"Mitigation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discontinuous. Anyhow there is no doubt that the specifically wolfish attitude of one nation to another can hardly be found in its pure state, being already tempered and mitigated by the practice and custom of diplomacy: and this diplomatic mitigation, however superficial, does something to break down that windowless isolation which is the essential cause of violence between two independent moral entities. Pacificists of the democratic school sometimes present a fallacious view of international diplomacy, ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... Doellinger and he were divided on the question of the severity of condemnation to be passed on persecutors and their approvers. Acton found to his dismay that Doellinger (like Creighton) was willing to accept pleas in arrest of judgment or at least mitigation of sentence, which the layman's sterner code repudiated. Finding that he had misunderstood his master, Acton was for a time profoundly discouraged, declared himself isolated, and surrendered the outlook ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... underfoot ought to guide her down the drive to the great gateway; and once outside the park, clear of its overshadowing trees, one would surely find mitigation of darkness sufficient ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... and the Athenians passed their verdict accordingly. But the recollections of Lemnos and Marathon, and the sight of the fallen general, who lay stretched on a couch before them, pleaded successfully in mitigation of punishment, and the sentence was commuted from death to a fine of fifty talents. This was paid by his son, the afterward illustrious Cimon, Miltiades dying, soon after the trial, of the injury which he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... never even seen an annuity distributed to aggravate the muddle with their suggestions would be most presumptuous. It is as little as we can do to abstain. We may venture here only to say a word in mitigation of the deep stain left upon the fair fame of the United States by its management of Indian affairs. The contrast so frequently drawn with the course of things in Canada is not wholly just. It was the French who saved the Canadian Indians from the mere sordid extinction which has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... houses so shut up; also several people broke out by force in many places, as I shall observe by-and-by. But it was a public good that justified the private mischief, and there was no obtaining the least mitigation by any application to magistrates or government at that time, at least not that I heard of. This put the people upon all manner of stratagem in order, if possible, to get out; and it would fill a little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... themselves the title of Social Reformers; these were the people who insisted, if not upon the actual evils and sufferings indicated in this illustrative note of social contradictions, then upon violent opposition to their complements in the way of mitigation and relief. And I was keenly ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... of the King. What he wanted was that the Roman Catholics should be exempted from all laws imposing penalties and disabilities on account of nonconformity, but that the persecution of the Covenanters should go on without mitigation. [135] This scheme encountered strenuous opposition in the Council. Some members were unwilling to see the existing laws relaxed. Others, who were by no means averse to some relaxation, yet felt that it would be monstrous to admit Roman Catholics to the highest honours of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... costly embassies to the Chinese capital. These, however, failed to produce any tangible result. Their gifts were accepted, and their representatives were accorded a more or less gratifying reception; but there was no mitigation of the severity shown by the local mandarins, and, for all practical purposes, the money expended on these missions was as good as thrown away. The Portuguese succeeded in obtaining an improvement in their lot only by combining their naval forces with ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... (M16) The only mitigation of the sentence was the eternal enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the Serpent, in which the final victory should be given to the former. The rite of sacrifice was introduced as a type of the ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... one occasion they decreed that a certain man whom they considered in fault was to pay a fine. The unwary litigant, thinking that his case had not been properly heard, began to try to address the judges in mitigation ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... passage from Ulpian is drawn upon in the Digests, which declares all men to be equal according to the law of nature, but slavery to be an institution of the civil law.[65] The Romans, however, in spite of all mitigation of slave laws, never thought of such a thing as the abolition of slavery. The natural freedom of man was set forth by many writers during the eighteenth century as compatible with lawful servitude. Even Locke, for whom liberty forms the very essence of man, in his ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... religious persecution. Representations were made to the king by the Council of State of the general discontent throughout the country, of the deplorable results of the policy of force and repression, and urging the withdrawal of the troops, the mitigation of the edicts, and the appointment of a member of the royal house to the governorship. To these representations and requests no answer was sent for months in accordance with Philip's habitual dilatoriness in dealing with difficult affairs of ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... of spring, there was of course some mitigation of the trials of the winter. Here is an almost idyllic passage from a letter to his sister, written on the fly-leaves of 'Les Confessions de ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... thought not of pursuing or saving Lady Glenthorn. I was as anxious for a divorce as she could be. Some months afterwards the affair was brought to a public trial. When the cause came on, so many circumstances were brought in mitigation of damages, to prove my utter carelessness respecting my wife's conduct, that a suspicion of collusion arose. From this imputation I was clear in the opinion of all who really knew me; and I repelled the charge publicly, with a degree of indignation ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... for increasing its positive happiness, as before explained; this may suggest to us what should be our general aim respecting ourselves, in our passage through this world: namely, to endeavour chiefly to escape misery, keep free from uneasiness, pain, and sorrow, or to get relief and mitigation of them; to propose to ourselves peace and tranquillity of mind, rather than pursue after high enjoyments. This is what the constitution of nature before explained marks out as the course we should follow, and the end we should aim at. To make pleasure and mirth and jollity our business, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... before graced mine, or higher lays. Bright authors of my sadly-pleasing state, That you alone conceive me well I know, When to your fierce beams I become as snow! Your elegant disdain Haply then kindles at my worthless strain. Did not this dread create Some mitigation of my bosom's heat, Death would be bliss: for greater joy 'twould give With them to suffer death, without them ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the apportionment made. Still there is great room to suppose that the rule agreed upon would, upon experiment, be found to bear harder upon some States than upon others. Those which were sufferers by it would naturally seek for a mitigation of the burden. The others would as naturally be disinclined to a revision, which was likely to end in an increase of their own incumbrances. Their refusal would be too plausible a pretext to the complaining States ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Florence in '61, London again in '62, Amsterdam in '64; and in '65 the mania had overspread the globe, that year witnessing exhibitions dubbed "international" in Dublin, New Zealand, Oporto, Cologne and Stettin, with perhaps some outliers we have missed. Then ensued a lull or a mitigation till the moribund empire of France and the remodeled empire of Austro-Hungary flared up into the magnificent demonstrations of '67 and '73. To these last we shall devote the remainder of this article, with but a glance at the second ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... to do with him," said Sir Harry. That was all very well, but as Emily's wants in this respect were at variance with her father's, there was a difficulty. Lady Elizabeth pleaded that some kind of civility, at least some mitigation of opposition, should be shown, for Emily's sake. At last she was commissioned to go to Cousin George, to send him away from the house, and, if necessary, to make an appointment between him and Sir Harry at the Crown, at Penrith, for the morrow. Nothing on earth should induce Sir Harry ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... have induced him to recommend the individuals respectively; and should the governor be satisfied that they are deserving of reward, his excellency will mitigate their sentence to that of seven or fourteen years, from the date of such mitigation; after which the individuals will, of course, be eligible to all the privileges of prisoners of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... of opinion was found among the people; many wished to decide the question by arms at once, for they were assured it would have to be done some time, and that it would be better to do so then than delay till the enemy had acquired greater strength; and that if they thought a mitigation of the laws would satisfy them, that then they would be glad to comply, but that the pride of the nobility was so great they would not submit unless they were compelled. To many others, who were more peaceable and ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the King wrote in language still more touching. "I hope that you will oblige me in one thing. Keep your key of office. I shall not consider you as bound to any attendance. But I beg you to let me see you as often as possible. That will be a great mitigation of the distress which you have caused me. For, after all that has passed, I cannot help loving ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and fortune-telling is a disease which peculiarly affects weak intellects, ruled by ignorance, or afflicted by adversity. In the future, such persons seek a mitigation of the present; and the illusive enjoyments of the mind make them almost forget the real sufferings of the body. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Saint Francis himself, the founder of the order. It is difficult to conceive of such irreverence in a priest, himself a member of that great order in the Catholic Church; and it is this, if anything, which would show a weakness of the mind. But even here, let us say, not as excuse, but in mitigation of his offense, that only from inadvertence did the Father speak to, or of, his cats by these names in any one's hearing; and there were only two or three people at the mission who knew after what august personages they were called. ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... yet as to the constitution of this world apart, which the abolition of branding, the mitigation of penalties, and the silly leniency of furies are making a threatening evil. In about twenty years Paris will be beleaguered by an army of forty thousand reprieved criminals; the department of the Seine and its fifteen hundred thousand ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... originated out of the civil procedure, probably could not at the outset touch the liberty or life of the citizen, but at the most could only pronounce sentence of exile; this, which had hitherto been a mitigation of punishment accorded to one who was found guilty, now became for the first time a formal penalty This involuntary exile however, like the voluntary, left to the person banished his property, so far as it was not exhausted in satisfying claims for compensation and money-fines. Lastly, in ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... that, in order of time, decoration precedes dress. Among people who submit to great physical suffering that they may have themselves handsomely tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an Orinoco Indian, tho quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labor for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... though perhaps Othello did, which would at once settle the difficulties of those commentators who, abiding by Iago's very disagreeable suggestions as to his purely African appearance, are painfully compelled to forego the mitigation of supposing him a Moor and not a negro. Did I ever tell you of my dining in Boston, at the H——'s, on my first visit to that city, and sitting by Mr. John Quincy Adams, who, talking to me about Desdemona, assured me, with ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Patricians in a quandary. With riot in the streets and war beyond the walls they were at the mercy of the commons. They were forced to promise a mitigation of the laws, declaring that no one should henceforth seize the goods of a soldier while he was in camp, or hinder a citizen from enlisting by keeping him in prison. This promise satisfied the people. The debtors' prisons were emptied, and their late tenants ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... power, it seems to me that this first extended romance was not outdone by its successors; yet there is a harshness in its tone, a want of mitigation, which causes it to strike crudely on the aesthetic sense by comparison with those mellower productions. This was no doubt fortunate for its immediate success. Hawthorne's faith in pure beauty was so absolute as to erect at first a barrier between himself and the less devout reading public. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... doubtless be pleaded in mitigation, that the cities and large villages in those states are new; that they have not had sufficient time thoroughly to organize their police, so as to make it an effectual terror to evil doers; and further, that the rapid growth of those places has so ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... mingling frankly among them, gaining their confidence, becoming the immediate auditor of their complaints, informing himself of their wants, making himself a channel through which their grievances may be quietly communicated to the proper sources of mitigation and relief; or by becoming, if need be, the intrepid and incorruptible guardian of their liberties—the enlightened champion ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... ostracism, giving their jealousy of his reputation the name of fear of tyranny. For ostracism was not the punishment of any criminal act, but was speciously said to be the mere depression and humiliation of excessive greatness and power; and was in fact a gentle relief and mitigation of envious feeling, which was thus allowed to vent itself in inflicting no intolerable injury, only a ten years' banishment. But after it came be exercised upon base and villainous fellows, they desisted from it; Hyperbolus, being the last whom they ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... shrink from the water in the freezing winter weather, thus early showing true Puritan fortitude; and also his noble resolves and hopes for their future. On this especially cold day when a baby was baptized, the minister prayed for a mitigation of the weather, and on the same day in another town "Rev. Mr. Wigglesworth preached on the text, Who can stand before His Cold? Then by his own and people's sickness three Sabbaths passed without public Worship." February 20 he preached ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... "respond," not really relief at all, but merely the slight relaxation of a continuing strain. The audience now looked at Ramsey no more than people look at a bridegroom, but he failed to perceive any substantial mitigation of his frightful conspicuousness. He had not the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his case for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty to listen closely to Dora, in order to be able to refute her argument when ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... absolutely necessary that that blow should fall in all its severity? He asked himself this question over and over again, and always had to acknowledge that it was necessary. There could be no possible mitigation. The son must be told that he was no son—no son in the eye of the law; the wife must be told that she was no wife, and the distant relative must be made acquainted with his golden prospects. The position of Herbert ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... sufferer was allowed this partial freedom. One of his brothers visited him in 1828, and found him inclosed within four solid stone walls, as in a sepulchre "full of all uncleanness." In 1829, there appears not to have been any mitigation of his sufferings. For three years or more, the priestly despot had him under his heel, and inflicted upon him the greatest amount of suffering compatible ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... many respectable merchants at San Luis; and, of course, I did not lack kindly visits in the stronghold to which I was reconducted. It was found to be entirely useless to attack the sympathy of the tribunal, either to procure a rehearing of the cause or mitigation of the judgment. Presently, a generous friend introduced a saw suitable to discuss the toughness of iron bars, and hinted that on the night when my window gratings were severed, a boat might be found waiting to transport me to the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... mischief they do is more extensive, and has less mitigation than is the case with ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the more or less genius—there are only two solutions that I can see:—an increase in industry or a possible decrease in profit, though much may be accomplished in mitigation of these hard conditions, if they prove too hard, by a good and economical system of work, and by ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... mechanical injuries, they have to be treated and all causes of irritation to the brain removed. If it is due to stable miasma, uremic poisoning, pyemia, influenza, rheumatism, toxic agents, etc., they should receive prompt attention for their removal or mitigation. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings—that only ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... however, some mitigation to the horrors of this voyage, for, during it, he heard of his promotion to the rank of major-general, which gave him very great satisfaction, as he was beginning to fear that, as the War Office authorities had failed to offer him an appointment ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... Iris from the indescribable fate from which no power could rescue her if ever she fell into the hands of these vindictive savages. Therefore it was war between him and them, war to the bitter end, war with no humane mitigation of its horrors and penalties, the last dread arbitrament of man forced to adopt ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Java that created a "mud volcano," a tsunami in South Java, and major flooding in Jakarta, all of which caused additional damages in the billions of dollars. Donors are assisting Indonesia with its disaster mitigation and early ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... individual liberty. And it looks as if we were at the threshold of an era of "vaccination" for other diseases besides smallpox; typhoid is now absolutely preventable by that means, and the number of diseases amenable to prevention or mitigation by similar methods is yearly increasing. In some or all of these cases there is a slight risk to the patient, in view of which compulsory "vaccination" is in some quarters strenuously opposed. Leaving the discussion of the principle here involved to chapter XXVIII, we may confidently say, at ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... protestation, that the clause she so fearfully deprecated, had been repealed by Edward. But the good earl blushed as he spoke, for in this instance he said what was not the truth. Far different had been the issue of all his attempts at mitigation. The arrival of Athol from Scotland with advices from the Countess of Strathearn, that Lady Helen Mar had fled southward to raise an insurrection in favor of Wallace, and that Lord Bothwell had gone to France to move Philip to embrace the same cause, gave Edward so apt an excuse for giving ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... reduction of their large garrison at Danzig, and the recognition of Russia's right to trade with neutrals. If these terms were accorded by France, Alexander was ready to negotiate for an indemnity for the Duke of Oldenburg and a mitigation of the Russian customs dues on French goods.[254] The reception given by Napoleon to these reasonable terms was unpromising. "You are a gentleman," he exclaimed to Prince Kurakin, "—and yet you dare to present to me such proposals?—You are acting as Prussia did before Jena." ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in the House of Lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed" that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "My Lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet." Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807, declared that "he could ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... subject, where humanity and justice, as well as public and private interest, would be more intimately united than in that, which should recommend a mitigation of the slavery, with a view afterwards to the emancipation of the Negroes, wherever such may be held in bondage. This subject was taken up for consideration, so early as when the Abolition of the slave trade was first practically thought of, and by the very ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... relief, now failed. Stimulating cataplasms, warm embrocations, laudanum, internally and externally, heat applied externally to the cheek by means of very hot flannels, produced not the slightest mitigation of the pain; and she continued to suffer excessively until the afternoon of the 15th; when acupuncturation being proposed, she consented to the operation with this remark,—"any thing to relieve me from ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... who sold her jewels to fit Columbus for the discovery of a New World, is modern warfare most indebted for a mitigation of its horrors, through the establishment of the first regular Camp Hospitals. During her war with the Moors she caused a large number of tents to be furnished at her own charge, with the requisite medicines, appliances, and attendants for the wounded and sick of her army. These were known ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Balzac's financial affairs, was to end unhappily. At first he liked her very much and dined with her, meeting in her company such noted literary men as Beranger, but as usual, he delayed completing his work, meanwhile resorting, in mitigation of his offense, to tactics such as the following words will indicate: ". . . a pretty watch given at the right moment to Madame Bechet may win me a month's freedom. I am going to overwhelm her with gifts ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the end, to the violence of the torrent: the current must have and will have its course, be the consequences what they may. In cases not quite so decided, absence, the sight of new faces, the sound of new voices, generally serve, if not as a radical cure, as a mitigation, at least, of the disease. But, the worst of it is, that, on this point, we have the girls (and women too) against us! For they look upon it as right that every lover should be a little maddish; and, every attempt to rescue him from the thraldom ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... his latter years gained abundant praise for wholesome severity towards footpads, and at his death left behind him a name—which, tradition informs us, belonged to a man who in his reckless youth, and even after his call to the bar, was a cut-purse and highwayman. In mitigation of his conduct it is urged by those who credit the charge, that young gentlemen of his date were so much addicted to the lawless excitement of the road, that when he was still a beardless stripling, an act (1 Ed. VI. c. 12, s. 14) was passed, whereby any peer of the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... proper.[**] In the end, the bishops and abbots, being threatened with excommunication, which made all their revenues fall into the king's hands, were obliged to submit to the exaction; and the only mitigation which the legate allowed them was, that the tenths already granted should be accepted as a partial payment of the bills. But the money was still insufficient for the pope's purpose: the conquest of Sicily ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains of William Brandon to repose and to the worm. On that same day Clifford received the mitigation of his sentence, and on that day another trial awaited Lucy. We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene was; we need only observe that Dummie Dunnaker, decoyed by his great love for little Paul, whom he delightedly ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and finally Easter Sunday came. No mitigation of the Wilkins visitation had entered into our lives. As the days wore on the girls became more devoted to him than ever, and he became correspondingly unbearable. The condescension with which he would treat his fellow-men was something hardly to be ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... hemisphere. It also seems necessary, as colder currents of water always flow to lower latitudes, while warmer ones are running towards polar regions, that some such compensation should take place, and that an increase of cold in one region must to a certain extent be balanced by a mitigation of ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... when life is preserved by the sacrifice, or the acute pain of a remedy by which a chronic disease is cured. Such was slavery in its origin: a commutation for death, gladly accepted as mercy under the arm of a conqueror in battle, or as the mitigation of a judicial sentence. But it led immediately to nefarious abuses; and the earliest records which tell us of its existence show us also that men were kidnapped for sale. With the principles of Christianity, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... and though failing to convince me of the correctness of his position in respect to the nullity of those proceedings, I am satisfied that under all the circumstances of the case a mitigation of his sentence can be justified on both ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... League agree to encourage and promote the establishment and co-operation of duly authorised voluntary national Red Cross organisations having as purposes the improvement of health, the prevention of disease and the mitigation of suffering throughout ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... old man some mitigation of his sufferings, and they liked each other so well that they parted the best of friends, and not till ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... according to the old proverb, "the spoiled child of fortune:" Mr. Wordsworth might plead, in mitigation of some peculiarities, that he is "the spoiled child of disappointment." We are convinced, if he had been early a popular poet, he would have borne his honours meekly, and would have been a person of great bonhommie and frankness of disposition. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... white-headed, and large of his age like his brother. His pale blue eyes were gravely vacant under his thick white thatch; his chin dropped; his mouth gaped with stolid patience. There was no mitigation for his dull task; he was not allowed to keep his vigil on a comfortable branch of a tree with the mossy trunk for a support to his back, lest he might be tempted to eat of the cherries, and turn pal of the robins ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... from the heat, but not much. I had been roasting, and while my sensations were somewhat like those which I imagine come to a planked shad when he first finds himself spread out over the plank, there was a mitigation. My temperature fell off from 167 to about 163, which is not quite enough to make a man absolutely content. Suddenly, however, I began to shiver. There was no breeze, but I ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... particles of liquid which had been carried mechanically from the U-tubes into the experimental tube. Precautions were therefore taken to prevent any such transfer. They produced little or no mitigation. I did not imagine, at the time, that the dust of the external air could find such free passage through the caustic potash and sulphuric acid. This, however, was the case; the motes really came from without. They also passed with freedom through a variety of aethers and alcohols. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... determine, it is grossly improper; and ought to be abolished. Our Generals, however, had entered Portugal as Allies of a Government by which this title had been acknowledged; and they might have pleaded this circumstance in mitigation of their offence; but surely not in an instrument, where we not only look in vain for the name of the Portugueze Sovereign, or of the Government which he appointed, or of any heads or representatives of the Portugueze armies or people as a party ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... let us endeavour to ascertain the cause, and secondly, to suggest means for the mitigation or prevention ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... xlviii super Matth.), "because death was an unmitigated evil for the Jews, who did everything with a view to the present life, it was ordained that children should be born to the dead man through his brother: thus affording a certain mitigation to his death. It was not, however, ordained that any other than his brother or one next of kin should marry the wife of the deceased, because" the offspring of this union "would not be looked upon as that of the deceased: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... strongly reminded of the monks in the darker part of the Middle Ages. To a certain proportion of them, perhaps two out of five, we are indebted for the preservation of literature, and their contemporaries for good teaching and mitigation of socials evils. But the remaining three were the fleas and flies and thistles and briars with whom the satirist lumps them, about a ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... into her seat with a gasp of mitigated disgust. The mitigation was the irresistible thrill of his devotion. She had a husband who would desert her and a cavalier who would not. It was difficult not to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... poetic value lies in the stimulation of religious feelings, Lead, kindly Light is no better a poem than many a tasteless version of a Psalm: if in the excitement of patriotism, why is Scots, wha hae superior to We don't want to fight? if in the mitigation of the passions, the Odes of Sappho will win but little praise: if in instruction, Armstrong's Art of preserving ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... and others present will remember it too, two or three years of bad fishing, followed by a year of blight, when the man who wrought most anxiously and was honest-hearted could not meet the demands upon him. At such times, if there was no qualification or mitigation of the ready-money system, perhaps the men might get into difficulty.' '10,529. But do you not think that with that system of fortnightly payments a respectable fisherman and tenant would get credit just as easily as he gets it now?-I believe he would.' '10,530. From a greater number of persons, ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... was her nest and Hannah her mother, whose wings covered her. These sisters were very poor; not, however, as the phrase is understood in the large cities, where, notwithstanding the many charitable institutions for the mitigation of poverty, scores of people perish annually from cold and hunger; but as it is understood in the rich lower counties of Maryland, where forests filled with game and rivers swarming with fish afford abundance of food and fuel to even the poorest hutters, however ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... most charming and the wealthiest widow in Rome. This means, to a certainty, that both Satronius Satro and Vedius Vedianus descry the possibility that Vedia's union with a second husband acceptable to both clans and opposed to neither may work for mitigation of the feud spirit and for establishment of harmonious amity almost as powerfully as would have the permanency of her membership of the Satronian clan. I conceive that all of us, outsiders and partisans, may congratulate Caius without reservation or ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... All sentences passed upon persons who may be convicted of offences contrary to the rules of civilized warfare committed during the recent hostilities will be duly carried out, and no alteration or mitigation of such sentences will be made or allowed by the Government of the Transvaal State without Her Majesty's consent conveyed through the British Resident. In case there shall be any prisoners in any of the gaols of the Transvaal State whose respective sentences ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... not any more to blame than you or I. I have seen men who had been guilty—yes, even convicted of most heinous crimes, who from the very conformation of their heads revealed certain things that, to say the least, should have been considered in mitigation of ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... was now confusion and dismay, the children crying, the neighbors collecting around and in the house, while the executioner bound Mr. Judson with the cords, and took a fiendish pleasure in making them as tight as possible. Mrs. Judson gave Moung Ing money that he might follow and procure a mitigation of this torture, instead of which, Mr. Judson was again thrown down, and the cords so tightened as almost to prevent respiration. Then he was hurried on to the court-house, thence to "the death prison," into which ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... This will be illustrated in due course: the actual condition of English with respect to homophones must be understood and appreciated before the nature of their growth and the possible means of their mitigation will ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... indispensable to the relief of court ceremony, and the monotony of aulic pomp, than in any other region of life. This royal support, and the consciousness that any brilliant success in these arts implied an unusual share of natural endowments, did something in mitigation of a scorn which must else have been intolerable to ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... her late father, and if she does not have thee hanged, the least mitigation of thy penalty will be that thou wilt be kicked out of her house and service," said another. "Certes, he's dead enough, he is ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... shall find upon the whole that they have often just causes of offence, and that there are many circumstances connected with their crimes which, from the peculiar position they are placed in, may well require from us some mitigation of the punishment that would be exacted from ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... ready to undertake the defence of any person who had a title, pleaded, in mitigation of censure, that perhaps Lady St. James might not be aware that her ladyship was yet ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... Father, you do not really wish us well, you do not wish us to have corn, although you do wish to live on our corn." In some parts of Germany at harvest the men and women, who have reaped the corn, roll together on the field. This again is probably a mitigation of an older and ruder custom designed to impart fertility to the fields by methods like those resorted to by the Pipiles of Central America long ago and by the cultivators of rice in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... of one's own guilt, and the associated most suggestive establishment of it, the confession, is a very extraordinary psychological problem.[1] In many cases the reasons for confession are very obvious. The criminal sees that the evidence is so complete that he is soon to be convicted and seeks a mitigation of the sentence by confession, or he hopes through a more honest narration of the crime to throw a great degree of the guilt on another. In addition there is a thread of vanity in confession—as among young peasants who confess ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... charming hath ouer-spread it selfe in this Sunneset of the world, and challengeth a lawfull approbation from the authority and practise of ancient [z]Physitians, yea and found some [aa]Diuines to be their Patrons respectiuely, and with clauses of mitigation, I thinke it very necessarie to ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... were found guilty and sentenced to be hung. Mr. Thurnall pleaded for the lives of the men, who belonged to his own parish, but the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, wrote that their case was too bad to admit of any mitigation of the punishment, and the day was appointed for their execution. The poor fellows were desirous {91} of seeing Mr. Thurnall, and he went to Cambridge gaol to take leave of them, and they thanked him for his exertions on their behalf, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... and France, the evils arising out of extreme poverty could not be easily remedied; yet the help thus afforded by the rich, contributed greatly in ameliorating the distress of thousands of the poorer classes. To the same source we may trace the mitigation of many severe laws. The punishment of death is no longer enforced, but in cases of great depravity. Mercy has stepped in, and wiped the blood ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... rough, brutal manners—their vicious principles, and their vile, blasphemous impiety. I was a warm lover and a still more ardent hater, and my hatred to most of them exceeded all bounds of reason; but it was just such as a straightforward, warm-tempered fellow, is certain to entertain without mitigation in such a case. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... entrusted to Lord Henry the restoration of many old observances; and the joyous feeling which this celebration of Christmas had diffused throughout an extensive district was a fresh argument in favour of Lord Henry's principle, that a mere mechanical mitigation of the material necessities of the humbler classes, a mitigation which must inevitably be limited, can never alone avail sufficiently to ameliorate their condition; that their condition is not merely 'a knife and fork question,' to use the coarse and shallow phrase of the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Commons of Great Britain, that it be dismissed from your consideration: and this I demand, whether you take it as an attempt to render odious the conduct of the Commons, whether you take it in mitigation of the punishment due to the prisoner for his crimes, or whether it be adduced as a presumption that so virtuous a servant never could be guilty of the offences with which we charge him. In whichever of these lights ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... recent Certina legislative strategy as lacking vigor (a reproach by no means to be laid to the speaker's language), Mr. Couch's tenderest feelings were lacerated. With considerable dignity for one in his condition, he bade his guest go farther and fare worse, and in mitigation of the latter's Parthian taunt, "Kid-glove fussing, 'bo," called Heaven and earth and the whole cafe to witness that, abhorrent though self-trumpeting was to him, no man had ever handled more delicately a prickly ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... invest any private man at their pleasure not merely with the extraordinary authority of the supreme magistracy, but also with a sphere of office definitely settled by them. That the senate had to choose this man from the ranks of the consulars, was a mitigation only in form; for the selection was left to it simply because there was really no choice, and in presence of the vehemently excited multitude the senate could entrust the chief command of the seas and coasts to no other ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and his mortification was increased by not having the use of his hands or legs to defend himself, from his being so miserably maimed by the tortures. So cruel was the governor, that he even ordered the vermin to be swept on him twice in every eight days. He, however obtained some little mitigation of this part of his punishment, from the humanity of a Turkish slave that attended him, who, when he could do it with safety, destroyed the vermin, and contributed every refreshment to him ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... earlier or later to trial than to any steady principle of equity applied to their several cases. Without great care and sobriety, criminal justice generally begins with anger and ends in negligence. The first that are brought forward suffer the extremity of the law, with circumstances of mitigation of their case; and after a time, the most atrocious delinquents escape merely by the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... only promised to every applicant her intercession, but she made him presents, and was ever ready, by solicitations, flatteries, and expostulations, and, if necessary, even with tears, to entreat from her husband a mitigation of the punishment and sentence which he had decided upon in his just severity; and seldom had Bonaparte the courage to oppose her wishes. These were for Josephine glorious days of love and triumph. She depicts them herself in a letter to her ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... a revolt, that while accomplishing some of the objects that could have been reached by constitutional means, left its red stream across that early page of our history. But in the midst of all our statements let it be remembered, in mitigation of the attitude of the Canadian authorities, that communication between Ottawa and the West at that period was very difficult. There were no railways nor telegraphs and the mails were few and far apart. Though, on the other hand, that condition of things should have made all parties ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... simple and in marked contrast to Stella Benton's. Plenty of grub, no work, some cheap finery, and a man white or red, no matter, to make eyes at. Her horizon was bounded by Roaring Lake and the mission at Skookumchuck. She was therefore no mitigation of ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Fred, which they did, by dragging Bill Jenkins half-drowned from the river, for Fred, in his anger, had kept him under water more than once; and then all three kicked him rather unmercifully to bring him well to again; and it must be said, in mitigation of this rather barbarous proceeding, that the blood of the conquerors was a little up, and they were in that state in which we hear of soldiers being when they sack and ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... The leeway to be made up after the destructive action of the penal laws was so enormous that Catholic philanthropists had no time or will for high politics, and devoted their whole energy to the further relaxation of those laws, to the education of their backward co-religionists, and to the mitigation of poverty. For relief they instinctively looked towards the only legal source of relief, though the source of secular oppression, Parliament. But this was habit. The Catholics at this time were like clay in the hands of the potter, open to ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... each inscribed, 'Eternity!' A voice cried aloud, 'Forever!' and another replied, 'Forever and ever!' The waves of fire now rolled over me, and the worm that dieth not seized hold of me. I begged for even the smallest mitigation of misery, and the vials of wrath were poured out upon me. In my anguish I cried, 'Roll on, ye eternal ages!' But why? They will be no nearer through. 'O Lord, how long?' With an earthquake, that seemed to shake the very throne, came back the reply, 'Forever! Forever!' I sank down ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... sinister motives. It is for the defendant to prove, if he can, that he had lawful motives for a lawless act; and that he exercised due precaution, and did not lend himself recklessly to the dark designs of others. If he succeed in this, that may go in mitigation of damages, though it cannot affect the verdict. Our principal object is the verdict, which will remove the foul aspersion cast on my injured client, and restore him to society. And to this verdict we are entitled, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... their situation was without resource—without mitigation; they had exhausted their ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... tragic to hear day by day of this waste of the life of brilliant young men who were the hope of the future. And yet we must not say that it is waste. If we say that, then there is no mitigation of the sorrow. The price is appalling, but we must believe that it is being paid for a treasure the world cannot live without; and if that treasure is won, your sorrow will at least be assuaged by the thought that it is not in vain, and that ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... preparing the way for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which will inevitably be associated (partly as cause and partly as effect) with a new general phase of consciousness, involving the mitigation of the struggle for existence, the growth of intuitional and psychical perception, the spread of amity and solidarity, the disappearance of War, and the realization (in ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... sarcasm of a disappointed man, brought upon Buelow the enmity of the official classes and of the government. He was arrested as insane, but medical examination proved him sane and he was then lodged as a prisoner in Colberg, where he was harshly treated, though Gneisenau obtained some mitigation of his condition. Thence he passed into Russian hands and died in prison at Riga in 1807, probably as a result ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... this custom of sale, that on the face of it was harsh and barbarous, some slight mitigation of the cruelty of the system had come; for the practice had grown up of permitting parents to buy back their own children—nominally thereafter holding them as slaves—and so to save them at a single stroke from both ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... deeply, though it showed him his mistake, as the darkening shadow of disappointment in her eyes. If she had been a flirt, she would have been prepared for rudeness. He began casting about in his mind for some apology, some mitigation of his offense; but as he was about to speak, the sudden fading of her color, leaving her pale, and the look in her proud, dark eyes disconcerted him ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... is the mode of punishment. Murder is repugnant to my feelings. Besides it would not be polite. The man was perhaps sincere in his devotion to Carleton, though I believe that he rather looked to the reward. But if sincere, that ought to be considered in mitigation of his sentence. Furthermore, he is a friend of M. Belmont, and that too shall count in his favor. I had intended to seize him and deliver him as a prisoner of ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... satisfy the inflexibility of thy temper, will not all my past sufferings suffice to glut thy severity? Is it still necessary that the happiness of months must be sacrificed to the inexorable laws of decorum? Must I seek in distant climes a mitigation of my fate? Yes, too amiable tyrant, thou shalt be obeyed. It will be less punishment to be separated from thee by mountains crowned with snow, by impassable gulphs, by boundless oceans, than to reside in the same city, or even under the same roof, and not be permitted ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... the unwilling hands of the cardinal and the privy council, marks an important epoch in the history of the Reformed Church in France. Barely nine months had elapsed since five members of the Parisian Parliament had been thrown into the Bastile for daring to advocate a mitigation of the penalties pronounced against the Protestants, until the assembling of the long-promised Oecumenical Council. Little more than two months had passed since one of their number, and the most virtuous judge on the bench, had been ignominiously executed. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... showing too much interest in the fate of his unhappy friend. He nevertheless went to the very edge of prudence in trying to save him, and the ministers of the United States were instructed to use every private effort to secure Lafayette's release, or at least the mitigation of his confinement. All these attempts failed, but Washington was more successful in other directions. He sent money to Madame de Lafayette, who was absolutely beggared at the moment, and represented ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... in the Punjab, the United Provinces, and in Bombay. I do not think that anybody who has been concerned in India—I do not care to what school of Indian thought he belongs—can deny that measures for the extermination and mitigation of this disease have occupied the most serious, constant, unflagging, zealous, and energetic attention of the Indian Government. But the difficulties we encounter are manifold, as many Members of the House ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... In mitigation of judgment it is only fair to take into account the tremendous difficulties that faced them; their unfamiliarity with the Russian problem; the want of a touchstone by which to test the overwhelming mass of conflicting information which poured in upon them; their constitutional ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... promised all the consulates in the service; the Senators will all come to me and refuse to believe me dis-consulate; I shall see all my treaties slaughtered, one by one, by the thirty-four per cent of kickers and strikers; the only mitigation I can foresee is being sick a good part of the time; I am nearing my grand climacteric, and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... been the lot of my poor mamma!" cried Barbara, clasping her hands. "And she had no one to sympathize with her—no one, no one! I, as I tell you, was little more than a child; and papa, who might have done it, took part against Richard. It went on for three or four years, the sorrow, and there was no mitigation. At the end of that period Richard came for a few hours to West Lynne—came in secret—and we learnt for the first time that he was not guilty. The man who did the deed was Thorn; Richard was not even present. The next question was, how to find Thorn. Nobody ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... passage across or through, and constraining you to steer a foolishly, really quite inordinately divergent course. Under this obstructive head the two Americas offend direfully, sprawling their united strength wellnigh from pole to pole. The piercing of their central isthmus promised some mitigation of this impertinence of emergent matter; though whether in his, the speaker's lifetime, remained—so he took it—open to doubt. The "roaring forties," and grim blizzard-ridden Fuegian Straits would long continue, as he feared, to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... some astonishment, "you two Forbes girls can have nothing to say against Kitty. It cannot injure you in any way that we should plead for the mitigation ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... offered to wait three days, or until the safety of the wounded man was medically certified to. It was incomprehensible to her that Vittoria should reject her terms; and though it was true that she would not have listened to a reason, she was indignant at not hearing one given in mitigation of the offence. She set out alone on her journey, deeply hurt. The reason was a feminine sentiment, and Vittoria was naturally unable to speak it. She shrank with pathetic horror from the thought of Merthyr's rising from his couch to find her a married woman, and desired most ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his perilous situation, endeavoured to engage the affections of the native English. As that people were now so thoroughly subdued that they no longer aspired to the recovery of their ancient liberties, and were content with the prospect of some mitigation in the tyranny of the Norman princes, they zealously embraced William's cause, upon receiving general promises of good treatment, and of enjoying the license of hunting in the royal forests. The king was soon in a situation to take the field; and as ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... the inhabitants some were favourable, many indifferent, and the rest overawed. So nothing memorable occurred in the course of the evening, except that Waverley's rest was sorely interrupted by the revellers hallooing forth their Jacobite songs, without remorse or mitigation of voice. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Babington as a rash and weak-headed youth, easily played upon by designing persons, but likely to take to heart such a lesson as this, and become a true and loyal subject. If he could obtain any sort of mitigation for the poor youth, it ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knowledge had now come to him. That it could have come in any harder way, it is difficult to believe. There was only one palliation to its misery—it was quite unpremeditated—but even this mitigation of the affront hardly brought him any comfort as yet Braelands was certainly deeply grieved at the miserable outcome of the meeting. He knew the pride of the fisher race, and he had himself a manly instinct, ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... militarism. It is the same alliance as prevailed everywhere between the traders and the armies and navies, and the Kaiser's crime consists mainly in turning back the movement of the world which through the Hague Conferences was approaching brotherhood, or at least a mitigation of the horrors of war. His blasphemies are no less archaic. He repeats Oliver Cromwell, but with less simplicity, while his artistic aspiration complicates the Puritan with the Cavalier. "From childhood," he is quoted as saying, "I have been under the influence of five men—Alexander, Julius ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... said he, 'your own deserts have no doubt suggested the likelihood of it to your mind; but I now am with you to let you know that whatever mitigation of your sentence you may look for, must be earned by your compliance with my orders. You must frankly and fully explain the contents of the packet which you endeavoured this day to destroy; and further, you must tell all that you know of the designs ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... purpose, or more worthy of such dishonour, than the article in the 'Quarterly Review' for July, 1860. (I was not aware when I wrote these passages that the authorship of the article had been publicly acknowledged. Confession unaccompanied by penitence, however, affords no ground for mitigation of judgment; and the kindliness with which Mr. Darwin speaks of his assailant, Bishop Wilberforce (vol. ii.), is so striking an exemplification of his singular gentleness and modesty, that it rather increases one's indignation against the presumption of his critic.) Since ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... though no favorable opportunity offered, to rebel against her, and that no dangers or difficulties could free them from this indispensable duty. But Parsons and Campion, two Jesuits, were sent over with a mitigation and explanation of the doctrine; and they taught their disciples, that though the bull was forever binding on Elizabeth and her partisans, it did not oblige the Catholics to obedience except when the sovereign pontiff should think proper, by a new summons, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong 90. The plea in extenuation of guilt and mitigation of punishment is perpetual. At every step we are met by arguments which go to excuse, to palliate, to confound right and wrong, and reduce the just man to the level of the reprobate. The men who plot to baffle and resist ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... present sketches object, that the writer has deviated from the course of most modern biographers, by the indulgence of his old-fashioned notions of impartiality and truth, he must plead guilty to the charge; but, in mitigation of punishment, he would beg leave to relate ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... Nothing more than the unconventional requires a nicely discriminating taste; and it's no use being more violent than you can help. You and Dorothea are making a match that sets the rules of your world at defiance, but you may as well avail yourselves of any little mitigation that comes to hand. Life is going to be hard enough for ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... of Commons. To the Whigs of the nineteenth century we owe it that the House of Commons has been purified. The abolition of the slave trade, the abolition of colonial slavery, the extension of popular education, the mitigation of the rigour of the penal code, all, all were effected by that party; and of that party, I repeat, I am a member. I look with pride on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, struggling with difficulties, but ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after twenty-four hours, became known, Agnes's wish to place herself in the wrong, beyond sympathy, or hope of pardon, was freely gratified. No criticism seemed too harsh for her conduct. No voice was lifted in mitigation of her offence. Rennes was excused, because he was an artist, erratic and passionate, and she was unfortunately beautiful. The poor old Bishop, however, rallied under the shock, preached more vigorously than ever, and showed a proud countenance to his daughter's adversaries. When he was able ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... consideration. Men of all classes and conditions signed it. Religion made no difference. Roman Catholic priests even were associates of the league. The motives were not the same with all, but the pretext was similar. The Roman Catholics desired simply the abolition of the Inquisition and a mitigation of the edicts; the Protestants aimed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... against their adversaries. In these infamous productions, hatched by celibate pedants in the foul atmosphere of the Jesuit colleges, the gamut of charges always ranges from bad grammar to unnatural crime. The only circumstance which can be alleged in mitigation of the excesses of the Regii sanguinis clamor is that Milton had provoked the onfall by his own violence. He who throws dirt must expect that dirt will be thrown back at him, and when it comes to mud-throwing, the blackguard has, as ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... life and property and protect the Nation from all hazards, including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters, by leading and supporting the Nation in a risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation. (2) Specific activities.—In support of the primary mission of the Agency, the Administrator shall— (A) lead the Nation's efforts to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against the risk of natural disasters, acts of terrorism, ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... all these experiences that are encountered as absolute facts in life, facts from which there is no appeal, and for which, alas, there is no mitigation, what remains? One may feel as if he would gladly give up the whole business of trying to live at all, but that is not a matter that is optional with the individual. One has to live out his appointed days in this phase of being, and it is only the person of ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... growing uproarious. Among all the strugglers for existence who rushed this way and that, Alfred Yule felt himself a man chosen for fate's heaviest infliction. He never questioned the accuracy of the stranger's judgment, and he hoped for no mitigation of the doom it threatened. His life ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... in common with most of the Cruciferous plants, it is endowed with a pungent volatile oil, and some sulphur. The bruised plant has been applied externally for healing ulcers, burns, whitlows, and for the mitigation of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... 13th of November, in the presence of their former comrades, the culprits were sent, in accordance with the terms of their sentence, to render their account to the Almighty. It was the saddest spectacle I ever witnessed, but there could be no evasion, no mitigation of the full letter of the law; its timely enforcement was but justice to the brave spirits who had yet to fight the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... had passed since this had been written, and whilst the evils of private property, so vividly depicted by Mill, showed no signs of mitigation, the remedies he anticipated had made no substantial progress. The co-operation of the Rochdale Pioneers had proved a magnificent success, but its sphere of operations was now clearly seen to be confined within narrow limits. Profit-sharing then as now was ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... Rousseau, as we wandered through the scenes which he so often frequented; each individual censuring or defending him, according to the bias of his or her disposition. On one point all agreed; which was, that, if judged by his actions, little could be said in mitigation of the conduct of him who, while writing sentiments fraught with passion and tenderness, could consign his offspring to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... In mitigation of sentence I can only urge the day-long preoccupations in which I had been plunged, and the article, suddenly become necessary, which I must begin to write instanter. But at any rate, excuse or no excuse, it is certain that I woke from my daydream to find ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... tried all entreaties, but in vain; even three times he had cast himself on his knees before his Highness, yet could obtain no mitigation; for his Grace was incensed against the witch, because of her arrogant defiance, and her stubborn refusal to remove the spell from the princely race, and sent orders to the executioner to build the pile ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... place where they are for that into which they shall not come, so what would they give for a change of condition? Yea, if an absolute change may not be obtained, yet what would they give for the least degree of mitigation of that torment, which now they know will without any intermission be, and that for ever and ever. 'Tribulation and anguish, indignation and wrath' (Rom 2:8,9), the gnawing worm, and everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of faith, affirmed dogmatically and exclusively. The One and All, first in the order of being and of knowing, logically necessary itself, and uniting all lesser things in the bonds of mutual necessity, how could it allow of any mitigation of its inner rigidity? The slightest suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of independence of any one of its parts from the control of the totality, would ruin it. Absolute unity brooks no degrees—as well might you claim ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... severity of the punishment which is administered by no earthly tribunal; and that, finally, this stern sentence has hidden in it the possibility of forgiveness, inasmuch as the consequence of the sin is liability to punishment, but not necessarily suffering of it. The old law had no such mitigation of its sentence. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... secondly, because you are probably persuaded that you could have guarded against it had you foreseen if, and therefore the misfortune, having been seemingly encountered by your own fault, makes your grief the greater. That it is so, time evinces; which, as it advances, brings with it so much mitigation that though the same misfortunes continue, the grief not only becomes the less, but in some cases is entirely removed. Many Carthaginians were slaves at Rome, and many Macedonians, when Perseus their king was taken prisoner. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... entertained in 1890 that the British East Africa Company, by the pressure it could put on the Sultan of Zanzibar, had secured the cessation of the slave trade on the East African shore; these hopes are not yet fulfilled, but it may be trusted that a step has been taken towards the mitigation of the evil—the "open sore of ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... forgeries was L1,500, and in the last three months of 1818 it was near L20,000. Sir Samuel Romilly said that "pardons were sometimes found necessary; but few were granted except under circumstances of peculiar qualification and mitigation. He believed the sense and feeling of the people of England were against the punishment of death for forgery. It was clear the severity of the punishment had ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... soldiers who lashed the Sepoys to the mouths of their cannon, and then fired the pieces, thus cruelly murdering the captured rebels, offered the plea, in mitigation of their crime, and as an excuse for violating the rules of war, that their subjects were not of a civilized nation, and did not themselves adhere to the laws governing civilized nations at war with each other. But no such plea can be entered ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... public library, where, by the token of Richard Caramel's card, he had drawn out half a dozen books on the Italian Renaissance. That these books were still piled on his desk in the original order of carriage, that they were daily increasing his liabilities by twelve cents, was no mitigation of their testimony. They were cloth and morocco witnesses to the fact of his defection. Anthony had had several hours ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... relentless conqueror had as yet inflicted on his captured enemies. Others had been mutilated, or beheaded; Saul-Mugina was burnt. The tie of blood, which was held to have aggravated the guilt of his rebellion, was not allowed to be pleaded in mitigation of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... juncture there was formed in London a new anti-slavery society. Its object was explicitly stated to be "the mitigation and gradual abolition of Slavery throughout the British dominions." In looking over the names of its officers and leading members, we find not those of the early Abolitionists alone: by the side of Zachary Macaulay we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... spread their prayer carpets anywhere and perform their drill of prayers without embarrassment or distraction in the sight of a crowd, or the rapt 'devotion' of fakirs, are held up as a rebuke to us 'Christians' who are ashamed to be caught praying. One may observe, in mitigation, that the worship which is of the heart is naturally more sensitive to surrounding distractions than that which is a matter of posturing and repetition by rote. But there still remains substance enough in the contrast to point a sharp arrow ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... children of men, are punishments to which all men are subject, because they are sinners, and at which no man needs to be surprised. Grace is not to free the Davidic family from this common lot of mankind, is not to afford to them the privilege of sinning. The mitigation only follows in ver. 15, in which the close resumes the beginning: "I will be a father to him." But this mitigation must not be misunderstood by being conceived of as referring to the individuals. Such a conception of it would be opposed to the nature of the thing itself, would ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... generous consolation in the name bequeathed to her by her departed parent, and she fondly cherished the halo of glory that surrounded her father's life, and now must adhere for ever to his memory. The queen, anxious to contribute to the mitigation of her sorrow, had kindly invited her to the palace, that by a temporary absence from her own dwelling she might be relieved from the sight of objects, which continually brought to her mind a train ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the influence of the great "spirit interest" had succeeded in removing all restriction from the goldfields. By this time, however, the police and other authority were better organized, so that there was a very considerable mitigation of bad effects. ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... One mitigation I might have set against the rest. Dining at the Rag the night before I left, I met a man who knew a man then staying at the Riffel Alp. My man was a sapper with whom I had had a very slight acquaintance out in India, but he happened to be one of those good-natured ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... was informed by signal that the Terror's was completely destroyed, and nearly torn away from the stern-post. We had hoped that, as we drifted deeper into the pack, we should get beyond the reach of the tempest; but in this we were mistaken. Hour passed away after hour without the least mitigation of the awful circumstances in which we were placed. Indeed, there seemed to be but little probability of our ships holding together much longer, so frequent and violent were the shocks they sustained. The loud, crashing noise of the straining and working of the timbers and decks, as she was driven ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman |
