"Dead letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sat upon Jacob's well, and discoursed with the woman of Samaria, he directed her attention from ordinary, or elementary to spiritual and living water. So he did upon this occasion. He gave life to the dead letter of an old ceremony by a new meaning. His disciples were from henceforth to turn their attention, if they chose to celebrate the passover, from the paschal lamb to himself, and from the deliverance of their ancestors out of Egyptian bondage to the deliverance of themselves ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... resource the poor youth came hither to see whether the guardian whose wardship has hitherto been a dead letter, were indeed so utterly obdurate and helpless as ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the starry night. "Oh, Father!" he said in his heart, "what dost thou intend with regard to this son of man? If it is thy will that water shall be turned into wine, it may then be possible to pour new wine into the old skins, the spirit and strength of God into the dead letter!" ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... passion. In truth, the strong and influential of both religions treated it with contempt, and trampled on it without any dread of the consequences. By the time of his return from transportation, it was merely a dead letter, disregarded and scorned by both parties, and was no obstruction to either the marriage or the happiness of himself and his ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... season, which lasted their lifetime and beyond it. These garments were bequeathed to their children. Consequently the clause in the marriage-contract relating to arms and clothes, which in these days is almost a dead letter because of the small value of wardrobes that need constant renewing, was then of much importance. Great costs brought with them solidity. The toilet of a woman constituted a large capital; it was reckoned among the family possessions, and was kept in those ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... offered, and for six years my charges were regularly met without question. Then payment ceased. My demands for an explanation came back through the Dead Letter Office, and when I followed them up by a journey to the address given, it was to learn that my man—a chief boatman in the coast-guard service—had died three months before, leaving no effects beyond a pound or two and the contents of his sea-chest—no ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... considered as a whole, were the wisest devisable to suit the peculiar circumstances of the Colony; but whilst many of them were disregarded or treated as a dead letter, so many loopholes were invented by the dispensers of those in operation as to render the whole system a wearisome, dilatory process. Up to the last every possible impediment was placed in the way of trade expansion; ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... gigantic system of smuggling was carried on. The custom-house officials had no force at their disposal which would have enabled them to check these operations, and the law enforcing a trade with England was virtually a dead letter. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... we consider that the measure of last session, prohibiting any further issue of notes beyond those already taken out by the banks, is almost a dead letter. We have not the least fear, that under any circumstances there can be a call for a larger circulation; at the same time, we demur to the policy which ties our hands needlessly, and we object to all restriction ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... been expected in the works of those surrounded by heathen modes of thought and expression. The influence of Christianity, however, so changed the current of ideas, and so affected the feelings of those whom it called to new life, that heathenism became to them, as it were, a dead letter, devoid of all that could rouse the fancy, or affect the inner thought. A great gulf was fixed between them and it,—a gulf which for three centuries, at least, charity alone could bridge over. It was not till near the fourth century that heathenism began, to any marked extent, to modify ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... audacious to review Moses than Blackstone, the Jewish code of laws, than the English system of jurisprudence? Women have compelled their legislators in every state in this Union to so modify their statutes for women that the old common law is now almost a dead letter. Why not compel Bishops and Revising Committees to modify their creeds and dogmas? Forty years ago it seemed as ridiculous to timid, time-serving and retrograde folk for women to demand an expurgated edition of the laws, as it now does ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Often of a night I revolved these things in my mind, and perplexed myself with conjectures as to what in future was to become of us. Although he had saved all he could from his pay, it was impossible to pay several hundreds of pounds of debt; and the steam-boat stock still continued a dead letter. To remain much longer in the woods was impossible, for the returns from the farm scarcely fed us; and but for the clothing sent us by friends from home, who were not aware of our real difficulties, we should have been ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... son] You speak as if your former convictions were somehow to blame, but you yourself, not they, were at fault. You have forgotten that a conviction, in itself, is nothing but a dead letter. ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... general facts"; and the reason given for the decided preference manifested for his vivid record is not less true than philosophical,—"We learn so much from him enjoyably." It is precisely the lack of this pleasurable trait which makes the greater part of the annals of the past a dead letter to the world, and wins to romance, ballad, epic, fiction, relic, and poetry the keen attention which facts coldly "set in a note-book" never enlisted. How many of us unconsciously have adopted the portraits of the early English kings as Shakspeare drew them! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Hamilton (disdaining as a business what as an amusement perhaps might have delighted him) was deemed a dead letter, and as such, neglected; while he bestowed himself on other mechanism, presenting more material ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... writer had been a member of parliament in the time of Henry VIII., and was imprisoned by that despot in 1542, very probably without any just cause. He about the same time translated into English the great charter of Englishmen which had become a dead letter through the tyranny of the Tudors; and he rendered the same public service respecting several important statutes which existed only in Latin or Norman French; proofs of a free and courageous spirit extremely ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... people, and the result has been a constant deterioration of the Indians. This is especially true of those laws intended to prevent our citizens from hunting on the Indian lands, residing in their country, and trading with them without a license from the United States. These have generally been a dead letter upon the national statute book, and the encroachments of the lawless frontiers-men, the trader, the land speculator, and the vender of spirituous liquors, have impoverished degraded, and vitiated, more or less, every ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... Indeed, in spite of commendable efforts on the part of the authorities who represent the United States in that Territory, the law has in very rare instances been enforced, and, for a cause to which reference will presently be made, is practically a dead letter. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... know who are religious, and yet analyse point by point what they believe in? She lives in the midst of the traditional churches, and is full of reverence by nature; and yet if you knew how fearlessly that woman has torn up the old cerements and taken note of what is a dead letter within, yet preserved her faith in essential spiritual truth, you would feel more admiration for her than even for writing 'Uncle Tom.' There are quantities of irreverent women and men who profess infidelity. But this is a woman of another order, observe, devout yet brave in the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... lies in the west of London, Fleet Street is little more than a name, and Clifford's Inn a mere dead letter. Yet Clifford's Inn lies as safely stowed away in the shadow of the Law Courts as any grave under a country church wall; it is as green of grass, as gray of stone, as irresponsive to ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... published in connection with his Traite d'Harmonie. But Reicha's genius did not suffice for this task. He was a good musician, but no more than that. His choral piece was insignificant and remained a dead letter. Berlioz took this lost effect and used it in his ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... be a father. The appellation of Lord General, and similar titles, were never before known here. Almost every day he caused proclamations of various import to be published, which were for the most part never observed, and have long since been a dead letter, except the wine excise, as that yielded a profit. The proceedings of the Eight Men, especially against Jochem Pietersz Cuyffer and Cornelis Molyn, happened in the beginning of his administration. The Director showed ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... taste of that savoury meat; more a good deal than the man who offered the meat had learned in the same time. Taking the middle of the yard, so as to leave himself ample space for retreat, he remained watchfully regarding Matey, and refused to advance a step. Matey's spoken blandishments were now a dead letter to Finn. Having once discovered the possibilities of human treachery, he would never forget them. And here the folk who belong to what we call the brute creation are apt to be a good deal wiser than their betters in the scale of evolution. They do not forget the teaching ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... knowledge, no doubt, would be beyond human endurance. But we make a step towards it, when we learn that there is rottenness and evil in the world, masquerading as right and morality—when we learn to know the living spirit from the dead letter. I have not cared to stop in this struggle of life to question. You, perhaps, wouldn't dare to alone. Together, dear one, we will work it out. Be sure there is a way—we may not find it in the end, but we will at least ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... come when China also will have her great mechanical and scientific enterprises; but what we contend for here is that nothing we can say or do will bring that time an hour nearer. European public opinion is to China a dead letter; she refuses to plead before that tribunal. Each step of her advance along our path must be the result of her own reflection and experience; and our wisest policy would be to leave her to herself to advance on it as she deems ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... followers on them, without offering them the smallest remuneration. A statute was now made which pronounced these proceedings "open robbery," and accorded the right of suit in such cases to the crown. But this enactment could only be a dead letter. We have already seen how the crown dealt with the most serious complaints of the natives; and even had justice been awarded to the complainant, the right of eviction was in the hands of the nearest noble, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... subsequently returned to the religion of his fathers, was beheaded at Constantinople. The Christian powers of Europe immediately remonstrated, and it was hoped that the law against apostates from Mohammedanism would be permitted to become a dead letter. In a few months, however, a firman issued from the government ordering the decapitation of a young man near Brooza, who was put to death for having promised in a passion, but had afterwards refused, to become a Mohammedan. Lord Aberdeen, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, then demanded ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... into action for attempts against nature even with mutual consent; the penalty is one hundred strokes with the bamboo and a month's imprisonment; if there is violence, the penalty is decapitation; I am not able to say how far the law is a dead letter. According to Matignon, so far as homosexuality exists in China, it is carried on with much more decorum and restraint than it is in Europe, and he thinks it may be put down to the credit of the Chinese that, unlike Europeans, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was fixed by authority, and was for obvious reasons of special importance in the case of the necessaries of life.... The legitimate price of a thing as fixed by authority had to be based upon the natural price, and therefore lost its validity and became a dead letter the moment any change ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... in reality, a "natural scavenger," but its virtues are only imperfectly known. As a therapeutic agent it is almost without a peer, and yet it is so little used that it is practically a dead letter. Chemists are burning the midnight oil in their laboratories searching for new weapons with which to fight sepsis, while hot, boiled water, which is one of the best antiseptics in existence, is almost ignored. It may be asked ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... personality—that is, through records that "give unborn generations their due and their part in his being", and also to what those records owe their effectiveness, and are saved from becoming a dead letter. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... without warrant, tried without jury, for the first offence be fined, for the second lose one ear, for the third lose the other ear, and for the fourth be bored with red-hot iron through the tongue,—though this last penalty remained a dead letter. They could be stripped to the waist, tied to a cart, and whipped through town after town,—three women were whipped through eleven towns, eighty miles,—but afterwards the number was limited to three. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... shapeless ruin; but the promised Utopia had not been realised to take its place. In many directions the forces of reaction were at work. Religion, striving to maintain itself upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms which had been stirred by the opening ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the clause was represented by the Americans as a mere form of words, necessary to bring the negotiations to an end, and to save the face of the British government. To this day it has remained, except in one or two states, a dead letter. On the other hand it is impossible not to convict the British commissioners of a betrayal of the Loyalists. 'Never,' said Lord North in the House of Commons, 'never was the honour, the humanity, the principles, the policy of a nation so grossly abused, ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... nor would anybody waste his time over making oleomargarine when no one was COMPELLED to abstain from real butter. Adulteration laws are only needed in a society of thieves—and in such a society they are a dead letter. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... whence come fire, warmth, light, and so on; the very thing, namely, which no European scientist, steering an even course between Tyndall and Schropfer, has, as yet, defined. This concealed meaning has totally escaped Professor Max Muller's attention, and this is why, clinging to the dead letter, he never hesitates before cutting a Gordian knot. How then can he be permitted to pronounce upon the antiquity of the Vedas, when he is so far from the right understanding of the language of these ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... laws against witchcraft had become practically a dead letter, but it was not till 1735 that they were repealed. Still, the abolition of the legal penalty did not kill the popular belief in the power and reality of witchcraft; and even now, at this present day, we find proof ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Law was a dead letter until Mr. Roosevelt instructed the Attorney-General to prosecute its violators, both great and small. No fear or favor was shown in the enforcement of the laws against the rich and poor alike. There ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... it, especially as the majority of the princes were unwilling to carry out its terms in their territories. Hence, outside the hereditary dominions of the House of Habsburg, the lands of Joachim I. of Brandenburg and of Duke George of Saxony, and in Bavaria, it remained a dead letter. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... not remain a dead letter, he went about the country seeing that what Parliament required ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... reinstating me in my father's lands; but I came over to tell you that, at present, I do not propose to take advantage of that law. I shall do nothing, until this war is at an end. If King William's cause triumphs, the act will remain a dead letter. If King James's wins, and the act is upheld, I wish to tell you that I shall never disturb you in the land which you, yourselves, occupy. Your tenants, on the other hand, will be my tenants; but in the house which you have built, and in the fields which ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... a certain ambitious gentleman of the legal profession had furnished the most satisfactory credentials, and that nothing remained but for her to name the day. Now the fourth commandment was very far from being the dead letter in 1670 that it is in 1885, and it was matter for grave surprise to the elders that their usually obedient daughter, when the lawyer proceeded to plead, refused to hear, and peremptorily adjourned his cause without day. Maternal expostulation and paternal ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... that they were dancers in every sense; there are many ancient sepulchres in Etruria, with dancing painted on their walls. Other description than that of the pictures we do not possess, for as yet the language is a dead letter. There is no doubt, as Gerhardt [Footnote: "Ann. Institut.": 1831, p. 321.] suggests, that they considered dancing as one of the emblems of joy in a future state, and that the dead were received with dancing and music in their new home. They danced to the ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... film that shrouded the ears of my brain, and the words became inspired and alive, and I forgot my own thoughts in listening to the Holy Book. For is not the voice of every loving spirit a fresh inspiration to the dead letter? With a voice other than this, does it not kill? And I thought I had heard the voice before, but where I sat I could not see the Communion Table.—At length the preacher ascended the pulpit stairs, and, to my delight and the rousing of an altogether unwonted expectation, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... "He who has not the Spirit," he wrote, "and who fails to find Him in the Scriptures, seeks life and finds death; seeks light and finds darkness, whether it be in the Old or in the New Testament."[41] "He who thinks that he can be made truly righteous by means of a Book is ascribing to the dead letter what belongs to the Spirit."[42] He does not belittle or undervalue the Scriptures—he knew them almost by heart and took the precious time out of his brief life to help to translate the Prophets into German—but he wants to make the fact forever plain that men are saved ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Moreover, I may ask now, is a man to assent to anything against his reason? (18) What is denial if it be not reason's refusal to assent? (19) In short, I am astonished that anyone should wish to subject reason, the greatest of gifts and a light from on high, to the dead letter which may have been corrupted by human malice; that it should be thought no crime to speak with contempt of mind, the true handwriting of God's Word, calling it corrupt, blind, and lost, while it is considered the greatest ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... he stroked mi heead, "Tak my advice, young chap," he sed, "Let liquors be, sup ale asteead, An' tha'll be better, An' dunnot treat th' advice tha's heard Like a dead letter." ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... wouldn't find much to eat. Having been brought up in Pennsylvania, I listened with great interest to General Sherman's reference to the proposed names of the States in the country. He mentioned one as "Sylvania." That was evidently a dead letter till we put the Pen(n) to it. [Laughter.] I noticed that President Dwight listened with equal interest to the statement of that expedition which went West and carried such a large quantity of whiskey with it, in consequence of which the first ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Much of it, no doubt, was unconstitutional; but it was hoped that the laws enacted would serve their purpose before the question of constitutionality could be submitted to the judiciary and a decision obtained. These laws did serve their purpose, and now remain "a dead letter" upon the statute books of the United States, no one taking interest enough in them to give them ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... before; already it was apparent that this phase of the party's program would have to be sacrificed in order to make the party leader responsible in the true sense for the program as a whole. But that plank had not been seriously intended, and by 1916 the march of events had made it a dead letter. ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... which I can back with indisputable proof at any moment? Let us put aside all such mad folly and say no more on that subject. She was your mother and she is dead, so her past shall be a dead letter to us. I have only this one question to put to you, whether you will, after this conversation, remain here and become one of the circle which Prince Adelsberg has ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... agreement. But the Spanish government did not observe a similar conduct, and this has been deplored and still is deeply deplored by the Philippine people. The general amnesty which was promised has remained completely a dead letter. Many Filipinos are still to be found in Fernando Po and in various military prisons in Spain suffering the grievous consequences of the punishment inflicted upon them unjustly and the inclemencies of the climate to which they are not accustomed. Some of these unfortunates, who succeeded ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... understood, many imperfectly translated, some in which dignity is lost, others in which bombast is substituted in its stead. But the unabated vigour and spirit of the version more than overbalances these and all its other deficiencies. A sedulous scholar might often approach more nearly to the dead letter of Virgil, and give an exact, distinct, sober-minded idea of the meaning and scope of particular passages. Trapp, Pitt, and others have done so. But the essential spirit of poetry is so volatile, that it escapes during such an operation, like ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... shall be clothed, partakes of the nature of petty, irritating and annoying tyranny. They also know that the natural result is to fill a country with spies, hypocrites and pretenders, and that when a law is not in accordance with an enlightened public sentiment, it becomes either a dead letter, or, when a few fanatics endeavor to enforce it, a demoralizer of courts, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... that the publication and perusal of this humble effort to glorify God by perpetuating the memory of the loved ones so fondly cherished shall not be all in vain, and fall on the heart as a dead letter, "like the wind that passes over the rock, leaving it harder than before." Mr. D. L. Moody once said, "I never saw a man who was aiming to do the best work, but there could be some improvement; I never did anything in my life that I didn't think I could have done better, and ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... formidable to their enemies but also the most troublesome to themselves, always on the point of mutiny for more pay and plunder. The Swiss were beginning to see the evils of the system, and prohibited the taking of pensions in 1503, though this law remained largely a dead letter. [Sidenote: September 13-14, 1515] The reputation of the mountaineers suffered a blow in their defeat by the French at Marignano, followed by a treaty with France, intended by that power to make Switzerland a permanent ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... royal state have lost the heads Wherewith they plotted in their treasonous malice, Have talk'd together, and are well agreed That those old statutes touching Lollardism To bring the heretic to the stake, should be No longer a dead letter, ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... affectiveness—or whatever it may be called—urged him to stand forward, seize upon Elfride, and be her cherisher and protector through life. Then came the devastating thought that Elfride's childlike, unreasoning, and indiscreet act in flying to him only proved that the proprieties must be a dead letter with her; that the unreserve, which was really artlessness without ballast, meant indifference to decorum; and what so likely as that such a woman had been deceived in the past? He said to himself, in a mood of the bitterest cynicism: ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... be enrolled and conducted to Texas at the expense of that territory, were inserted in our newspapers. The Government, indeed, issued its proclamation, forbidding these hostile preparations; but this was a dead letter. Military companies, with officers and standards, in defiance of proclamations, and in the face of day, directed their steps to the revolted province. We had, indeed, an army near the frontiers of Mexico. Did it turn back these invaders of a land with which we were at ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... mind with men yet intelligible to us, after we have freed ourselves from our modern conceits. We shall not succeed always: words, verses, nay, whole hymns in the Rig-veda, will and must remain to us a dead letter. But where we can inspire those early relics of thought and devotion with new life, we shall have before us more real antiquity than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Nineveh; not only old names and dates, and kingdoms and battles, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... proudest ambitions are about to be realised at the fetes at Kiel. That patriotic hymn of theirs, which up to the present has been a dead letter for those peoples who have not yet been incorporated in the Prussianised Empire, will now become a living thing. Henceforward all Europe must hear and accept the offensive utterance which the Germans shout: "Deutschland ueber Alles!" Yes, Germany ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... went, seizing the clergy and taking them off to the galleys; but it was impossible to track unregistered priests through the mountains and valleys of Munster. Hence the law as to the registration of priests soon became a dead letter. ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... department of the Government would also be empowered to incur the requisite liability for their compensation. But the second section of this bill contains a prohibition not found in any previous legislation. Its design is to render the election laws inoperative and a dead letter during the next fiscal year. It is sought to accomplish this by omitting to appropriate money for their enforcement and by expressly prohibiting any Department or officer of the Government from incurring ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... money or other present for any cause; and annulling all gratuities or presents made by the client to the patron or advocate. But as no penalty was prescribed for the breach of the law, it of course became a dead letter. The Emperor Augustus afterwards re-enacted the Cincian law, and prescribed penalties for its breach. But towards the end of his reign, the advocates were again authorized to receive fees or presents ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... in the war days, and, among the volunteers and, indeed, among regiments of the regulars whose ranks were sprinkled with college men who had rubbed shoulders but a few months earlier with certain subalterns, the military line of demarcation was a dead letter when "the boys" were out of sight and hearing of their seniors, and so it happened that when a young officer came hurrying down the pathway that led from the tents of the general to those of the field officers of the Tenth ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Portland at last, and promised faithfully to send word to a certain friend of Monckton's, in London, where he was, and what he was doing. Meantime he begged his way northward from Portland, for the southern provinces were a dead letter to him. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the violence of their enemies. Far from their armed companions, there was little protection for their lives or their property. The edict of the preceding September, assuring to peaceable Protestants freedom from molestation in their homes, was as much a dead letter as any of its predecessors. The government, the courts of justice, and the populace, were equally eager to oppress them. At Orleans the "lieutenant-general" placed all the Huguenots of the city, without distinction of age or sex, in the public prisons, upon pretext of providing ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... at the chateau gates), were included in the purchase money. But the country was already in a ferment, and had our countryman struck a bargain then and there, the last-named extras would have proved a dead letter. Seigneurial rights were being abolished, or rather surrendered, at the very time that this transaction was under consideration. As Arthur Young tells us, he might as well have asked for an elephant at Moulins ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... therefore, that the royal recommendations of clemency remained a dead letter, and that, under the pressure of the incessant demand for gold, the Indians were reduced to the most abject ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... Commissariat, which, unlike that of Foreign Affairs, is extremely clean and very well organized. I told him I was particularly interested to hear what he could say in answer to the accusations made both by the Mensheviks and by the Extremists on the Left that control by the workers has become a dead letter, and that a time will come when the trades unions will move ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... those checks had proved utterly inefficient. The laws which had been framed to secure the distinct authority of the executive magistrates and of the legislative assemblies—the freedom of election—the freedom of debate—the freedom of the press—the personal freedom of citizens—were a dead letter. The ordinary mode in which the Republic was governed was by coups d'etat. On one occasion, the legislative councils were placed under military restraint by the directors. Then, again, directors were deposed by the legislative ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who say we cannot enforce prohibition, and undertake to make the law a dead letter. Men who will murder—no, they lack that courage, but will hire the slugger—if they are not permitted to carry out their work of death. Shall we make our laws to please, or to restrain and punish ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... preaching and of the Sacraments. And after losing our preachers, our own lives and limbs would not be safe among the miners, and we must needs expect a revolt of all the people." (Walther 19f.) Thus the Interim before long became a dead letter throughout the ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... is acted out in the commercial world to-day. All good intentions, all right convictions, all wise counsels of religious teachers, are side-tracked and become as a dead letter if they stand in the way ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such infernal arts." A similar statute was contained in the "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts, probably inspired by the command of Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This law, we shall see, was not a dead letter. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... why the ordinance remained a dead letter was that, while it fixed the limits within which local governments might act, it left the creation of those governments wholly to the future. At Vincennes, for example, the ordinance made no change in the political habits of the people. "The local government ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... Act requiring the chief persons of the insurrection to come, in periods specified, and amply long enough, to stand their trials. Certain it is, as we said before, that though many of these were or became prisoners, none were executed. The Act was a dead letter; and considering the principles of the time, surely the Act was ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... moderation at this time, [Footnote: See Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 4, p. 6.] not so did the free-lance John Randolph, of Virginia. "I do not stop here, sir," said he, "to argue about the constitutionality of this bill; I consider the Constitution a dead letter; I consider it to consist, at this time, of the power of the General Government and the power of the States— that is the Constitution." "I have no faith in parchment, sir; ... I have faith in the power of the commonwealth of which I am an unworthy son." "If, under ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... towards buildings, without any distinction of sect."[164] This precious system, which would make no "distinction of sect," between the doctrine of the beloved apostle St. John, and that of the Nicolaitans, "which God hates,"[165] is almost a dead letter in Western Australia, owing to the scattered state of the population, and the great majority of them being members of the Church of England. The duty of government to tolerate separatists, (while they continue obedient to the laws of the country,) is now denied by no ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... be no harm in agreeing to forfeit him if you fail," rejoined Wallace; "for if you certainly do feed him, then your agreement to forfeit him will be a dead letter." ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... practical illustration of that great truth, which ought to be familiar to all statesmen and politicians, that a law passed by the national legislature to operate locally upon a people not represented, will always remain practically a dead letter upon the statute book, if it be in opposition to the wishes and supposed interests of those who are to be affected by it, and at the same time charged with its execution. The Ordinance of 1787 was practically a dead letter. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... thus liberated to be kept within the bounds set by existing institutions. "The peace, the prosperity, and the very existence of the Union," he wrote, "are vested in the hands of the seven Federal judges. Without them the Constitution would be a dead letter: the Executive appeals to them for assistance against the encroachments of the legislative power; the Legislature demands their protection against the assaults of the Executive; they defend the Union from the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... defeated. Several agencies combining, each taking up the commodity transported at the boundary line at one end of a State, and leaving it at the boundary line at the other end, the Federal jurisdiction would be entirely ousted, and the constitutional provision would become a dead letter."[356] In short, it was admitted inferentially, that the principle of the decision would apply to land transportation; but the actual demonstration of the fact still awaited ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... fundamental principle of the constitution, that no tax could be imposed without its consent; [34] and an express enactment to this effect was suffered to remain on the statute book, after it had become a dead letter, as if to remind the nation of the liberties it had lost. [35] The commons showed a wise solicitude in regard to the mode of collecting the public revenue, oftentimes more onerous to the subject than the tax ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... of a body many of whose members had accepted his bribes. When he was asked why he had so high-handedly refused to run his trains across the river, the old fox smiled grimly, and to their utter surprise, showed them an old law (which had hitherto remained a dead letter) prohibiting the New York Hudson Railroad from running trains over the Hudson River. This law had been enacted in response to the demand of the New York Central, which wanted no competitor west of Albany. When the committee recovered its breath, its chairman ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... carry corn, on paying the duties due, to what parts they pleased, except to his enemies, subject however to an order of the Council; and owing to the interference of the Council the law probably became a dead letter, at all events we find it confirmed and amended by ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... not said science would destroy religion but that at its present rate of decline the Church of England would become a dead letter in a hundred and fifty years. Next, that science "has no bearing upon the spiritual truths ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... The written Word is the sword of this Divine Spirit. The renewed soul is begotten of the Spirit and it is instinct with the indwelling of the Spirit. No other system makes any claim to such an influence as that of the Holy Ghost. Sacred books, written systems of law or ethics would all prove a dead letter—the Bible itself, as well as the Veda, would be a dead letter but for the co-operation of this Divine Spirit. Sacred Scriptures might be venerated, they would not be obeyed. The dead heart must be quickened and renewed and only Christianity reveals ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Isaiah, and Jeremiah, to declare to the Jews of their times that God would no more accept of burnt offerings and sacrifices! and that the ceremonial law was ipso facto abolished; because, if such passages do signify the abolishment of the Mosaic law, it must be considered as having been a dead letter ever since David, Isaiah., and Jeremiah ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... they are to be enforced and obeyed. They do not want them overthrown by revolutionary violence or defeated by fraud. They do not wish them repealed by constitutional amendments, abrogated by judicial construction, nullified by unfriendly legislation, State or National, or left a dead letter by non-action on the part of law-makers or executive officers. Has the time come when the country can afford to trust the Democratic party on these questions? ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... generous heart, to bring forth truth an hundred fold, so cut and pare the words of the Lord as to take the very life from them, quenching all their glory and colour in their own inability to believe, and still would have the dead letter of them accepted as the comfort of a creator to the sore hearts he made in his own image! Here, 'as if they were God's spies,' some such would tell us that the Lord proclaims the blessedness of those that mourn for their sins, and of them only. What mere honest man would make a promise which ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... Are the letters and papers for delivery properly post-marked? Are they all intended for the delivery of the office? Are they sorted into the proper boxes? Are there any which should have been sent to the Dead Letter Office? ...
— General Instructions For The Guidance Of Post Office Inspectors In The Dominion Of Canada • Alexander Campbell
... monotonous whirling of the wheel which he turns everlastingly in his ear, he never develops the harmony of his being; and, instead of imaging the totality of human nature, becomes a bare abstract of his business or the science which he cultivates. The dead letter takes the place of the living understanding; and a practised memory becomes a surer guide than genius and sensibility. Doubtless the power of genius, as we all know, will not fetter itself within the limits of its occupation; but talents of mediocrity are all exhausted ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the king had sinned against the deity, and they suspended him from his functions until the Delphic or Olympic oracle should reinstate him in them. This custom, which has all the air of great antiquity, was not suffered to remain a dead letter even in the last period of the Spartan monarchy; for in the third century before our era a king, who had rendered himself obnoxious to the reforming party, was actually deposed on various trumped-up charges, among which the allegation that the ominous sign had ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... thin moustache with a nervous laugh. "If you mean I'm an ass, you're right. Look here." He held out an envelope stamped with the words: "Dead Letter Office." "My effusion has come back to me marked 'unknown.' There's no such person at the address ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... be made payable at a future period; but this could only be by forcing a loan from the people, many of whom are unable to make it, and of consequence it would be a hard measure, if not an unjust one. Perhaps it could not be executed, for laws repugnant to the general feelings of mankind are only a dead letter. 2dly. Another mode is by receiving them in taxes, but this is very dangerous for several reasons, among which, the two following are cogent. The public revenue will not bear such a heavy deduction at those certificates ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... are significant: "Although under the decision of the courts the National Government had power over the railways, I found, when I became President, that this power was either not exercised at all or exercised with utter inefficiency. The law against rebates was a dead letter. All the unscrupulous railway men had been allowed to violate it with impunity; and because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and decent railway men had been forced to violate it themselves, under penalty of being beaten by their less scrupulous rivals. It was not ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... not depend on forms that are given spontaneously; for how could a complicated machine, which shuns the light, confide itself to the free will of man? This relation is rather dictated, with a rigorous strictness, by a formulary in which the free intelligence of man is chained down. The dead letter takes the place of a living meaning, and a practised memory becomes a safer guide than genius ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... to be true, that many hotels in New York serve them up even in March and April; quail, this autumn, have been sold openly in the markets, many days previous to the expiration of close time. And, in fact, sorry I am to say it, as far as eating-houses are in question, the game laws are nearly a dead letter. ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... oysters, chicken salad, every known variety of sandwich, ices and cakes was taken standing for the most part, Madame Zattiany, however, once more enthroned at the head of the room, women as well as men dancing attendance upon her. Prohibition, a dead letter to all who could afford to patronize the underground mart, had but added to the spice of life, and it was patent that Miss Dwight had a cellar. More cocktails, highballs, sherry, were passed continuously, and two enthusiastic ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... individuals, will declare for what they believe to be just and right; but communities, like individuals, can be led away from their principles step by step under the temptations of specific desires and supposed expediencies until the principles are a dead letter and allegiance to ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... been the belief of most Ranters that could manage to rise to a metaphysics—with which belief was conjoined also a rejection of all essential distinction between good and evil, and a rejection of all Scripture as mere dead letter; but from a so-called "Carol of the Ranters" I infer that Atheism, or at least Mortalism or Materialism (see Vol. III. p. 156-157), had found refuge among ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... aunt had been poisoned,[977] but that private grief was not to affect his public policy; and Charles, Francis, and even the Pope, became more or less eager competitors (p. 350) for Henry's favour. The bull of deprivation, which had been drawn up and signed, became a dead letter, and every one was anxious to disavow his share in its promotion. Charles obtained the suspension of its publication, made a merit of that service to Henry, and tried to represent that it was Francis who, with his eyes on the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... and in marked angles—nor are they affected by the wind, except under circumstances of very rapid motion. The ideal of the face is often solemn—seldom beautiful; occasionally ludicrous failures occur: in the smallest designs the face is very often a dead letter, or worse: and in all, Giotto's handling is generally to be distinguished from that of any of his followers by its bluntness. In the school work we find sweeter types of feature, greater finish, stricter care, more delicate outline, fewer errors, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... leaving college by a studious life, and austere manners. Literature and the bar shared his time. The philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau had made a profound impression on his understanding; the philosophy, falling upon an active imagination, had not remained a dead letter; it had become in him a leading principle, a faith, a fanaticism. In the strong mind of a sectarian, all conviction becomes a thing apart. Robespierre was the Luther of politics: and in obscurity he brooded over the confused thoughts of a renovation of the social world, and the religious world, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Roman father possessed arbitrary powers of life and death over his children; but it is probable that natural affection and a more advanced civilization commonly made the law a dead letter. ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Argall, governor of Virginia, conceived that this foreign settlement trenched upon the rights granted by the English crown to its subjects, and by a display of superior force constrained the Dutch colony to acknowledge British sovereignty (1613);[351] but this submission became a dead letter some years later, when large bodies of emigrants arrived from the Low Countries (1620);[352] the little trading post soon rose into a town, and a fort was erected for its defense. The site of this establishment was on the island of Manhattan;[353] the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Africa. It was literally a tariff for revenue; but it was a settlement that settled nothing definitely, except that the provision of the Constitution for a tax of ten dollars on imported slaves should be a dead letter. Thenceforth the policy of free trade was established, so far as African slaves were concerned, till the traffic was supposed to cease by constitutional limitation and Act ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... not liable for service abroad, and only goes out for a short period of training, annually. However, by law, should the supply of volunteers fall short, battalions can be kept at their full strength by men chosen by ballot from the population. But this is practically a dead letter, and I am told that the ballot is never resorted to; though doubtless it would be, in the case of a ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... pamphlets, ballads, libels, and lampoons. The agitation ran its course during some two years, more than once threatened to involve the country in serious disturbance, and died out at last when the legislation which had caused so much tumult was quietly allowed to become a dead letter. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... and the Emir Beshir would be happy to grant you, if necessary, an escort through the mountains, yet I am afraid a short time must elapse before the people of Damascus can be made aware of the important changes in their social condition, when the Hatti Sherif of Gulhane shall be no longer to them a dead letter, when violence shall no longer usurp the place of justice, nor men endanger their lives by bearing witness to the truth. You will be able to return to Syria in a few months under better auspices, and cover the slanderers of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... damage before it is driven back into its lair. We may witness a repetition of the scenes of fifty and sixty years ago, when scores of brave men and women faced fine and imprisonment for Freethought, tired out the very malice of their persecutors; and made the Blasphemy Laws a dead letter for a whole generation. May our victory be as great as theirs, even if ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... this sentence into the realm the Bull was found nailed in a spirit of ironical defiance on the Bishop of London's door. Its effect was far from being what Rome desired. With the exception of one or two zealots the English Catholics treated the Bull as a dead letter. The duty of obeying the Queen seemed a certain thing to them, while that of obeying the Pope in temporal matters was denied by most and doubted by all. Its spiritual effect indeed was greater. The Bull dealt a severe blow to the religious truce which Elizabeth ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... the three; but, after all, why should he not be? He had spent several years in society that seemed callous to fear,—that knew not what it was to be a Christian; where the utmost coolness was necessary to the preservation of life; where bravery was all and education a dead letter. Fearless Frank, too, had seen all phases of rough western life, probably, but his temperament was more nervous and excitable, his passions tenfold harder to restrain. Still, he managed to exercise a cool exterior ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... the proclamations for enforcing them, were not a dead letter is shewn by the criminal records. On the 8th of March 1550, Robert Hathwy, John Sym, and James Lourie, burgesses of Edinburgh, confess their guilt in transgressing a regulation against purchasing Bordeaux wines ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... measures. Therefore, the acts of the local legislature of Ireland should lie for three months' continuous session upon the table of the House of Commons, subject to adverse action of the House, but becoming operative unless disapproved. The provision would be a dead letter unless improper legislation were enacted, but if there were improper legislation, then it would be salutary. The clause, I said, was needed to assure timid people ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... own knowledge, in a state not dissimilar to that into which the Latin Church sank deeper amid deeper from the sixth to the fourteenth century; during which time religion was likewise merely objective and superstitious—a letter proudly emblazoned and illuminated, but yet a dead letter that was to be read by its own outward glories without the light of the Spirit in the mind of the believer. The consequence was too glaring not to be anticipated, and, if possible, prevented. Without that spirit ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... passing of the Ecclesiastic Titles Bill in 1857. Aytoun was not alone in thinking that Cardinal Wiseman, the first to act upon the mandate from Rome, was more than a match for Lord John, and that the Bill would become a dead letter, as it did. The controversy was at its hottest when Aytoun expressed his view of the probable result of the conflict in the ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... the meeting of the first Duma the freedom manifesto had become a dead letter; and in July, 1906, when Mr. Makarof, the Associate Minister of the Interior, was called before the Duma to explain the inconsistency between the "inflexible will" of the Czar, as expressed in the freedom manifesto, and the policy of the administration, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... fact in mind will be surprised at the great indifference of these officers to the continuing of the slave-trade; in fact, he will be ready to learn that the laws of Congress upon the subject had become a dead letter, and that the suspicion was well grounded that certain officers of the Federal Government had actually ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... humanity to collapse. For years I had done the work of three men with the constitution of one, so one day it came to pass that I was forced by my friends into the consulting-room of a celebrated physician, labelled "Ill. To be returned to Dead Letter Office, or to be sent by foreign mail to some distant land, or to be cremated on the spot," anything but to leave me free to return to my mad disease, the worst mania of all—the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... that the traditional liberal policy of Cape Colony has broken down through this law can no longer be disputed: indeed, the only comfort that had been held out to the Natives was that Mr. Sauer would make the Natives' Land Act a dead letter. This statesman having since died, we were anxious to see how the Cape Natives were faring under the Act, so we left Kimberley on November 1, 1913, on a tour of observation in the eastern districts of the Cape Province. Our programme included visits to two alleged defenders ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... be no possibility of any mistake between us. God only knows what it costs a man to open old wounds as I have opened mine to-night. Only this afternoon you affected a considerable regard for me, which I promised to return to the best of my power. All that is a dead letter if you hold any communion with this man. Choose him for your friend, and renounce me for your father. You cannot ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Matters had advanced since then. The Church had returned in its full power and privileges together with the monarchy, and everything went back into its old groove. Every Act passed for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church was declared a dead letter. Those of the ejected incumbents who remained alive entered again into their parsonages, and occupied their pulpits as of old; the surviving bishops returned to their sees; and the whole existing statute law regarding the Church revived from its suspended animation. No new enactment ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... no practical result except to put Dilke into the front rank of army reformers. The Government took no action to remedy the military weakness which everyone recognized. The report of the Stephen Commission remained a dead letter. In June, 1888, a new Royal Commission was issued, in which the Marquis of Hartington, associated with a number of colleagues of Cabinet rank and with a General and an Admiral, was instructed to inquire into the administration of the naval and military departments. The attempt at reform ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... on this side of his teaching, must be considered rather as the author of a phrase than as the founder of a philosophy. The phrase remained, and had a profound influence on subsequent philosophies, but in his own hands it was little more than a dead letter. His immediate interest was rather in the variety of phenomena than in their conceived principle of unity; he is theoretically, perhaps, 'on the side of the angels,' in practice ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... imposts, or other taxes, by its own authority; the whole general government, therefore, was little more than a name. The Articles of Confederation, as to purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly a dead letter. The country sought to escape from this condition, at once feeble and disgraceful, by constituting a government which should have power, of itself, to lay duties and taxes, and to pay the public debt, and provide for the general welfare; and to lay these duties and taxes ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... children. All of them are dead except three. One is in Washington, D. C.; another is in Chicago, Illinois, and then I am here. One of my brothers was a mail clerk for the government for fifty years, and then he went to Washington and worked in the dead letter office. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... should at once be turned over to bishops, and the Indians attached to them made subject to civil authority. Though promulgated in 1813, this decree was not published in California till 1820, and even then was practically a dead letter. Two years later, California became a province of the Mexican Empire, and in due course the new government turned its attention to the missions, in 1833 ordering their complete secularization. The atrocious mishandling by both Spain and Mexico of ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... constitutional, a decent respect for the opinion of mankind seems to suggest that verbal criticism should cease. The council of perfection is that the law should be obeyed till such time as it can be repealed or explained away. If it should become a dead letter, propriety would demand that no evil should be spoken of it. Since the days of Andrew Jackson the word "nullification" has had an ugly ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... at the Dead Letter Office in Washington? If you have never paid such a visit, you can form no conception of the tons, the hundreds of thousands of letters and parcels that are lost every ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... personal experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star Chamber, that the High Commission had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the Great Charter a dead letter on the north of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this place and the West Indies. When landed on the coast of Florida, it is an easy matter to distribute them throughout the more southern states. The law which makes it piracy to traffic in the foreign slave trade is a dead letter; and I doubt not it has been so in the more southern states ever since it was enacted. For you can perceive at once, that interested men, who believe the colored man is so much better off here than he possibly can be in Africa, will not hesitate to kidnap the blacks whenever an opportunity ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... eighth article of the treaty of Bucharest, concluded by Russia with the Porte, which remained a dead letter, was followed by the fifth article in the treaty of Akerman, formally securing the Servians a ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... has no eyes: the law has no hands: the law is nothing, nothing but a piece of paper printed by the King's printer, with the King's arms at the top, till public opinion breathes the breath of life into the dead letter. We found this in Ireland. The Catholic Association bearded the Government. The Government resolved to put down the Association. An indictment was brought against my honourable and learned friend, the Member for ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... permanent congress of diplomatists for the purpose of settling the mutual relations of the constituent states. Each state was ordered to adopt a constitutional form of government, but, as no provision was made for enforcing this clause, it remained a dead letter. Prussia regained her provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, with a population exceeding 1,000,000, and was allotted the northern part of Saxony, with a population of 800,000, besides retaining her original share of Poland, with the province of Posen, which had formed part of the duchy of Warsaw. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... gravity of the situation of the Jews. Wherever they live in perceptible numbers, they are more or less persecuted. Their equality before the law, granted by statute, has become practically a dead letter. They are debarred from filling even moderately high positions, either in the army, or in any public or private capacity. And attempts are made to thrust them out of business also: "Don't buy ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... regarded with a most malignant and distorted vision. Meanwhile, though Mr. Allsop was popular with the higher classes and with such of the extreme poor as his charity relieved, his pastoral influence generally was a dead letter. His curate, who preached for him—a good young man, but extremely dull-was not one of those preachers who fill a church. Tradesmen wanted an excuse to stay away or choose another place of worship; and they contrived to hear some passages ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... self-administering. It is not a mere combination of words, printing-ink, and white paper which makes a law. It is the popular sentiment back of it which enforces it, and unless a law is the wish of a majority of the people who are to be governed by it, it is either a dead letter, or must be enforced by elaborate police systems, supported oftentimes with great armies. Even then it does not succeed, if the people choose to resist. Look at the attempt to govern Ireland by force, in the face of popular sentiment. Then, too, we get a stability almost unknown in governments ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Netherlands, forbids all private assemblies for devotion; all reading of the scriptures; all discussions within one's own doors concerning faith, the sacraments, the papal authority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death. The edicts were no dead letter. The fires were kept constantly supplied with human fuel by monks, who knew the art of burning reformers better than that of arguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms, and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... laws respecting this matter a dead letter. Cases may occur in which they are disregarded, and a few instances may be found where slaves may have learned to read; but such are isolated cases, and only prove the rule. The great mass of slaveholders look upon education among the slaves as utterly subversive of the slave system. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... just what his investments were, and only he knew how few they were and how unprofitable they had become. Those were days when, as now, disbursing officers were forbidden to gamble, but when, not as now, the law was a dead letter. Burleigh had gambled for years; had, with little remorse, ruined more than one man, and yet stood now awe-stricken and dismayed and wronged by Fate, since luck had turned at last against him. Large sums had been lost to players inexorable as he himself ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... from which our knowledge of what Mosaism really was can be derived; for it cannot in any sense be regarded as the starting-point of the subsequent development. If it was the work of Moses, then we must suppose it to have remained a dead letter for centuries, and only through King Josiah and Ezra the scribe to have become operative in the national history (compare sections 8 and 10). The historical tradition which has reached us relating to the period of the judges and of the kings of Israel is the main source, though only of course ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... discuss the question of the divinity of Christ was considered blasphemy, and the person so offending was punished most severely by the criminal laws. At the present time this wretched remnant of the dark ages is practically a dead letter. The friends of Shelley suffered from this most intolerant spirit. Keats, it is believed by many, was wounded unto death for daring to speak on behalf of freedom, and we are given glimpses in the Adonais of his feelings on the subject; Leigh Hunt ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... to pass which would have been most honourable to him and to them, if there were not abundant proofs that it was meant to be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty of conscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation was put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to speak again of the mill-model, invisible in its carpet-roll above the fireplace. Remember that what Dr. Nash elicited from her, as an interesting case of dementia, was not necessarily repeated to Mrs. Thrale, and would have been a dead letter in the columns of the Lancet later on. Certainly the chances of an eclaircissement were at a minimum when Gwen returned from London, her own newly acquired knowledge of its materials apart. But then, how about the poor crazy old soul's daughter's new-born love for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... forgery. The varieties in a man's writing, caused by his writing with his glove on or off, with a quill or a bad steel pen, drunk or sober, calm or agitated, in full daylight or dusk, etc., etc., all this is a dead letter to them, and they have a bias toward suspicion of forgery; and a banker's clerk, with his mere general impression, is better evidence than they are. But I am an artist of a very different stamp. I never reason a priori. I compare; and I have no bias. I never will have. The judges know this ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... turbulence, neglect of duty, extreme ignorance, and extreme poverty; but there was not much real oppression or religious bigotry, and there were no signs of political disturbance or conspiracy. After a few years the portions of the penal code which restricted the Catholic worship became a dead letter, and Catholic chapels were everywhere rising on the Protestant estates. The monopoly, however, of place and power continued, though the legal profession was full of professing converts. The theological temperature in both sects had greatly subsided. Land was usually let by the owner on long leases, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... antiquity have passed from the secluded cell of the specialist and have come within reach of the general reader, or even of the student of literature. For many centuries the cuneiform writing was literally a dead letter to the learned world. The clue to the understanding of this alphabet was originally discovered in 1850 by Colonel Rawlinson, and described by him in a paper read before the Royal Society. Hence the knowledge of Assyrian literature is, so far as Europe is concerned, scarcely ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... valuable, induced a law, restricting the number of acres patented to any one person, at any one time, to a thousand. Our monarchical predecessors had the same facilities, and it may be added, the same propensities, to rendering a law a dead letter, as belongs to our republican selves. The patent on our table, being for a nominal hundred thousand acres, contains the names of one hundred different grantees, while three several parchment documents at its side, each signed by thirty-three ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... with their lips only. That the words of the New Testament contained the highest truth accessible to man,—truth not to be taken from nor added to,—all good men (as I thought) confessed: never before had I seen a man so resolved that no word of it should be a dead letter to him. I once said: "But do you really think that no part of the New Testament may have been temporary in its object? for instance, what should we have lost, if St. Paul had never written the verse, 'The cloak which I have left at Troas, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.'" ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... she said. "A dead letter! If he had sent it back to me, I think it would have cured me; but now there is no cure for me at all. If he had read it, he would have come,—if he had only read it; but it is a dead letter, and he ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
