that he could not wear a mask. When Guizot called Lamennais a malefactor, because he threw off his cassock and became a freethinker, Scherer, whose course had been some way parallel, observed: "He little knows how much it costs." The abrupt transition seems to have been accomplished by Turgot without a ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... "pledges" for all purposes of police. Strict rules were made to prevent the possible escape of criminals. The sheriffs were ordered to aid one another in carrying the hue and cry after them from one country to another; no "liberty" or "honour" might harbour a malefactor against the king's officers; sheriffs were to give to the justices in writing the names of all fugitives, so that they might be sought through all England; everywhere jails, in which doubtful strangers ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... your despatch box as we found upon the specimen-table, then what do they prove?—why, nothing. If the box had been in the room at the time of the tragedy, then it might have given us an important clue, because such an object would probably be touched by any malefactor or assassin. But——" ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux

... search," says the officer. He looks like a sub-inspector, and is evidently what a malefactor would consider a "bad man" to have anything to do with. Miss Hawkins knows that her right of sanctuary, if any, is a feeble claim, probably overruled by some police regulation; and invites the officers into the house, almost too ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... room to hope. I believe it is impossible to express, to the life, what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are, when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the grave: and I did not wonder now at the custom, viz. that when a malefactor, who has the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him; I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... his health, or so at least the newspapers said. Ben-Zayb rendered thanks to "the Omnipotent who watches over such a precious life," and manifested the hope that the Highest would some day reveal the malefactor, whose crime remained unpunished, thanks to the charity of the victim, who was too closely following the words of the Great Martyr: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. These and ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... of his prosperity had set. Creditors swooped down upon him, political enemies rose in troops, and the "Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clapped in jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the forty promising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out of human knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineers set him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... they should suddenly declare clean what they had always considered unclean; that they should transform their national spirit into a universal sympathy; yes, that they should recognise their Messiah in a crucified malefactor, indicate a complete revolution in their history; but the race itself was and continued to be, in the eyes of the world, if not beneath notice, at least an object of contempt. It should not, therefore, surprise ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... his hand, he pounced eagerly upon his victim, while his countenance was suffused with a grim and ghastly smile, which reminded us of Dante's devils. He immediately ascended the ladder, dragging his prey after him till they had nearly reached the top; he then placed the rope around the neck of the malefactor with many antic gestures and grimaces highly gratifying and amusing to the mob. To signify to the poor fellow under his fangs that he wished to whisper in his ear, to push him off the ladder, and to jump astride his neck with ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... 'but yet', it does allay The good precedence; fie upon 'but yet'! 'But yet' is as a gaoler to bring forth Some monstrous malefactor. Pr'ythee, friend, Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear, The good and bad together: he's friends with Caesar; In state of health, thou say'st; ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... different ways, while Janet tried to pull him round by the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone struck at Janet with a parasol, and several boys, who had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt, suddenly descrying among them the young malefactor who was the donkey's guardian, and who was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured him, dragged him, with his jacket ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... must give me his daughter." "Seize and bind him!" shouted the councillor. "Whoever says the king must do anything, offers an insult to his Majesty, and is worthy of death. May it please your Majesty to order this malefactor to be executed with the sword?" The king said: "Let him be executed." Vanek was immediately bound and led to execution. When they came to the place of execution Luck was there waiting for him, and said secretly to Intelligence: "See ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... chained, whereas an exception was made of those undergoing life sentences) were magnified by the partisans of Ferdinand II.; but the truth of the picture as a whole was amply confirmed from independent sources. Baron Carlo Poerio (condemned to nineteen years' imprisonment) was chained to a common malefactor, the chain never being undone, and producing in the end a disease of the bone from which he never recovered. His case was that of all the political prisoners in the same category with himself. Luigi Settembrini and ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... sharp. He then went to the Home Secretary, and by not seeking to understate the real difficulties of the case, induced that functionary to offer a reward of a thousand pounds for the arrest of the malefactor. Next he proceeded to a distant town, and took into custody a clergyman who resembled Feodora in respect of wearing shoes. After these formal preliminaries he took up the case with some zeal. He was not at all actuated by a desire to obtain the reward, but by pure love ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... whom he bound, stuck a knife in the master, rifled the apartments, and walked coolly out again at noon-day: nor should we have ever heard of such a trifle, but that it happened just by so; for here are no newspapers to tell who is murdered, and nobody's pity is excited, unless for the malefactor when they ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... I believe it is impossible to express, to the life, what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are, when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave: and I do not wonder now at that custom, when a malefactor, who has the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him—I say I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him bleed that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... discovery of a crime, were unhappily not deceived. The commissary was convinced of this as soon as he crossed the threshold. Everything in the first room pointed with a sad eloquence to the recent presence of a malefactor. The furniture was knocked about, and a chest of drawers and two large trunks had been forced and ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... some minutes before scarce any room to hope. I believe it is impossible to express to the life what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave; and I do not wonder now at that custom, viz., that when a malefactor who has the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him—I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... m. evil, injury, harm. malagueno of Malaga, a seaport of southern Spain. malaventurado unlucky. maldecido accursed. maldecir to curse. maldicion f. malediction, curse. maldito cursed. maleza bramble, brier. malhadado ill-fated. malhechor, -a malefactor. malo bad, wicked. malograr to fail, end unhappily. manantial m. source, spring. manar to distil, abound in. mancebo youth, clerk. mandar to command; send. manera manner. maniatar to manacle. manifestar to manifest, show, declare. mano ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... were ordered to obtain the necessary information, and the malefactor was reported after a few days to have destroyed another village, where it remained, devouring the rice and grain in the absence ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... same, was not put to death with them; but after the death of the other generals, he died under a punishment inflicted by the king, not like Clearchus and the other commanders, who were beheaded (which appears to be the speediest kind of death); but after living a year in torture, like a malefactor, he is said at length ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... bright. But I come to you this day with a message of hope from God our Father. He hath not appointed you to wrath. He loves all his children. He sent his Son to die for them. Jesus trod the paths of pain, and drained the cup of sorrow. He died as a malefactor, for malefactors. He died for me. He died for each one of you. If I knew the most broken, the most desolate-hearted, despairing man before me, who feels that he is scorned of men and forsaken of God, I would go to ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... order was published acknowledging that he was found guiltless, no communication was ever made to him by National authority giving even a hint of the grounds on which for half a year he was pilloried before the nation as a malefactor. The wound which General Stone received was deep. From some motive, the source of which will probably remain a mystery, his persecution continued in many petty and offensive ways, until he was finally driven, towards the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... news, 't is said, flies fast, And good news creeps; then his must needs be good That lets the tortoise pass him on the road. Ride, Dawkins, ride! by flashing tarn and fen And haunted hollow! Look not where in chains On Hounslow heath the malefactor hangs, A lasting terror! Give thy roan jade spur, And spare her not! All Devon waits for thee, Thou, for the moment, most important man! A sevennight later, when the rider sent To Town drew rein before The Falcon inn Under the creaking ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... lore, Was Isabel relating to the knight; How in the pinnace she was saved, before The broken vessel sank at sea outright; Odoric's assault; and next, how bandits bore Her to the cavern, in a mountain dight. Nor Isabella yet her tale has told, When bound the malefactor they behold. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... case of murder—it is the only punishment bestowed on serious offences. Imprisonment of some kind, either at home or in the colonies, is the penal safeguard of society; and we must be cautious that we do not so far diminish its terrors, that it should cease to hold out any threat to a needy malefactor. But before we allude to the discipline of the prison, we must take a glance at this great exception of death, which it is the object of many of our zealous reformers entirely to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... the noise of wind, very pleasant, and produced a great calm in his soul. His intervals of ease, however, were short; the recollection of his sins, and a fear that he had sold his Saviour, haunted his affrighted spirit. His soul became so tormented, as to suggest to his ideas the suffering of a malefactor broken upon the wheel. The climax of these terrors is narrated at paragraph No. 187. 'Thus was I always sinking, whatever I did think or do. So one day I walked to a neighbouring town, and sat down upon a settle in the street, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... used such, argument to the contrary as prevailed with his companion, and they set out for the New House, Hector between them with his hands tied. Annoyed and angry at being thus treated like a malefactor, he yet found amusement in the notion of their mistake. But he found it awkward to be unable to use that readiest weapon of human defence, the tongue. If only his EARS AND MOUTH, as he called Rob in their own speech, had been with him! ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... Melissa, is it possible my father can be so cruel! Is he so unfeeling as to banish me from his house, and confine me within the walls of a prison, like a common malefactor?" She flung herself on the bed in a state little inferior to distraction. Her aunt told her it was all owing to her own obstinacy, and because she refused to be made happy—and went ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... courage were to become not only unquestionable but proverbial. It may be safely asserted, however, that the story was an invention to be classed with those fictions which made him the murderer of his first wife, a common conspirator against Philip's crown and person, and a crafty malefactor in general, without a single virtue. It must be remembered that even the terrible Alva, who lived in harness almost from the cradle to the grave, was, so late as at this period, censured for timidity, and had been accused in youth of flat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... others put together. For the original claimants to the soil being all dead and buried, and no one remaining to inherit or dispute the soil, the Spaniards, as the next immediate occupants, entered upon the possession as clearly as the hangman succeeds to the clothes of the malefactor—and as they have Blackstone[21] and all the learned expounders of the law on their side, they may set all actions of ejectment at defiance—and this last right may be entitled the right by extermination, or in other ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... suspicious and mysterious appearances, we are told that many letters, &c. are found, which inculpate the King; and perhaps the fate of this unfortunate Monarch is to be decided by evidence not admissible with justice in the case of the obscurest malefactor. Yet Rolland is the hero of a party who call him, par excellence, the virtuous Rolland! Perhaps you will think, with me, that this epithet is misapplied to a man who has risen, from an obscure situation to that of first Minister, without being possessed of talents of that brilliant ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... Earle, even the worst malefactor is not expected to incriminate himself. I can refuse to answer, ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, of a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband. I wish I could apply it to myself, if the reader would be kind enough to think it belongs to me. The character of Zimri in my 'Absalom' is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem. It is not bloody, but it ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... established an ordinance, by which every malefactor taken and brought before the judge, should distinctly declare three truths, against which no exception could be taken, or else be hanged. If, however, he did this, his life and property should be safe. It chanced that a certain soldier transgressed the law and ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... ungrateful man," said the princess, with a charming smile—"he was occupying all my thoughts, and yet he dares complain! You are a malefactor deserving punishment. Come here to me, Alexis; kneel, kiss my hand, and beg for ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... have had, even in the deep pastures of Leicestershire; and how many Sundays we have heard the same prayers for rain, and supplications that it would please the Lord in His mercy to turn aside His anger from the poor, pining cattle. You, my dear husband, have imprisoned more than one malefactor for leaving his dead ox in the public way; and other hinds have fled before you out of the traces, in which they, and their sons and their daughters, and haply their old fathers and mothers, were dragging the abandoned wain ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... embarrassment, as it obliged them to bring a hangman from a distance at a considerable expense, besides the customary fee of two crowns. A young tradesman, belonging to the city council, giving his sentiments, said, "I think, gentlemen, we had best give the malefactor the two crowns, and let him go and ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... notion regarding his Roumanian correspondent. He is good-looking, although his face denotes great energy of character, and he must be energetic to have shut himself up in a box like this for such a long journey. But if he has nothing of the malefactor about him, I must confess that he does not look like the hero I am in search of as the chief personage in ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... the religion from whose bosom it sprang all the scorn and hatred which were attached by the world to its own special tenets, for however much the Greeks and Romans despised the Jews, they despised still more the belief that the Lord and Saviour of the world was a crucified malefactor who had risen ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... man entered they looked furtively at the bull whip which trailed from his right hand, and then glanced fearfully at one another as though questioning which was the malefactor on this occasion. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... harmony in Hell, Down through the appalling clamors of the place, Charming them all to willing concord, fell A Voice ineffable and full of grace: "Because of all the law-defying race One single malefactor of the cell Thou didst not free from his incarceration, Take thou ten ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... tell their power of reprisals? Nor prison-cells nor gates of adamant can keep them in; they will forthwith escape and report such violence to the Fairy who, wroth with extreme wrath to find her husband doomed to durance vile like a common malefactor, and that too for no default or crime but by a treacherous arrest, will assuredly deal the direst of vengeance on thy head and do us a damage we shall not be able to forfend. An thou wilt confide in me, I will advise thee ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the presence of danger, defend themselves or their families against a monarch as against any malefactor, if the monarch assaults them like a bandit or a ravisher, and provided they are unable to summon the usual protection and cannot in any way ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... informed of modern skeptics. That the world has been influenced by His teaching infinitely beyond what it has been by that of any other man, is not denied. That the world regards His teaching to-day, after eighteen hundred years from the day of His death as a malefactor and His rest in a borrowed grave, as it has never regarded the teaching of another man, is also an admitted fact. How shall we account for such teaching—teaching of such accumulating power over ages and generations ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... now only half-past one; let us step out, we shall be there in time to touch my three hundred and seventy-five livres, and get away before the arrival of the malefactor." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... thought that John xii. 3 is based upon Luke vii. 38. The anointing of our Lord's feet in both is certainly remarkable. Sometimes John agrees with Matt. and Mark and not Luke, as in recording the binding of Jesus, the crown of thorns, the purple robe, and the custom of releasing a malefactor at the feast. Such coincidences between John and the Synoptic Gospels are so slight and disconnected that it seems doubtful whether the former uses any material drawn from the latter. Nevertheless, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... can express the ecstasies and transports that my soul felt at the happy deliverance. It was like a reprieve to a dying malefactor, with a halter about his neck, and ready to be turned off. I was wrapt up in contemplation and often lifted up my hands, with the profoundest humility, to the Divine Powers, for saving, my life, when the rest of my companions were all drowned. And now I began to cast my eyes around, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... head incredulously. "Why, friend, you do not pretend to believe that I am really a malefactor?" said Bertram. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... masters, the judicial and legislative powers. It was the duty of the governors to maintain the peace of their province by the arbitrary and rigid administration of justice; the freedom of the city evaporated in the extent of empire, and the Spanish malefactor, who claimed the privilege of a Roman, was elevated by the command of Galba on a fairer and more lofty cross. Occasional rescripts issued from the throne to decide the questions which, by their novelty or importance, appeared to surpass the authority ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... and if there were, it would be useless: we are as God made us.—No, I will not say that: I will say rather, I am as God is making me, and I shall one day be as He has made me. Meantime I know that He will have me love my enemy tenfold more than now I love my friend. Thou believest that the malefactor—ah, there was faith now! Of two men dying together in agony and shame, the one beseeches of the other the grace of a king! Thou believest, I say—at least thou professest to believe that the malefactor was that very day with Jesus in Paradise, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... was a characteristic one, "If He were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered Him up unto thee." This was as broad a hint as they could give that they desired the governor to waive his right to re-try the case, accepting their trial of it as sufficient, and content himself with the other half of his prerogative—the passing and the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... readmission into heavenly favor and forgiveness: that it was in vain to complain of the rigors of persecution exercised in other kingdoms; when a queen and an innocent woman was excluded from an indulgence which never yet, in the most barbarous countries, had been denied to the meanest and most obnoxious malefactor: that could she ever be induced to descend from that royal dignity in which Providence had placed her, or depart from her appeal to Heaven, there was only one other tribunal to which she would appeal from all her enemies; to the justice and humanity of Elizabeth's own breast, and to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... came to Crusoe) have a peculiar significance if read in this connection. I also think it possible there may be a particular meaning in the several waves, so carefully described, through which Crusoe made his way to dry land; and in the simile of the reprieved malefactor (p. 50 in Mr. Aitken's delightful edition); and in the several visits ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... again that the Force should have more men to cope with the demands of the immigration movement. "It is only natural," he says, "to expect that a percentage of criminals should accompany a large migration into a new country. A malefactor who finds it necessary to lose his identity for a while cannot choose a more convenient location than a country just filling with new settlers and where one stranger more or less is not likely to be noticed." This is sound reasoning, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... the least, ma'am,' I replied. 'The simplest thing in life. We are in a civilised country; the man's a malefactor—' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... give us curious glimpses of the manners of the time. The Grub-Street Journal has an article upon 'an operation designed to be performed upon one Ray, a condemned malefactor, by Mr. Cheselden, so as to discover whether or no not only the drum but even the whole organ be of any use at all in hearing.' The writer must have been an ardent vivisector, for he concludes by a suggestion that 'all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... curiosity as to your possible fate. I hope this is not because you under-estimate the risks. If the authorities saw you 'letting fly' as you term it, promiscuously, or even at a given object, they would treat you as no better than a malefactor." ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie

... together. No sooner did it fall than the whole gang sprang upon it, and he fired with precision in their midst. Joe did not look to see what execution was done. He was dangling in the air and whirling round and round at a rapid rate, like a malefactor suspended from the gallows, with the exception that his neck did not suffer, and he cried out most lustily for assistance. When the cloud of smoke that enveloped him cleared away a little, and he became better acquainted with his critical situation, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... He would erect. By means which seem to destroy His Church, He establishes it. How strangely does He found the new dispensation and give it His sanction! The legislator Himself is condemned by the learned and great, as a malefactor, and dies an ignominious death. Oh, that we fully understood how very opposite our self-righteousness is to the designs of God—it would be a subject for endless humiliation, and we should have an utter distrust in that which at present constitutes ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... saw a town and a public square, and I saw a scaffold. And when I listened I heard a seething sound of voices, and when I looked I saw many people who talked and gritted their teeth with joy. And I saw a man who was being bound, a malefactor who was being bound with leather thongs, and the malefactor's countenance was haughty and proud, and his eyes shone like stars. But his garment was torn and his feet stood naked on the ground, and his clothes were almost ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun

... also to be desolate survivors—to mourn a Brother dearer still! He who had been to them Friend—Father—Brother, all in one, was to be, like Lazarus, laid silent in a Jerusalem sepulchre. The Lord of Life was to be the victim of Death! His body was to be transfixed to a malefactor's cross, and consigned to a lonely grave! He knew the shock that awaited their faith. He knew, as this terrible hour drew on, how needful some overpowering visible demonstration would be of His mastery over ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... no common malefactor or whatever it may be. Who and what do you suppose he is? I confess that I'm interested in the fellow and he looks as though one might like him without half trying. Why haven't you dug up his past history, Beverly? You are so keen ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... warn you, Godfrey Bullen, that escapades of this kind, which may be harmless in England, are very serious matters here. Ignorantly, I admit, but none the less certainly, you have aided in the escape of a malefactor of the worst kind; and but for the proofs that have been afforded us that you were a mere dupe, the consequences would have been most serious to you, and even the fact of your being a foreigner would not have sufficed to save you from the hands of justice. You are now free to depart; ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... he rising to his feet, "I came hither when I would fain have stayed in my own cabin aboard, and I came not to chop logic nor to be put to the question like a malefactor, but to bring help to my sick neighbors, who, to be sure, cried out for it lustily enough before they got it, but now pick and question at my good meat and drink as if 't were like to poison them. Well, that's an end ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... to possess her; but Aristotle, observing his weakness, said: 'Do not touch her, for if you do, you will certainly perish. She has been nurtured upon the most deleterious food, which I will prove to you immediately. Here is a malefactor who is already condemned to death. He shall be united to her, and you shall soon see the truth ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... sanktigi. Make known sciigi. Make longer plilongigi. Make an obeisance riverenci. Make public publikigi. Make stronger plifortigi. Make younger plijunigi. Malachite malakito. Malady malsano. Malcontent malkontentulo. Male viro. Malediction malbeno. Malefactor krimulo. Malevolence malbonvolo. Malicious malica. Malign kalumnii. Malignant malicema. Malleable etendebla. Mallet martelego. Mallow malvo. Malt bierhordeo, hordeo trempita. Maltreat bati. Mama patrineto. Mammal ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... moment and a scene more suited to paying the last offices to one of calm and pure spirit could not have been chosen. There are a mystery and a solemn dignity in death, that dispose the living to regard the remains of even a malefactor with a certain degree of reverence. All worldly distinctions have ceased; it is thought that the veil has been removed, and that the character and destiny of the departed are now as much beyond ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... school and university, engaged in a career of infamy. What was his life's story I wondered as I looked at him, noting how refined his features were, what well-shaped hands he had. Why had he sunk so low? Above all, who was he? for certainly he was no ordinary malefactor. ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... principles of interpretation adopted by another scholar, our personal characters will be attacked, we shall be impeached with foul actions; you must prepare yourself to be told that your mother was a fish-woman, and that your father was a renegade priest or a hanged malefactor. I myself, for having shown error in a single preposition, had an invective written against me wherein I was taxed with treachery, fraud, indecency, and even hideous crimes. Such, my young friend—such are the flowers ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... his long and bitter persecution to be attributed? Why had he been deprived of his liberty; thrust into a dark and unwholesome dungeon; refused the benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act; denied his enlargement upon bail or main-prize; branded as a malefactor of the most dangerous kind; badgered and tortured to the ruin of his health and his reason? Merely this: he had imbibed, in advance, the spirit of Mr. Arthur Clennam, and had "wanted to know."[2] He had displayed a persistent determination to let in the light of day upon the iniquities and ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... precinct, which was assessed in a ratio ten times as great—a vivid illustration of the manner in which the rich were favored at the expense of the poor. Marshall felt himself put forward as a criminal—a malefactor; he was assured, furthermore, that a man who offered a bribe was worse than the man who ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... Willie gave them a good run for their money. For nearly four miles they chased him, but ran him down at length. After some hard giving and taking, he had to acknowledge his defeat, and, pinioned like a common malefactor—arms tied behind him, legs bound under his horse's belly—they rode ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... my breath and my senses, without knowing what streets I had been through, nor where I had come from, and I stole furtively into my hotel, as if I had been a malefactor. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... in a land where men should call themselves Christians, when evil-doers and robbers and thieves walk in peace to purge themselves. What should a wicked man find better to do than to preserve his life so long as he may? Here is now a malefactor convicted of guilt, one who has burnt innocent men in their houses, and yet is allowed to undergo purgation. Such ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... whole generations for the sake of one.] Nor is his wrath appeased by the Execution of the Malefactor, but oftentimes he punisheth all his Generation; it may be kills them alltogether, or gives them all ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... The functions of Commanding General were added to the duties of the Secretary of War. Stanton, now utterly merciless toward McClellan, instantly took possession of his office and seized his papers, for all the world as if he were pouncing upon the effects of a malefactor. That McClellan was not yet wholly spoiled was shown by the way he received this blow. It was the McClellan of the old days, the gallant gentleman of the year 1860, not the poseur of 1861, who wrote at once to Lincoln making no complaint, saying that his services ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... forgery, sheep-stealing, arson and a long list of other offences down to pocket-picking: earlier still the list included witchcraft and heresy. At present hanging is the only mode of putting a malefactor to death; but formerly the ways of putting to death included also burning, boiling, pressing, beheading, and mixed modes. Before the Restoration, however, the offences punishable with death were far fewer than they afterwards became; and until ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... Magistrates; but soon these persons became too numerous, and the Magistrates too busy to hear their excuses. An example was made of one or another, to show that the laws must be kept; but Newgate itself becoming infected by the disease, it was not thought fit to send any malefactor there except ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... possibly suit his purpose. He thought his position one uncommonly difficult. As Maitland, he had on his hands a female thief, a hardened character, a common malefactor (strange that he got so little relish of the terms!), caught red-handed; as Maitland, his duty was to hand her over to the law, to be dealt with as—what she was. Yet, even while these considerations were ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... die young, Doctor," he said. "On that principle this young malefactor will live to be the oldest man in ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... such a connection as this, is denial. The impenitent thief upon the cross was clamorous for life and happiness, saying, "If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us." He said nothing concerning the crime that had brought him to a malefactor's death, and thereby showed that it did not weigh heavy upon his conscience. But the real penitent rebuked him, saying: "Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds." And then followed that meek and broken-hearted ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... relays of willing natives, no less than forty accompanying him on the road. Yusuph Effendi tells me the story of the whole lamentable affair, pausing at intervals to heap imprecations on the head of the malefactor, and to bestow eulogies on ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... statue of the presiding deity, was generally of a circular form, and constructed of stone. It was customary to engrave upon it the name or distinguishing symbol of the divinity to whom it was dedicated; and it was held so sacred that if any malefactor fled to it his life was safe from his pursuers, and it was considered one of the greatest acts of sacrilege to force ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... he said, "and I shall see that you are punished. You have broken one of the laws of your country. You have aided a malefactor!" ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... knew but superficially and—who knows?—more, it may be, by Tetard's anecdotes than through personal knowledge) is the least satisfactory part of his performance. One feels it to be the most "literary" portion of a book whose beauty is naivete. But whether we accept or reject the story of the negro malefactor hung in a cage from a tree, and pecked at by crows, it is certain that the traveller justly regarded slavery as the one conspicuous blot on the new country's shield. Crevecoeur was not an active abolitionist, like that other naturalised Frenchman, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... that at one time threatened to obtain for him the title of "The Just", "there is one detail which must not be ignored—especially as our ruling will doubtless become a lantern to the feet of later ones. You appear, malefactor, to have committed crimes—and of all these you have been proved guilty by the ingenious arrangement invoked by the learned recorder of my spoken word—which render you liable to hanging, slicing, pressing, boiling, roasting, grilling, ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... Forgiving spirit on the part of the malefactor Great error of despising their enemy Mistake to stumble a second time over the same stone Modern statesmanship, even while it practises, condemns Preferred an open enemy to a treacherous protector Reformer who becomes in his turn a ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... Jim, at the door of his office, next morning. "As prospective joint-proprietor and co-malefactor, I bid ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... Certain phases of irony always caused him to chuckle audibly. Every one of those four stories would be accepted. He knew it absolutely, as if he had the check in his hand. Why? Because Howard Spurlock the author dared not risk the liberty of Howard Spurlock the malefactor; because there were still some dregs in this cup of irony. For what could be more ironical than for Howard Spurlock to see himself grow famous under the name of Taber? The ambrosia of which he had so happily dreamt!—and this ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... Redeemer was unfortunate; but those only who repaid Him for the inestimable gift He offered them, and for a life passed in toiling for their good, by nailing Him upon the cross, as though He had been a slave or malefactor. The persecutor dies and rots, and Posterity utters his name with execration, but his victim's memory he has ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... eucalyptus trees on our left, their rugged trunks like an army of tattered, unkempt giants. From the brink of the old stone quarry, we gaze down into its prisonlike depths, the perpendicular walls looking as if they had been carved out of solid rock to hold some primeval malefactor; then we descend the hill on the other side ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... but his patent cast-iron neck set suspensory science at defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give up the ghost. At first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and yelled murder with all his might; but after a little practice the malefactor acted more philosophically, regarding the performance quite as part of his nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late for breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after execution, the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with a swollen ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... exhibiting every form of human weakness and infernal wickedness, of ingratitude, desertion, injury, and insult, of bodily and mental pain and anguish, culminating in the most ignominious death then known among the Jews and Gentiles, the death of a malefactor and a slave. The government and the people combined against him who came to save them. His own disciples forsook him; Peter denied him; Judas, under the inspiration of the devil, betrayed him. The rulers of the nation condemned him, rude soldiers mocked him, the furious ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... felt a youthful malefactor's desire to get his task done as swiftly as possible. He was impatient to feel the deed behind him. He ran through the deserted village, crossed a little bridge over the river, and then approached the Mill by a meadow ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... between the German people and their Prussian or Prussianized rulers and leaders for the monstrous crime of this war and the atrocious barbarism of its conduct is the difference between the man who, acting under the influence of a poisonous drug, runs amuck in mad frenzy and the unspeakable malefactor who administered that drug, well knowing and fully intending the ghastly consequences ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... agony, according to the original meaning of that word; for the conflict was great between two master principles of his nature: on the one hand, he clung with the weakness of a girl to life, even in that miserable shape to which it had now sunk; and like the poor malefactor, with whose last struggles Prior has so atrociously amused himself, "he often took leave, but was loath to depart." Yet, on the other hand, to resign his life very speedily, seemed his only chance for escaping the contumelies, perhaps the tortures, of his enemies; and, above all other considerations, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... him. Those words have an ominous ring in the ears of evil-doers. He could show a bold front to his fellowmen, but he squirmed under the dread conception of a supernatural vengeance. So, like every other malefactor, David railed against his "luck." Little did he guess the extraordinary turn that his "luck" ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... whose kindly sympathy had cheered his heart in many of the severest of earth's trials. They had passed through peril and poverty together, and now the cup of tribulation seemed full to the brim. They were doomed to death,—not to the death of the malefactor, but as victims of private interest. No friendly jailer had been near, to bring them even a cup of cold water to assuage their consuming thirst. Not a morsel of food had they tasted since their incarceration! The terrible doom to which they were consigned ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... Secret Service men—their motto, like that of our present day Boy Scouts, is "Be Prepared"; for day and night they must hold themselves in readiness to start to the other side of the world if necessary—China, Japan, India, the Philippines perhaps—detailed to fetch back some notorious malefactor wanted by Uncle Sam, and information of whose presence in distant ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... a Malefactor to the penitentiary was proceeding to point out to him the disadvantages of crime and ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... That traitor of a master, being in fact my enemy, replied: "Would God, most blessed Father, that it may turn out as you say; for we have some proofs against him." Upon this the Pope turned to the Governor of Rome, and bade him see he found the malefactor. During those days the Pope sent for me, and leading cautiously in conversation to the topic of the coins, asked me at the fitting moment: "Benvenuto, should you have the heart to coin false money?" To this I replied that I thought I could do so better than all the rascals who gave ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... wild rage, fell on my poor servant, threw him down, trampled on him and would have killed him, had not the all-powerful high-priest-designing to involve me, as author of the crime, in the same ruin—commanded them to cease and take the wretched malefactor to prison. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... encountered a less bitter and stubborn resistance; capital was apparently weakening just at the time when, with its strong organizations of trained and willing strike-breakers, it was most secure. Not so; an ingenious malefactor, whose name has perished from history, had thought out a plan for bringing the belligerent forces together to plunder the rest of the population. In the accounts that have come down to us details are wanting, but we know that, little by little, this amazing project was accomplished. Wages ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce



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