"Chattel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am agreeable to become a good and chattel for this occasion only, as the playbills say, and hold myself up to ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... not of much service to the city on that day,—neither on that day nor on the two following days. He was using all his mental faculties in endeavouring to decide what it might be best for him to do in the present emergency. The red house was a chattel of great value in Nuremberg,—a thing very desirable,—the possession of which Peter himself did desire with all his heart. But then, even in regard to the house, it was not to be arranged that Peter was to become the ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... was one of the greatest blots on ancient civilisation. It was twice cursed, cursing both parties, degrading each, turning the slave into a chattel, and the master, in many cases, into a brute. Christianity, as represented in the New Testament, never says a word to condemn it, but Christianity has killed it. 'Make the tree good and its fruit good.' Do not aim at institutions, change the people that live under them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... citizen is wealthy enough to lend money to the Federal Government, a State cannot tax his scrip to the amount of one cent. But, if the doctrine contended for by some is sound, then it may take the citizen himself, confiscate the whole of his property, blot out his citizenship, and make a chattel of him, and the Federal Government can afford him no protection! Among all the doctrines that Slavery has originated in this country, there is none ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Reverend Orme Leighton, a schism in the church would have meant nothing unless it came to the point of cracking heads; but a schism in governmental policy, which placed the right to govern one's self and own black chattel in the balance, found him taking sides from the first, thundering out from the pulpit, supported by text and verse, the divine right of personal dominion by purchase, and in superb contradiction voicing the constitutional right to self-government. When the day of words was past, ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... one of the slaves called out from within the entrance, "Who is it rappeth at our gate?" Hereupon said Masrur to him, "O son of my uncle, open to us the door and give us a gugglet of water for that our lord thirsteth." The chattel went in to his master, the young man, Manjab hight, who owned the mansion, and said, "O my lord, verily there be at our door three persons who have rapped for us and who ask for a drink of water." The master asked, "What manner of men may they be?" and the slave answered, "One of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... it be told the hundred men, and let them afterwards make it known to the tithing men and let them all go forth whither God may direct them to their end; let them all do justice on the thief as it was formerly Eadmund's law. And be the ceapgild (i.e., market value) paid to him that owns the chattel; and be the rest divided in two, half to the hundred, half to the lord except men; and let the lord take ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... we retraced our steps to Tavistock Street, "you are my thing, my chattel, my famulus. No slave of old belonged more completely to a free-born citizen. You will address ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... be done: Leslie's to-night and the Excise to-morrow. It shall be done. This settles it. They used to fetch and carry for me, and now ... I've licked their boots, have I? I'm their man, their tool, their chattel. It's the bottom rung of the ladder of shame. I sound with my foot, and there's nothing underneath but the black emptiness of damnation. Ah, Deacon, Deacon, and so this is where you've been travelling all these years; and it's for this that you learned French! The gallows ... God help me, it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to hold back), in law, an action whereby one who has an absolute or a special property in goods seeks to recover from another who is in actual possession and refuses to redeliver them. If the plaintiff succeeds in an action of detinue, the judgment is that he recover the chattel or, if it cannot be had, its value, which is assessed by the judge and jury, and also certain damages for detaining the same. An order for the restitution of the specific goods may be enforced by a special writ of execution, called a writ of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Abolitionists, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Macaulay, and others, had secured the abolition of the slave trade thirty years before (1807), but the united opposition of the colonial planters to a reform which would deprive them of the services of their chattel laborers postponed the consummation of the humanitarian measure. The reformed Parliament proved less sensitive to the planters' arguments. It destroyed the system forever, making a cash compensation ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... are, young—alas! scarce more than child!—accomplished, beautiful with the most touching beauty, innocent as an angel—all these qualities that should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell. You are a chattel; a marketable thing; and worth—heavens, that I should say such words!—worth money. Do you begin to see? If I were to give you freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the manumission would be certainly annulled; you would be still a slave, and I ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... a personal chattel, may be sold, or pledged, or leased, at the will of his master. He may be exchanged for marketable commodities, or taken in execution for the debts, or taxes, either of a living, or a deceased master. Sold at auction, "either individually, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... things visible and invisible, as one great and perfect community, whose King and Lawgiver is God. He is King, because He is Creator and Lord. But lordship and kingship are different things, even in God. It is one thing to be lord and master, owner and proprietor of a chattel, property and domain: it is another thing to be king and governor, lawgiver and judge of political subjects. The former is called power of dominion, or right of ownership, the latter is power of jurisdiction. Power of dominion is for the good of him who wields it: but ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... born in slavery, and I belonged to a Baptist preacher. Until I was fifteen years old I was taught that I was his own chattel-property, and he could do with me like he wanted to, but he had been taught that way too, and we both believed it. I never did hold nothing against him for being hard on Negroes sometimes, and I don't think I ever would of had any trouble even if I had of ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... that a couple of Heirs can spend Much Money and yet besides if they do not work at anything else. Especially when every Pearl in the Rope represents a Chattel Mortgage and a fancy Weskit is a stand-off for One Month's Rent of a good piece of ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... do you belong then?" "To myself." "And to whom do I belong? do I belong to you?" "No!" "Whose Henny am I?" "Your own!" These amusing answers bear the very impress of the animal's sense of independence: she is loth to be considered a "chattel," like some chair ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... loftiest exaltation; Aurelius proved that a Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest humility. The one—a foreigner, feeble, deformed, ignorant, born in squalor, bred in degradation, the despised chattel of a despicable freedman, surrounded by every depressing, ignoble, and pitiable circumstance of life—showed how one who seemed born to be a wretch could win noble happiness and immortal memory; the other—a Roman, a patrician, strong, of heavenly beauty, of noble ancestors, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... chattel!" he muttered under his breath, quoting his Uncle Bob, with whom, in theory at least, race feeling was strong. Yancy appeared at the door of the bar and called to him, and as the boy slid from the fence and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... a lunatic are realities, to him. Our dreams are realities while they last; and, in the Past, no more unreal than what we have acted in our waking hours. No man can say that he hath as sure possession of the truth as of a chattel. When men entertain opinions diametrically opposed to each other, and each is honest, who shall decide which hath the Truth; and how can either say with certainty that he hath it? We know not what is the truth. That we ourselves believe ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Sudan; composed of every tribe, it was a curious mixture, good, bad, and indifferent. Some were slaves who had been given, in free gift, by their owners to the Miri (Government), and men never part with a good "chattel," except for a sufficient cause. As will be seen, many of the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... with eyes not blind. As if a daughter had appeared to you. Pleading for mercy to the unfortunate. We are in your hands as in the hand of God, Helpless. O then accord the unhoped for boon! By what is dear to thee, thy veriest own, I pray thee,—chattel or child, or holier name! Search through the world, thou wilt not find the man Who could resist the leading of ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... matter of convenient arrangement. Two ancient names, two great fortunes cry aloud for union and they drown the voice of the heart. I am bestowed like a chattel." ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... rejoicing that his chattel had golden hair and was comely beyond comparison with all other women he had ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... has made himself master of you; no doubt of that. He does what he likes with you;—leads you by the nose. You follow him whither he chooses, and assume every shape at his command; you are his chattel, his toy. I know how it will be: you are going to let Ixion off, because you have had relations with his wife; she is the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... days, the employee was a serf, bound to the soil of his employer. He received a bare living and shared not at all in the gains of the man whose chattel he was. In the days of transition between ancient feudalism and modern industrialism, Civilization greatly improved the relationship between employer and employee. The proprietor and all his men ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... now I am a chattel. Not a few tears have I gulped down, alone and far from every one. How gladly would I have exchanged them for a consoling smile! Why are our destinies so unequal? Your soul expands in the atmosphere of a lawful passion. For you, virtue will coincide with pleasure. If you encounter ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... "Nay, he is no chattel of mine," said the merchant. "He is the thrall of goodman Reas, over in Rathsdale—a morning's walk from here. If you would deal with him a guide will soon be got to ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... store? Wa'al, he come to me some months ago, on the quiet, an' said that he wanted to borro' five hunderd. He didn't want to git no indorser, but he'd show me his books an' give me a statement an' a chattel morgidge fer six months. He didn't want nobody to know 't he was anyway pushed fer money because he wanted to git some extensions, an' so on. I made up my mind it was all right, an' I done it. Wa'al, about a month or so after he come to me ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... last Will, I insist on it still, So sneer on and welcome And e'en laugh your fill. I, William Hickington, Poet of Pocklington, Do give and bequeathe, As free as I breathe, To thee, Mary Jaram, The queen of my haram, My cash and cattle, With every chattel, To have and to hold, Come heat or come cold, Sans hindrance or strife, (Tho' thou art not my wife,) As witness my hand, Just here as I stand, This 12th of July, In the year ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... indeed, by the learned doctors of the nullification school, that color operates as a forfeiture of the rights of human nature: that a dark skin turns a man into a chattel; that crispy hair transforms a human being into a four-footed beast. The master-priest informs you that slavery is consecrated and sanctified by the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament: that Ham was the father of Canaan, and all his posterity were doomed, by his own father, to be ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... and conscience and honesty withdrew. Without going into the demoralizing details, suffice it to say that I stole a blanket from some hapless victim belonging to another company, and thus safeguarded the health and military efficiency of a chattel of the Nation. How the other fellow got along, I don't know. I made no impertinent inquiries, and, during the day time, indefinitely thereafter, kept that blanket in my knapsack, carefully concealed from prying eyes. But it will be recorded here that this was the only ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... a Gaspard Chuckle when he checked up the total Get, for now he owned two Brick Buildings and had tasted a little Blood in the way of Chattel Mortgages. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... my fate is none too soft. Thou speakest as a good man speaks, then be So good as not to speak with me today. I am thy chattel, take me as thy chattel, And let me, like a chattel, keep my thoughts Unspoken, only uttered to myself! [She weeps silently with compressed lips, her ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... a passion. As the vine must twine or grovel, so the child comes unconsciously to worship idols, and imitates bad patterns and examples in the absence of worthy ones. He obeys as with a deep sense of being our chattel, and, at bottom, admires those who coerce him, if the means be wisely chosen. The authority must, of course, be ascendancy over heart and mind. The more absolute such authority the more the will is saved from caprice and feels the power of steadiness. Such authority excites ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... modify their exaggerated antithesis between society and government. Government, indeed, imposed a barbarous code of laws upon women. It was a trifle that they were excluded from political power. The law treated a wife as the chattel of her husband, denied her the disposal of her own property, even when it was the produce of her own labour, sanctioned his use of violence to her person, and refused (as indeed it still in part does) to recognise her rights as a parent. But the state of the law reflected only ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... to purchase them, the Army furnishes the necessary implements and stock, consisting of the following: Team of horses, cow, hogs, chicken, seed, etc., secured by chattel mortgage. The interest on outfit and loans is fixed at 6 per cent. It is expected that the principal and interest will be repaid in installments each year. All outfits and loans are to be repaid within ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... 1855 Barnum had sold the American Museum to Messrs. John Greenwood, Jr., and Henry D. Butler. They paid nearly twice as much for the collection as it had originally cost, giving notes for nearly the entire amount, securing the notes by a chattel mortgage, and hiring the premises from Mrs. Barnum, who owned the Museum property lease, and on which, by agreement of the lessees, she realized something like $19,000 a year. The chattel mortgage was, of course, turned ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... cheerfulness as were in her I attributed to the Parliamentary duties which kept you out of her sight for so very many hours daily. I do not like to think of the fate to which the free and independent electors of West Odgetown have just condemned her. Only, remember this: chattel of yours though she is, and timid and humble, she despises you in her heart. I am, dear Mr. Pobsby-Burford, Yours ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... designs, and soaring into the infinite, accompanied by all the host of heaven. It is, therefore, only the body which misfortune hands over to a master, and which he buys and sells; this inward part cannot be transferred as a chattel. Whatever comes from this, is free; indeed, we are not allowed to order all things to be done, nor are slaves compelled to obey us in all things; they will not carry out treasonable orders, or lend their hands ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... security. She was taken immediately to the General's headquarters. The General was much impressed by her modest demeanor, and surprised to see the refinement and beauty she possessed. Could it be possible that this young and beautiful girl had been a chattel, with no power to protect herself from the highest insults that lawless brutality could inflict upon innocent and defenseless womanhood? Could he ever again glory in his American citizenship, when any white man, ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... following pages, the words slave and slavery are not used in the sense commonly understood by the abolitionists. With them these terms are contradistinguished from servants and servitude. According to their definition, a slave is merely a "chattel" in a human form; a thing to be bought and sold, and treated worse than a brute; a being without rights, privileges, or duties. Now, if this is a correct definition of the word, we totally object to the term, and deny that we have any such institution as slavery among ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... words "beautiful" and "ugly." Neither is this all. The owner of a weapon or a vessel or piece of tissue, is not always intent upon employing it; in proportion to its usefulness and durability and to the amount of time, good luck, skill or strength required to make or to obtain it, this chattel will turn from a slave into a comrade. It is furbished or mended, displayed to others, boasted over, perhaps sung over as Alan Breck sang over his sword. The owner's eye (and not less that of the man envious of the owner!) caresses its shape; and ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... implements. Several of the families had come from Mexico to escape revolutionary disturbances there, bringing implements, horses, cattle, etc. When they arrived they had to borrow seeds and provisions for the support of the families. The company furnished these on a chattel mortgage at 7 per cent. But the company was not able to provide irrigating water, so the settlers, after two years of fruitless effort, had to leave the land, losing all their mortgaged personal property. ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... toil and hardship there! The cows are infinitely prettier and more preferable, and lead much pleasanter lives. And the men for whom these poor wretched women work, lounge about in cafes all day, smoking and playing dominoes. The barbaric arrangement that a woman should be a man's drudge and chattel is quite satisfactory, I think, to the majority of our sex. It is certainly an odd condition of things that the mothers of men should suffer most from man's cruelty. But it is the work of an all-wise Providence, no doubt; and you, Mr. Leigh, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... learned with patience, and to-day she knows many things dear to the soul far better than her teachers. In olden times the Jews claimed to be the conservators of the world's morals—they treated woman as a chattel, and said that because she was created after man, she was created solely for man. Too many still are Jews who never called Abraham "Father," while the Jews themselves have long acknowledged woman as man's proper helpmeet. In those days women had few lawful claims and no one to urge ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... strength with such weapons as God had given to her. God had, indeed, given to her many weapons, but she knew but of one. She did know that God had made her very beautiful. But she regarded her beauty after an unfeminine fashion,—as a thing of value, but as a chattel of which she could not bring herself to be proud. Might it be possible that she should win for herself by her beauty some position in the world less burdensome, more joyous than that of a governess, and less dependent than ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... seemed that if slavery could only be controlled, all things else would come right of themselves with us. Slavery has not only been controlled, but it has been destroyed, and yet things have not begun to come right with us; but it was in the order of Providence that chattel slavery should cease before industrial slavery, and the infinitely crueler and stupider vanity and luxury bred of it, should be attacked. If there was then any prevision of the struggle now at hand, the seers averted their eyes, and strove only to cope with the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... later time there began another mighty agitation in this country. It was against an institution that was deemed a very respectable one in its time, the institution of chattel slavery, that became all-powerful, that controlled the president, both branches of congress, the supreme court, the press, to a very large extent the pulpit. All of the organized forces of society, all the powers of government, upheld chattel slavery in that day. ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... either obtained his deliverance or a less cruel master." Compare this with the condition of serfs under the Christian feudal system, when, in Mr. Henson's own language, "the serf was tied to the soil, bought and sold with it, the chattel of his master, who could overwork, beat, and even kill him ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery. The great difference is, that the table and chair cannot feel, and the man can; for even a legal enactment that he shall be "taken, reputed, adjudged in law, to be a chattel personal," cannot blot out his soul, with its own private little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at 1614 west Twenty-Second street, Jacksonville, Florida, claims to be a grandson of Osceola, last fighting chief of the Seminole tribe. Born in 1858 of a mother who was part of the human chattel belonging to one of the Hearnses of Alachua County in Florida, he served variously during his life as a State and Federal Government contractor, United States Marshal (1881), ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... to the Hebrew conception of family life. It developed toward the Christian ideal. At first, polygamy was permitted; woman was the chattel of man and excluded from any part in the religious rites. But it included the ideal of monogamy in its tradition of the origin of the world, it denounced and punished adultery (Deut. 22: 22), and it gave especial attention to the training of the offspring. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... tenant-in-chief should do homage to the king; that every superior tenant should do homage to his lord; that every villein should be the bondman of the free; and that every slave should, without any property however limited and insecure, be the absolute chattel of some master. The whole system was connected with military service. This was the feudal system. There was some resemblance to it in parts of the Saxon organization; but under that organization there was so much of freedom in the allodial or free tenure of land that a great deal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... finally closing altogether to her the door of his room and of the workroom. She had a vague consciousness of what was taking place, an instinctive jealousy tortured her, in her adoration of the master, whose chattel she had been satisfied to be ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... from a likely purchaser he would with a sign order a lictor to pick out one of his wares, to drag him forward out of a compact group and set him up on the catasta. A small crowd would then collect round the slave thus exposed, the tablet on his neck would be carefully perused and the chattel made to turn round and round, to walk backwards and forwards, to show his teeth and his muscle, whilst the African up on the rostrum would with loud voice and profuse gesture point out every line of beauty on a lithe body and expatiate on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of Joanna and Mary Tudor read surprisingly alike. In reading these old chronicles, one would think woman's lot was melancholy as a dreary day of uninterrupted rain. Doubtless her lot is ameliorated in these better days, when she is not chattel but sovereign, and gives her hand where her heart has gone before. But Queen Mary, dying alone, longing for her Philip, who cared for her as much as a falcon for singing-birds, turning her dying eyes southward where ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... well; and without exception they do it, making no resistance whatever—allowing themselves to be driven to baptism in flocks like sheep, and believing, as they are commanded to do, that all power comes from one God, who bestows it upon one lord. For the Arian serf is a mere chattel without a will, and will not think for himself until he is educated to do so. This work of education has been a long time in progress; but, as the previous speaker rightly said, the idea of freedom ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... intended son-in-law was entered as my patient. His disease which was given me to cure is a chattel which belongs to me, and which I reckon among my possessions. I therefore declare to you that I will not allow him to marry before he has rendered due satisfaction to the faculty, and submitted to the remedies which I ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... with nobody to help him but a hired man and a high protective terriff. The farms in our State is mortgaged for over seven hundred million dollars. Ten of our Western States—I see by the papers—has got about three billion and a half mortgages on their farms, and that don't count the chattel mortgages filed with the town clerks on farm machinery, stock, waggins, and even crops, by gosh! that ain't two inches high under the snow. That's what the prospects is for farmers now. The Government is rich, but the men that ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... recognized the slave as a human being. The Roman world was full of slaves. Not only were there slaves born but debtors sometimes sold themselves[14] or their children. The criminal might be enslaved. In early pagan times the slave had no rights. He was a chattel disposable according to the will of his master who had jus vitae necisque, who could slay, mutilate, scourge at pleasure.[15] In the course of time this extreme power was restrained. Hadrian forbade the killing of slaves, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... children were subject to the will of the stronger, the head of the family. Among the Aryan races the family system was widened, and the patriarch of the tribe secured personal obedience and economic services from all members of the community. Chattel slavery, the typical form of industrial organization in early tropical civilization, seems to have been one of the necessary steps to progress from rude conditions; students to-day incline to view it as an essential stage in the history of the ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... Chattel mortgages are filed and recorded in the same way, except that it is not usual to make copies of the instrument. They are described in ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... you now belong to me, you are my property, my chattel; I am going to give you my instructions, and they must be strictly ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the same general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was the institution of slavery itself. Such a condition of affairs has not the melodramatic and soul-stirring incidents of chattel slavery, but its effects can be as far-reaching and as debasing. There has been some manifestation of its possible consequences in the recent outbreaks of lynching and other race oppression in the South. The practical ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... existence, degrading as is its denial of our capacity for self-government, still it concedes to us more than any other Government on earth. Woman, over half the globe, is now and always has been but a chattel. Wives are bargained for, bought and sold, as other merchandise, and as a consequence of the annihilation of natural rights, they have no political existence. In Hindustan, the evidence of woman is not received in a court ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the length and breadth of the civilised world, promising ultimately to produce a change in social conditions compared with which the abolition of slavery sinks into comparative insignificance. It is no longer a question of the emancipation of a few chattel slaves, but of the ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave and his food, by the mere power of his ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... and we are now reaping its bitter fruits in the manifold and hideous forms of a great civil war. Taking human nature as it is, there appears to be no escape from this cruel ordeal. We of the North claim that we have transcended that type of society whose vital and informing element is chattel slavery. There is natural and irrepressible antagonism between the two forms of society; they cannot subsist in peace and good feeling by the side of each other, and still less under the same Government. Conflict ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to revert to this sad failing). He imbibes freely—the current fashions of the hour amongst whites. If raffling, for instance, be held in honour as a method for expediting the sale of personal effects, the Indian will adapt the practice to the disposal of every conceivable chattel that he desires ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... years' war was fought in America, a million men were killed and half a continent was devastated, in order to abolish chattel slavery and put wage slavery in its place. I have made a thorough study of both these industrial systems, and I freely admit that there is one respect in which the lot of the wage slave is better than that of the chattel ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... out of bed and softly slipped the bolt of the door into her husband's dressing room. She did it on a wild impulse. She felt that she could not bear him near her to-night. He should see that she was not his chattel.... But, perhaps, he did not want to come.... Well, so much the better. In any case, she wanted to show him that she did not want him. She wondered if he would venture.... She wondered if he did ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings. They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own hands they build a house and gather about them the comforts of civilization and the wife ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... is necessary to remind you that the changes that have taken place in the past have been even greater than the change proposed by Socialists today. The change from savagery and cannibalism when men used to devour the captives they took in war—to the beginning of chattel slavery, when the tribes or clans into which mankind were divided—whose social organization was a kind of Communism, all the individuals belonging to the tribe being practically social equals, members of one great family—found it more profitable to keep their captives as slaves than to eat ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... throughout New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania as early as 1800. In the South the contemporary of the land farmer was the planter or slave holder. The modified type in the South was due to an economic difference. The labor problem was solved in the South by chattel slavery; in the North by the wage system. It is true that throughout much of the South the small farmer held his own. These men conformed to the type of the land farmer. But in the South they did not ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... means "family" while a man too often means only possession. This alters the spirit of the family relationships fundamentally. Their form remains just what it was when woman was esteemed a pretty, desirable, and incidentally a child-producing, chattel. Against these time-honoured ideas the new spirit of womanhood struggles in shame, astonishment, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the thing wasn't settled, even now that I had recognized that Fox and the others were of no account ... What remained was to prove to her that I wasn't a mere chattel, a piece in the game. I was at the very heart of the thing. After all, it was chance that had put me there, the blind chance of all the little things that lead in the inevitable, the future. If, now, I ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... public to riot (pp. 9 and 93-98), and then shooting them legally. "By the percentage of wages," says the report of Congress, "by false measurements, by rents, stores, and other methods the workman is virtually a chattel ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... meeting of the Union, McGaw went to New York by the early boat. He carried a letter from Pete Lathers, the yardmaster, to Crane & Co., of so potent a character that the coal-dealers agreed to lend McGaw five hundred dollars on his three-months' note, taking a chattel mortgage on his teams and carts as security, the money to be paid McGaw as soon as the papers were drawn. McGaw, in return, was to use his "pull" to get a permit from the village trustees for the free use of the village dock ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... became a marketable chattel of the State. His services were sold by public auction, the purchaser acquiring the right to transport him and sell him for the term of his sentence to a builder, planter, manufacturer, or other employer beyond the Atlantic. The price paid to the British ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... of you, Conscript Fathers, though I be captured times without number. My body is a Carthaginian chattel, but my spirit is yours. The former has been alienated from you, but the latter nobody has the power to make anything else than Roman. As captive I belong to the Carthaginians, yet, as I met with misfortune not from cowardice but from zeal, I am ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... thereafter." Subscribers had the right to take out one book at a time by depositing one-third more than the value of it with the library-keeper. Rights could be alienated or bequeathed "like any other chattel." No person, even if he owned several shares, could have more than one vote, nor could a part of a subscription-right entitle the holder to any privileges. By 1772 the Society had increased to such an extent that it was thought best to incorporate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... else, it would at least recognize my right to myself. Once free from the necessity of hiding, I did not fear to face any difficulty. Surely he had been deceiving me, and playing upon my ignorance, when he told me I belonged to him as a chattel! ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... sword, but young Selim had thrown himself at the Marabout's feet, sobbing out entreaties that the maiden's life might be saved, and assurances that he was a staunch believer; while his father, scandalised at such an exhibition on behalf of any such chattel as a female, roughly snatched him from the ground, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which were peculiar to each sex. Even the best of us have a reminiscent sense of proprietorship in our wives, dating from the time when she was obtained by purchase or capture and could be disposed of like any other chattel. Wives, whose prehistoric discipline has disposed them to humility and submission (I am speaking of the European, not the American species, of course), have not yet in the same degree acquired this sense of ownership ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... where the father had become a widower, and where, consequently, the family had lost a female laborer. The son was then sent out to work in the fields, and this circumstance, together with the subjection and degradation of women in a social organization in which even the man was a mere chattel, favored the existence of a crime that greatly complicated the relations of blood in a peasant family, and often led to the brutal treatment of helpless wives by infuriated husbands. Nor did the evil stop even with a partial amelioration of the cause, but tended for a time to reproduce ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... to what part of the coast Azinte had been taken. For all he knew to the contrary, she might have been long ago shipped off to the northern markets, and probably was, even while he talked of her, the inmate of an Arab harem, or at all events a piece of goods—a "chattel"—in the absolute possession of an irresponsible master. Besides the improbability of Kambira ever hearing what had become of his wife, or to what part of the earth she had been transported, there was also the difficulty of devising any definite course ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... feels this sad contrast very much; the more, as the soldier is his own chattel withal, and of superlative inches: Friedrich Wilhelm flames up into wrath; sends off swift messengers to bring these Judges, one and all instantly into his presence. The Judges are still in their dressing-gowns, shaving, breakfasting; they make what haste ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... partially agreed to advance the sum if he could be secured by a chattel-mortgage, and when Neal overtook those in advance he was speculating upon the possibility of getting the amount that day, lest execution ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... I not?" Masanath rejoined swiftly. "A slave, a chattel, doubly enthralled! But enough of this, I would have said that if I wed the prince, I can ask Rachel's freedom ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... was called a freedman, and was by no means in the position of one who was born free. It is true that he was no longer a chattel, a mere thing, but he had still to serve his former master,—who had now become his patron,—for a certain number of days in the year. He was obliged to pay him a part of his earnings and could not marry ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... duck trousers and blouse, dirty and frayed from long usage. Two fingers of his left hand were doubled into a permanent bend, and, to an expert, would have advertised that he was a leper. Although he belonged to Dag Daughtry just as much as if the steward possessed a chattel bill of sale of him, his owner did not know that his anaesthetic twist of ravaged nerves tokened ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... as he was gone, I looked out from the lattice and saw the ten Mamelukes who had brought him the letter, as they were moons, each clad in a suit of clothes worth two thousand dinars, there is not with my father a chattel to match one of them. He went forth with them to bring up his baggage and hallowed be Allah who hindered me from saying to him aught of that thou badest me, for he would have made mock of me and thee, and haply he would have eyed me with the eye of disparagement ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... human purpose and design and forethought into the industrial welter, being 'contrary to the laws of political economy.' Even the proletariat sympathized, though to them Capitalist liberty meant only wage slavery without the legal safeguards of chattel slavery. People were tired of governments and kings and priests and providences, and wanted to find out how Nature would arrange matters if she were let alone. And they found it out to their cost in the days when Lancashire used up nine generations of wage slaves in one generation of their masters. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... said dryly, breaking in on her. "She used to belong to your grandmother, and now you belong to her. The plan of ownership has merely been reversed, that's all. Tell me, Miss Emmy Lou, how does it feel to be a human chattel, with no prospect of emancipation?" Then catching the hurt look on her flushed face he dropped his raillery and hastened to make amends. "Well, never mind. You're the sweetest slave girl I ever met—I guess you're the sweetest one that ever lived. Besides, she's gone—probably ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... with the house, and our private property. I will give her full instructions to act for me, and even an authorization in writing, if you prefer it. She is already in the habit of coming here; but her visits will give you very little trouble. And, as she is a slave, or, as you call it, I believe, a chattel, she will be already quite accustomed to the treatment which her class are in the habit of ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... can never be; Elaine belongs to me altogether and forever; she is my property, my chattel, my happiness. I adore her, I want her all to myself, even though she be guilty, and I will never leave her again for a moment, I will still stick to her petticoats, I will roll at her feet, and ask her pardon, for I thirst for ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Compare Schmitthenner, I, who calls attention and with reason to the importance of loans on chattel mortgages. But Berkeley, Querist, No. 265, remarks that a squire with a yearly income of L1000 can, "upon an emergency," do less good or evil than a merchant with L20,000 ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... at my opportunity. "If you are not merely a chattel and a decoy, if there is any womanhood, any self-respect in you, you ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... a man is his own and his right to it must be regarded. Since the abolition of chattel slavery this has ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... granted—that the natural power of youth, wit, and beauty were rendered impotent by a greatness of fortune whose proportions obliterated all else; if one simply argued from the premise that young love was no affair of hers, since she must always be regarded as a gilded chattel, whose cost was writ large in plain figures, what girl, with blood in her veins, could endure it long without wincing? This girl had undue, and, as he regarded such matters, unseemly control over her temper and her nerves, but she ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... group itself, was, so to speak, the capturer, her position in regard to her dependent husband would be profoundly modified, in comparison with that of the ordinary captive female, whereas such a captive, seized by the usual process of hostile capture, had been a mere chattel utterly without power; she, as a free agent in her own home, with her will backed by that of her brothers" [why not, I would ask, her sisters and her mother?] "could impose law on her ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... most in his power to make or mar the fugitive sailor's chances was in connection with the familiar fiction that the Englishman's house is his castle. To hide a sailor was to steal the king's chattel—penalty, 5 Pounds forfeited to the parish; and if you were guilty of such a theft, or were with good reason suspected of being guilty, you found yourself in much the same case as the ordinary thief or the receiver of stolen goods. A search warrant ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... that residents in these breeding States are to be found who would scorn to utter a wilful falsehood, and who deny this propagation of the human chattel for the flesh market; but there can be little doubt that the unbiased seeker after truth will find that such is the case. And why not? Why should those who make their livelihood by trafficking in the flesh of their fellow-creatures ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray |
