"High-handed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... struck him with his cane and then shut him up in the Hohentwiel, where he lay for four years without light, table, chair or bed. In like manner the patriotic publicist, Moser, was imprisoned for five years, without trial and without sentence, because he had withheld his consent to the duke's high-handed proceedings. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... were added because the French Royalists and the Spaniards asserted that England's high-handed conduct at Toulon arose from her resolve to make of it a second Gibraltar. The insinuation struck home then, and has been widely repeated.[256] But, on the first receipt of the news of the gain of Toulon, Grenville declared explicitly to the Austrian ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... fussin', an' you've seen me in a pinch or two; an' yet this very mornin' you intimated than I 'd risk Barbie on a pony she couldn't ride. The' ain't nothin' I wouldn't do for that child, but you don't understand her, an' if you go on in your high-handed way with her you 're in for the sorrow o' your ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... should love to," Flora murmured, not knowing whether she was more embarrassed or pleased at this high-handed dispensation which placed her ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... went off capitally. Every one was delighted, and I not the least so, when a messenger arrived from the director, who had just returned to town, requesting an immediate interview. Littichau was enraged beyond measure at my high-handed proceedings in this matter, of which he had been informed by our good friend Reissiger. If his baronial coronet had been on his head during this interview, it would assuredly have tumbled off. The fact that I should have conducted ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... recruits (i.e. recruits liable to military service but in excess of the annual 103,000 enrollable by law) pending the adoption of the Army bills by the two parliaments. The object of this apparently high-handed step was to avoid the expense and delay of summoning the supernumeraries again to the colours when the bills should have received parliamentary sanction; but it was not unnaturally resented by the Hungarian Chamber, which has ever possessed a lively ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... their sheep had also come over to winter in British territory, and their encampments could be seen all along the road wherever there was sufficient grass for their flocks. The Tibetans—Lamas and officials—maintained a high-handed and insolent demeanour as long as we were in Bhot, which they regarded as part of their own country; a fact observed not only by Dr. Wilson and the Political Peskhar, who travelled with us up to the frontier and back, as far as Askote, but also by Mr. Larkin, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... man, for a king, but his learning did not enlighten him in matters of common sense. As a man and a ruler, he was far inferior to his unschooled and light-hearted contemporary, Henry IV of France. Henry VIII had been a heartless despot, and Elizabeth had ruled the nation in a high-handed manner; but both of them had known how to make themselves popular and had had the good sense to say as little as possible about their rights. James, on the contrary, had a fancy for ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... valuable to be risked on the range. We had over fifty stolen last season, that cost us over three hundred dollars a head. I had a letter this morning from our superintendent, asking me to unite with what seems to be a general movement to suppress this high-handed stealing that has run riot in this county in the past. Mr. Baughman has probably acquainted you with the general sentiment in cattle circles regarding what should be done. I wish to assure you ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... Louisiana planter, who designed her for his harem. Her lover, a slave named David, resisted that design to the only gain of being flogged, while his loved one was borne away. David was no common black; he had been educated in France, and was the plantation surgeon. The story of this high-handed and twofold outrage reached Rudolph, whose yacht was on the coast. The prince, landing in the night with a boat's crew, carried off David and Cecily from the planter's calaboose, leaving a sum of money as indemnity. The two were wedded in France, but Cecily, won away by a very bad man, had ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... so very decisive a step as to board and carry the brig, there was now of course nothing for us but to go through with the affair in the same high-handed fashion. I therefore demanded at once to see the ship's papers; and after many indignant protests they were produced and flung down upon the cabin table for our inspection. These fully established the identity of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... leader of the opposition; and in 1807, when the Tories returned to power, he became foreign secretary in the ministry of the Duke of Portland, of which Mr. Perceval was the leading member. It was then that Canning seized the Danish fleet at Copenhagen, giving as his excuse for this bold and high-handed measure that Napoleon would have taken it if he had not. It was through his influence and that of Lord Castlereagh that Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterward the Duke of Wellington, was sent to Spain to conduct ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... There are laws to punish such high-handed methods as yours, and I'll see that you are punished, and well punished, too. If I can't do it, there are others who will—who will see that ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... censure Theodahad's avarice, "a vulgar vice, which the kinsman of the king and a man of Amal blood is especially bound to avoid", and to complain that "you, who should have shown an example of glorious moderation, have caused the scandal of high-handed spoliation". After Theodoric's death the process of unjust accumulation went on rapidly. From every part of Tuscany the cry went up that the provincials were being oppressed and their lands taken from them on no pretext whatever; and the Counts of the Royal Patrimony had to complain ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... Hugh in turn felt, no doubt, a great contempt for him, but Longchamp had no hesitation in measuring himself with the bishop. Soon after the departure of the king he turned Hugh out of the exchequer and took his county of Northumberland away from him. Other high-handed proceedings followed, and many appeals against his chancellor were carried to Richard in France. To rearrange matters a great council was summoned to meet in Normandy about the end of winter. The result was that Richard sustained his minister as Longchamp had doubtless ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... them? I wish they may neither woo nor dine henceforward, neither here nor anywhere else, but let this be the very last time, for the waste you all make of my son's estate. Did not your fathers tell you when you were children, how good Ulysses had been to them—never doing anything high-handed, nor speaking harshly to anybody? Kings may say things sometimes, and they may take a fancy to one man and dislike another, but Ulysses never did an unjust thing by anybody—which shows what bad hearts you have, and that ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... him: and this Narses, smooth-faced, passionless, thoughtful, is the conqueror of the Goths, and having conquered them, he would not suffer that a hair of the remnant of them should be hurt, because he had given his word. High-handed Henry the Fifth, claiming power over the Church, being refused full coronation by Pope Paschal till he yields, seizes Pope and College of Cardinals then and there, and imprisons them till he has starved them to submission, and half requites the Church for Gregory's humiliation ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... earlier in Bramante's, much money of the Church had been misappropriated by a gang of fraudulent and mutually indulgent craftsmen. It was not to be expected that these people should tamely submit to the intruder who put their master's cherished model on the shelf, and set about, in his high-handed way, to refashion the whole building from the bottom to the top. During Sangallo's lifetime no love had been lost between him and Buonarroti, and after his death it is probable that the latter dealt severely with the creatures of his predecessor. The ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... that something about his high-handed domestic readjusting was unusual. She looked from her father to Harriet, and after ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... necessary, after the temple had been destroyed, to make any effort to justify these high-handed proceedings. But Mdlle. Paulet, on whose pretended conversion to Catholicism the proceedings had been instituted, was now requested to admit the authenticity of the documents. She was still imprisoned in Toulouse; and although entreated and threatened by turns to admit ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that, since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in the land. The South, subjected to a second conquest after having laid down its arms, felt outraged and grew sullen. To most people in that section, as well as to very many at the North, this dictation by Congress to acknowledged States in time of peace seemed high-handed and guilty usurpation. Northern Congressmen incessantly called slavery barbarism, and yet combined to transmute to-day into electors and law-makers those who but yesterday had been slaves. Black legislatures inevitably abused their power, becoming ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... consecrated ground was considered next to sacrilege; and well it was for the fugitives in the sanctuary in those iron times that it should be so considered. Yet not the less is it necessary for us to distinguish a high-handed military measure from actual sacrilege, for which there can be no apology, and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... own medium, as it were, through his own customs and predispositions, to the soundness of Western methods of government. Therefore, in due time he made some dangerous mistakes. By virtue of certain high-handed actions he was the cause of several riots in native villages, and he had himself been attacked at more than one village as he rode between the fields of sugar-cane. On these occasions he had behaved very well—certainly no one could possibly doubt his bravery; but that was a small offset to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you think o' that! Ain't it the end o' the law? The high-handed way he has o' doin' things! Think o' the likes o' me closin' up my 'town-house' an' takin' my fam'ly (includin' Flicker an' Nixcomeraus) 'to the country-place'—for all the world like I was a lady, born ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... dead bodies lie, "is spiritually Egypt." Of all nations presented in Bible history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living God, and resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured upon more open and high-handed rebellion against the authority of Heaven than did the king of Egypt. When the message was brought him by Moses, in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly answered, "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go."(392) This is atheism; ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... those two high-handed courses should I have taken, even had you not stipulated against them. The very essence of our marriage plan is that those two conditions are kept. I see as well as you do, even more than you do, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... that Dick would call for help, this high-handed one was reckoning without a knowledge of the kind of boy he had to deal with. For Dick, though he was just a little more than slightly alarmed, would have been ashamed to call ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... exchanges and opened up a lively war on the others. As befitting its size, it claimed everything. It introduced Gray as the original inventor of the telephone, and ordered its lawyers to take action at once against the Bell Company for infringement of the Gray patent. This high-handed action, it hoped, would most quickly bring the little Bell group into a humble and submissive frame of mind. Every morning the Western Union looked to see the white flag flying over the Bell headquarters. But no white ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... to the hotel next morning, Eliza was not to be found. She was not in, and no one knew where she was. Mr. Hutchins was inclined to grumble at her absence as an act of high-handed liberty, but Miss Rexford was not interested in his comments. She went back to her work at home, and felt in dread of the visit which she had arranged for Alec Trenholme to make that day. She began to be afraid that, having no information of importance with which to absorb his attention, he might ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... queer on a small scale," said Blondet, "but on a large we call it finance. There are high-handed proceedings criminal between man and man that amount to nothing when spread out over any number of men, much as a drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a pail of water. You take a man's life, you are guillotined. But if, for any political conviction whatsoever, you ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... neglect to study the interests, and conciliate the affections, and instruct the opinions, and champion the rights of the people, that the latter become discontented and turbulent, and fall into the hands of demagogues: the demagogue always steps in, where the patriot is wanting. There is a common high-handed cant among the high-feeding, and, as they fancy themselves, high-minded men, about putting down the mob; but all true physicians know that it is better to sweeten the blood than attack the tumour, to apply the emollient rather than the cautery. It is absurd, in a country like England, where there ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... cool authority about Bannon that disturbed the men. They had been led to believe that his power reached only the work on the elevator, and that an attempt on his part to interfere in any way with their organization would be an act of high-handed tyranny, "to be resisted to the death" (Grady's words). But these men standing before their boss, in his own office, were not the same men that thrilled with righteous wrath under Grady's eloquence in the meetings over Barry's saloon. So they ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... first Stuart Kings of England there were quarrels with the Dutch that nearly led to war. The Dutch colonists and traders in the Far Eastern seas had used high-handed measures to prevent English competition. Nearer home there were disputes as to the right claimed by the King's ships to make any foreign ship lower her flag and salute the English ensign. But it was not till the days of the Commonwealth ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... fumed at not getting his desired tete-a-tete, but with all the will was too hedged in by conventionality and a sense of politeness to force matters, as his friend, Michael Arranstoun, would have done with high-handed unconcern. Thus, his cure at Carlsbad was drawing to a close before he again spent an afternoon quite alone with Sabine Howard. They had gone to the Aberg to tea, and the Princess had expressed herself too tired to walk back, and had got into the waiting carriage, making Cranley Beaton ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... sending back a vessel, its captain, and crew, is a very great one indeed, and, in our opinion, more safely lodged with the territorial judge. We would ourselves trust the tribunals of France to decide, when there is just cause for so high-handed an act of authority over the persons and property of so many of our citizens, to all of whom these tribunals will stand in a neutral and impartial relation, rather than any single person whom we ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of intellectual sharp practice like that of the shrewd but unprincipled Ulysses. If we were consistent honourable gentlemen, into Charybdis or on to Scylla we should go like lambs; every subterfuge by the help of which we escape our difficulty is but an arbitrary high-handed act of classification that turns a deaf ear to everything not robust enough to hold its own; nevertheless even the most scrupulous of philosophers pockets his consistency at a pinch, and refuses to let the native hue of resolution be sicklied ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... was silent. Cora made the most of her chance to get back at Linda for her high-handed treatment of her. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... the charge of cattle rustling, he had absolutely no proof to go upon. He had the moral conviction that the man was mixed up in the affair, but not a scintilla of evidence that would stand for a moment in a court of law. It would be high-handed and indefensible to make this man a prisoner, and take him on to the ranch for questioning by Melton. He would simply stand on his rights and defy them to prove anything against him. They would be forced to let him go, and, being henceforth ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... expenses for the supportation of the same, and by what ways it shall be gotten." All was peace for a short time, and the most friendly relations existed between the queen and her Council, till the first high-handed attempt of Henry VIII. to interfere through his sister in the government of Scotland, resulted in her temporary banishment, and the removal of the infant king from ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Martin, whose wrath had waxed hotter every day, as he saw power after power extended to the federal government, at length gave way and went back to Maryland, vowing that he would have nothing more to do with such high-handed proceedings. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... year is marked by the high-handed treatment of the island of Melos by the Athenians. This was one of the very few islands which had not been compelled to submit to Athens, but had endeavoured to remain neutral. Thither the Athenians now sent an expedition, absolutely without excuse, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... back to the officers of Fort Laramie, and they said he had done right and did not detain him. Nor did any of Jules' friends ever molest him. He returned to his work on the Overland. After this he grew more turbulent, and was guilty of high-handed outrages and of a general disposition to run things wherever he went. The officers at Fort Halleck arrested him and refused to turn him over to the stage line unless the latter agreed to discharge him. This was done, and now Slade, out of work, began to be bad at heart. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... head of two hundred horsemen across a stretch of country including hill and forest, to fall like a bolt from the blue on the suspected Prince in the midst of his gathering warriors, was a handsome piece of daring, and the high-handed treatment of the Prince was held by his advocates to be justified by the provocation, and the result. He scattered an unprepared body of many hundreds, who might have enveloped him, and who would presumptively have stood their ground, had they not taken ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... high-handed manner," she confessed to Gloriana, as they were preparing for bed that night, "but I couldn't bear to think of that selfish old cat—yes, that's what she is,—imposing upon Mrs. McKittrick again. I remember the boys, though it was quite a while ago that they were here. They were only ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... valiant foe believed. The agent of the British government in the China seas—himself, by the way, a philosophic radical—had forced a war upon the Chinese. The cabinet supported him. On the motion of Cobden, the House censured the proceeding. Mr. Gladstone, whose hatred of high-handed iniquities in China had been stirred in early days,[362] as the reader may recall, made the most powerful speech in a remarkable debate. 'Gladstone rose at half-past nine,' Phillimore says (Mar. 3), 'and delivered for nearly two hours an oration which enthralled ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... a large, black head, was a despatch from Baton Rouge relaying other despatches received at that point, from many points between Plaquimine and Bayou Sara. These, in short, told the story of the most high-handed attempt at river piracy known in recent years. The private yacht of Calvin Davidson, a wealthy northern business man, on his way South for the winter, had been seized by a band of masked ruffians, who boarded her while the yacht's owner ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... chosen as arbiter; and having enticed the two contestants to Bayonne, he set them both aside, and gave the crown of Spain to his brother Joseph,—Murat, who had married Napoleon's sister Caroline, taking the throne of Naples. This high-handed proceeding roused the Spanish people to revolt. The officers of Napoleon were several times defeated. A British force under Wellington—then Sir Arthur Wellesley—appeared in Portugal to lend help to the national movement. A French fleet in Cadiz ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... often as he drained it. Whatever else his captors intended to do to him they were not going to starve him. Of course the talk was all about the war, which Mr. West-all declared wasn't coming, and the high-handed action taken by the Washington authorities in sending Captain Stokes across the river from Illinois to seize ten thousand stand of arms that were stored in the St. Louis Arsenal. Of course this was done to keep the weapons from falling into the hands ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... morning, the chief, his son and daughter, and his son-in-law came on board the Resolution, and the three last-mentioned were invited to the Discovery, with a view to their detention there till the deserters should be brought back—an act of high-handed injustice of which, one would suppose, no amount of condescension and familiarity on the part of the English was ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the West, Astor, operating through his agents, could debauch, rob and slay Indians with impunity. As he was virtually the governing body there, without fear of being hindered, he thus could act in the most high-handed, arbitrary and forcible ways. In the East, however, where law, or the forms of law, prevailed, he had to have recourse to methods which bore no open trace of the brutal and sanguinary. He had to become the insidious and devious ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... to do so; but the cavalier deposing of their chosen man Banion—who before them all at the meeting had shown himself fit to lead—and the cool appointment of Woodhull in his place had on reflection seemed to them quite too high-handed a proposition. They said ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... in their high-handed policy, and gave to General Gage discretionary power as to a continuance of the troops in Boston; and this officer had come to the sensible conclusion that troops were worse than needless, for they were an unnecessary irritation and detrimental to a restoration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... with relish; "and in the meantime, the heir to all this high-handed authority is no ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... occurred in connection with the Greek question of 1850, when the English fleet threatened to blockade the Piraeus. Punch was indignant at this high-handed show of strength towards the little kingdom, and taking the mean-looking, grovelling British Lion by the ear (in his cartoon) asks him, "Why don't you hit someone of your own size?" With the exception of the occasion when ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... vessel of war belonging to the colony, a man of large property, and occupying a place in the very front rank of Boston society, had been arrested for witchcraft! What a state of insanity the religious delusion had reached, can be seen by this high-handed proceeding. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... Richard went on lording it over the Sicilians in the most high-handed manner. Some nobles of high rank were so indignant at these proceedings that they left the town. Richard immediately confiscated their estates and converted the proceeds to his own use. He proceeded to fortify his encampment more and more. The monastery which he had forcibly ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of children to their parents naught can be said but praise. Respectful in word and deed, every letter, every record shows that the young Puritans truly honored their fathers and mothers. It were well for them to thus obey the law of God, for by the law of the land high-handed disobedience of parents was punishable by death. I do not find this penalty ever was paid, as it was under the sway of grim Calvin, a fact which redounds to the credit both of justice ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... This high-handed diplomacy was backed by formidable demonstrations. The whole country west of the River Sorel, or Richelieu, was occupied by a savage host, and the distant fort of Cataracouy, on the Ontario shore, was with difficulty held against 800 Iroquois, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... character and great influence. During the civil troubles he took no very decided part until after the misfortunes of Charles I., when his loyalty overmastered all other feelings. In the first disputes between the king and the parliament he disapproved of the high-handed measures of the Court, and, disliking the government of Strafford and the principles of Archbishop Laud, he was considered to be one of the peers attached to the popular cause. But, like Lord Falkland, he could not heartily join the party opposed to the king, whom he accompanied to York ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... -metoeci-, full remission of debts to the debtors, lands to those that had none, freedom to the slaves; nearly 15,000 such manumitted slaves fought in the army of Archelaus. The most fearful scenes were the result of this high-handed subversion of all existing order. The most considerable mercantile cities, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, Tralles, Sardes, closed their gates against the king's governors or put them to death, and declared for Rome.(16) On the other hand ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... French, a crushing taxation was imposed, and this rendered the trading and upper classes, upon whom the burden principally fell, as hostile to the French domination as were the lower classes. Thus the French themselves had, by their high-handed conduct and their absolute disregard for the feelings and religious sentiments of the people, prepared a mine that was on ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... portion of their funds in mules and mustangs. Among the rest, Lieut. Dick Mason and Adjt. Wash. Armstrong set up their private teams. Now, it so fell out, that one of Armstrong's men stole Mason's mule, and being caught during the day with the stolen property on him, or he on it, the high-handed private, (who, barring his propensity to ride in preference to walking, was a very clever sort of fellow, and rather popular with the Adjutant,) nabbed him as a hawk would ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the doings of Herod, Pilate, and their unholy allies, for the simple reason given in explaining Acts ii. 23—viz., that if such were the case, then there is no foothold upon which to condemn those high-handed sinners. They were verily guilty, but we cannot find a shadow of fault with them if they were only doing what they were foreordained to do. What, then, had God determined to be done? He had determined to send His son into the world to make an ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... with anger he opened a parley. He declared that he would have the law, that he would publish her high-handed act from one end of the county of Simcoe to the other, that he would get himself elected for trustee and drive her out of the section. He blustered, he threatened, he scolded, he argued. And through it all the obstacle sat on her basket, in the middle of the highway, not deigning ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... Governor Pickens seized Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie on the 27th, and the custom-house and other United States property on the 28th. Before leaving, the commissioners made a formal call upon the President. The latter expected some apology or explanation in relation to the high-handed outrages which had been perpetrated. Had they temporized, or even used conciliatory language on this occasion, it is possible the South might still have preserved the ascendancy it had always held in the councils of the President. Fortunately, they assumed ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... put one's talent in a napkin; not think small beer of oneself &c. (vanity) 880. Adj. dignified; stately; proud, proud-crested; lordly, baronial; lofty-minded; highsouled, high-minded, high-mettled[obs3], high-handed, high-plumed, high-flown, high-toned. haughty lofty, high, mighty, swollen, puffed up, flushed, blown; vainglorious; purse-proud, fine; proud as a peacock, proud as Lucifer; bloated with pride. supercilious, disdainful, bumptious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... suffering from what an old writer has called “the ayen-bite of Inwyt,” {149b} or, in modern parlance, “remorse of conscience.” But if, judged by the scale of expiation, made in endowment and embodied in stone, these high-handed lords would seem to have been sinners above their more ordinary fellows, we must at least gratefully allow that they have left to us of the present day a goodly heritage, which even our modern vastly increased wealth has not enabled us ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... unsatisfactory subject of investigation was Mr. Hand, whom Straker watched for a day or two with growing suspicion. Straker had sputtered, good-naturedly enough, over the "accident" to his racing-car, and had taken it for granted, in rather a high-handed manner, that Mr. Hand was to make repairs. His manner toward the chauffeur was not pleasant, being a combination of the patron and the bully. It was exactly the sort of manner to precipitate civil war, though diplomacy might ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... expressed wish of the people, and so craven and degraded as to need an army to protect them in their position, we feel that we should be recreant to every principle of self-respect, honor, integrity, and patriotism to bow tamely to such high-handed tyranny, a parallel for which is only found in the attempts of the British government, in its most corrupt stages, against the rights, liberties, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to see how numerous are those in favour of removing the veils from the faces of the women. Many men with whom I have talked think the custom not only archaic, but thought-stifling. The Turkish authorities, thinking to extinguish this light of liberty, have greatly added to its flame, and their high-handed action has materially assisted the creation of a wider public opinion and a better understanding of this crucial problem." The other question exercising opinion in Ḥaifa is the formation of a military and strategic quarter out of Akka, which in this is resuming its bygone importance. ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... their chief is not given. These Vikings would certainly be Norse, either detached from the following of Rolf Ganger, who wintered in England in 875 A.D. the year before his descent on Normandy; or else independent rovers who, like Rolf, had been driven from Norway by the high-handed methods of Harald Fairhair. Indeed, the time when a Norse contingent was not present with the English forces, from this period till at least that of the battle of Brunanburh in 947 A.D. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... treachery and mutiny had been at work. Matters had gone ill with the colony, and Columbus did not improve the situation by his presence. He was a brilliant navigator, but no statesman. Complaints reached Spain, and a Spaniard was sent out to replace Columbus. This high-handed official at once put the poor navigator in chains and placed him on board a ship bound for Spain. Queen Isabella was overwhelmed with grief when the snowy-haired explorer once again stood before her, his face lined with suffering. He ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... The high-handed measures of Ferdinand, in regard to the marquis of Priego and some other nobles, excited general disgust among the jealous aristocracy of Castile. But they appear to have found more favor with the commons, who were probably not unwilling to see ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... This high-handed procedure on the part of the Government created a bad impression in France and Great Britain. What added to that was the dispatch which announced, only a few days before, the arrival in Saloniki in a special train from Sofia of four German officers: Baron Falkenhausen, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... to have continued to hold the manor on lease under the bishop, and to have acted in a somewhat high-handed manner to his spiritual superior, probably under the influence of the change in religious sentiment between the reigns of "the bloody Mary," and her sister Elizabeth of glorious memory. For again we find a document {21b} of the reign of the latter, in which the Bishop ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... James's presence. There was, however, a consultation between the two Regents, and Douglas's letter was read with such angry comments as may be supposed. The Earl's contempt evidently cut deep, and strongly emphasised the necessity of dealing authoritatively with such a high-handed ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... away from the Deanery all that day. On the morrow he heard, to his relief, that Oliver had returned to London with the unedifying Chipmunk. He took Peggy for a drive in the Rolls-Royce, and told her of Oliver's high-handed methods. She sympathized. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... on his hands and knees, and he grunted as much to Bateese on the way to the canoe. He felt, at the same time, that the situation owed him something more of discussion and explanation. Even now, after half killing him, the woman was taking a rather high-handed advantage of him. She might at least have assured him that she had made a mistake and was sorry. But she did not speak to him again. She said nothing more to Bateese, and when the half-breed deposited him in the midship part of the canoe, facing the bow, she stood back in silence. ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the propriety of such a raid with spirit. I contended that we might have reason to regret, at the end of another rope, so high-handed a proceeding. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the shop in the evening, Laurent decided that he would ask his wife for a few thousand francs, and that he would resort to high-handed measures to obtain them. Reflection told him that vice would be an expensive thing, for a man. He patiently awaited Therese, who had not yet come in. When she arrived, he affected gentleness, and refrained from breathing a word about having followed her in the morning. She was slightly tipsy, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... visited three of the outfits, urging them to hold all their reserve forces subject to call, in case an attempt was made to force the dead-line. At each camp I took every possible chance to sow the seeds of dissension and hatred against the high-handed methods of The Western Supply Company. Defining our situation clearly, I asked each foreman, in case these herds defied local authority, who would indemnify the owners for the loss among native cattle by fever between Powderville and the mouth of the Yellowstone. Would the drovers? ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... hard with a woman, especially a pretty one. That girl's a saucy and fascinating minx, and as dangerous as twenty men. I'll keep a watch on her movements from this on, and if she gets into mischief again I'll transport her to Detroit, or give her away to the Indians, She must stop her high-handed foolishness." ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... partnership, and could not I come out to him. He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas was terribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been against my emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are very high-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were not allowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became so distressed that I had thoughts—I actually contemplated ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... not deserve this accusation. Whatever share he had in the injudicious attitude of the Government, or in the blunders it committed, must be attributed to the sort of high-handed carelessness which distinguished the man. His singular fairness in the business is thus recorded by Baron Stockmar. "As I was leaving the Palace, I met Melbourne on the staircase. He took me aside and used the following remarkable and true words, strongly characteristic ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... spirit, once we are absorbed into the atmosphere of her romance, to dispute anything she would have us believe. The interest of the Sicilian Romance, which is far greater than that of her first novel, arises entirely out of the situations. There is no gradual unfolding of character and motive. The high-handed marquis, the jealous marchioness, the imprisoned wife, the vapid hero, the two virtuous sisters, the leader of the banditti, the respectable, prosy governess, are a set of dolls fitted ingeniously into the framework of the plot. They have more substance than ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... usual cool, high-handed air he entered his aunt's house, and asked for Thyme. Faithful to his definite, if somewhat crude theory, that Stephen and Cecilia and all their sort were amateurs, he never inquired for them, though not unfrequently he would, while waiting, stroll ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The Captain failing in his efforts to fasten him securely, I took my saddle girth, backed him up to the tree, buckled him to it, and returned to my quarters. This proved to be the last straw which broke the unfortunate camel's back. It was a high-handed outrage upon the person of a volunteer soldier; the last and worst of the many arbitrary and severe acts of which I had been guilty. The regiment seemed to arise en masse, and led on by a few reckless men who had long disliked me, advanced with threats ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... sides, was small, especially in the city. Indeed, the councils and people had, in the year 1513, executed a solemn oath against "Wages and Bribes," as it was called, and two years later, at the rumor of a high-handed breach of it, the people of the lakes rose up and by threats produced the flight of some of the bribed, and the dismissal and punishment of others; but the oath was taken on one day, uproar followed on the second, and then new transgressions on the third. When Zwingli came to Zurich, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... crowd of courtiers of Whitehall), and although, when churchwarden in his parish, he ever preserved the laudable custom of Whitsun and Martinmas ales for the good of the poor, and persisted in having the Book of Sports read from the pulpit,—he was averse from all high-handed measures of musketooning, and calivering, and gambriling those of the meaner sort, or those of better degree (as Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, and Another whom I shudder to mention), who, for Conscience' sake, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of his acquaintance. It represented the doleful perplexity of a wealthy and handsome young English knight of the olden time, who, in the course of a border foray, had been captured and carried off to the castle of a hard-headed and high-handed old baron. The unfortunate youth was thrown into a dungeon, and a tall gallows erected before the castle gate for his execution. When all was ready, he was brought into the castle hall where the grim baron was seated ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... Tom, thinking it quite time to be high-handed, "a first-class, howling idiot, Pepper, to act so. If you don't believe me, when I say I haven't anything to keep back from you, I'll go straight upstairs. Some ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... of these incidents look a little high-handed, as though everything was allowable in a race, regardless of other people's rights; but they really don't happen often. This time I tore one of my water boots on a stump going through the trees by Council. At a near-by cabin I tried to ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... friends outside of Washington. Well, no matter. I couldn't think of taking our convention into any church when we had a chance to go back to our old home, and that in a new and elegant house reared upon the ashes of the old. So if killed I am for this high-handed piece of work, why killed I ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... The restriction of the right of preaching to priests who received licenses from the Crown silenced every voice of opposition. Even to those who received these licenses theological controversy was forbidden; and a high-handed process of "tuning the pulpits" by express directions as to the subject and tenor of each special discourse made the preachers at every crisis mere means of diffusing the royal will. As a first step in this process every bishop, abbot, and parish priest was required by the new Vicar-General ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... that cayuse," sharply commanded the stranger. "An' I'll take yore Winchester as a fine for this high-handed business you've been carrying on. You may be the local court an' all the town officials, but I'm the Governor, an' here's my Supreme Court, as I was saying to the boys a little while ago. Yo're overruled. Get off that cayuse, an' ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... this legislation was high-handed, it was not careless. Even statesmen of the greatest strength, having once been drawn into this flood, were borne on into excesses which, a little earlier, would have appalled them. Committees of experts were appointed ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... rest of the world; though public opinion, as I have said, seldom gets a chance to penetrate its dark domain; though the whole place is stamped with its own peculiar, ironlike individuality; and though crimes, high-handed and atrocious, may there be committed, with almost as much impunity as upon the deck of a pirate ship—it is, nevertheless, altogether, to outward seeming, a most strikingly interesting place, full of life, activity, and spirit; and presents a very favorable contrast to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the second meeting. The Japanese demurred at this, being so exclusive that they did not wish their capital nor their country even to be seen by foreigners. Instead of respecting these wishes, Captain Perry approached still nearer, until he was only eight miles from Tokio. This high-handed policy had the desired effect. Five special Japanese commissioners met Captain Perry, and in a building within range of the ships' guns, negotiations were carried on. They resulted, on March 31st, in the signing ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... easily have been adjusted, seems incredible; but it should be remembered that at this period Spain and the United States were by no means on the best of terms. Spanish war-vessels in the West Indies had been overhauling American merchantmen in a high-handed way, which had already called forth the remonstrances of our Government; and the complaints from Cuba of the insecurity of property and life of American citizens had become more numerous than ever. Still, the result of the dispute was a surprise to the world; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... all these high-handed actions," snarled the deposed autocrat of the Trading Company. His heart hardened as he reflected that, after all, he was the legal marital master of the slim girl there, hidden in her ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... oppose it to the bitter end, Stephen. Yes, I would face poverty a thousand times rather than see a child of mine subjected to such indignity. I have watched Matilda's high-handed work with keen interest, I have noted everything, and if she thinks she has hoodwinked ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... selfish, conniving old rascal, that's what I am. We've always wanted children, Mrs. Bingle and I, and we never—er—never seemed to have 'em as other people do, so we began to look for children that needed parents as much as we needed children. That's the whole thing in a nut-shell. We are a bit high-handed about it, too. We never have a child until it is past the teething age and can walk a little bit and talk a little bit. So, you see, we manage to have 'em without the drawbacks. That's where we ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... spoilt by success and a gratified ambition, so that he thinks himself a small Alexander in his own way, and able to conquer any obstacles which may present themselves, has a certain high-handed activity of will about him that does not interfere with his duties in life; he is not made fretful and impatient and exigeant as a woman is—as if he alone of all mankind is to be exempt from misfortune ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... knows what feelings, she found herself seated beside me, Sophy Smith, while Alicia, beside the doctor, tossed gay remarks over her shoulder. Miss Hopkins realized that all Hyndsville would witness what she herself knew to be high-handed capture by force, but which must hideously resemble capitulation; and she also realized that ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... forth the declarations of eye and ear witnesses; this was the moment of the Gessellen-incident, and the outbreak of hostility between Prince Bismarck and Baron de Rozzenbach and Gustav Freitag, the novelist, and the celebrated jurisconsult for whose illegal imprisonment the high-handed chancellor had later to atone. But there apparently resulted from all these disputes that, as the glory of "priority of invention" was so eagerly sought for, there must have been an "inventor!" That was in reality the point on which Sybel "spoke," and he ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... captured a dozen desperadoes; that he was one of the road agents himself; that he was saved from lynching only by the timely arrival of cavalry; that the action of the United States government in rescuing him from the civil authorities was a most high-handed interference with State rights; that he received his reward from a grateful railroad by being promoted; that a lovely woman as recompense for his villainy—but bother! it's my business to tell what really occurred, and not what the world chooses to invent. And if any man thinks he would ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... they were sympathetic over Madam Bartlett's accident—the Martels' sympathy was always on tap for friend or foe,—but that did not interfere with a frank enjoyment of Quin's spirited account of her high-handed treatment of the family, especially the incident ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... of Armagh, born in Yorkshire, a high-handed Churchman and imitator of Laud; was foolhardy enough once to engage, nowise to his credit, in public debate with such a dialectician as Thomas Hobbes on the questions of necessity and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
