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More "Dead letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power of coercion but war, Congress could not lay imposts, or other taxes, by its own authority; the whole general government, therefore, was little more than a name. The Articles of Confederation, as to purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly a dead letter. The country sought to escape from this condition, at once feeble and disgraceful, by constituting a government which should have power, of itself, to lay duties and taxes, and to pay the public debt, and provide for the general welfare; and to lay these duties and taxes in ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... absorbed by the general and mute resistance of intentional passivity and of insurmountable disgust. They do not obtain from their subjects any of that unconscious obedience, that degree of passive co-operation, without which the law remains a dead letter.[51138] Their Republic, so young, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... given spontaneously; for how could a complicated machine, which shuns the light, confide itself to the free will of man? This relation is rather dictated, with a rigorous strictness, by a formulary in which the free intelligence of man is chained down. The dead letter takes the place of a living meaning, and a practised memory becomes a safer guide than genius ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... name given to an edict of the Sultan which is irrevocable, though many a one of them has proved a dead letter. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... grant you, if necessary, an escort through the mountains, yet I am afraid a short time must elapse before the people of Damascus can be made aware of the important changes in their social condition, when the Hatti Sherif of Gulhane shall be no longer to them a dead letter, when violence shall no longer usurp the place of justice, nor men endanger their lives by bearing witness to the truth. You will be able to return to Syria in a few months under better auspices, and cover the slanderers of your ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... Paget was a poor relation and dependant; that her bills had never been paid; that all those incalculable and mysterious "extras," which are the martyrdom of parents and the delight of schoolmistresses, were a dead letter so far as Diana was concerned. She knew that "poor Di" had been taken home suddenly one day, not in compliance with any behest of her father's, but for the simple reason that her kinswoman's patience had been worn out by the Captain's dishonesty. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... therefore, that the royal recommendations of clemency remained a dead letter, and that, under the pressure of the incessant demand for gold, the Indians were reduced to the most abject state ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... devoured. I doubt not the truth of the story. And from that day to this, has he made it his sole office to see that all the laws that bear hard upon the sect, and deprive them of privileges and immunities, are not permitted to become a dead letter. It is this man, drunk with blood, whom Aurelian has put in chief authority in his new temple, and made him, in effect, the head of religion in the city. He is however not only this. He possesses other traits, which with reason might commend him to the regard of the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... particularly good-humor, for some reason, and has not the heart to shut "the poor thing" in the closet; or, perhaps, there is company present, and she does not wish to make a scene. So the penalty announced with so much emphasis turns out to be a dead letter, as the children knew ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... itself, sir. The statute-book is a dead letter when it conflicts with public opinion. There is not a week passes but you may see that for yourself, father. If a man is insulted, he must protect his honour; and he will do so until the law is able to protect him better than ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... this slice of good fortune principally to the fact that the crew of a privateer were exempt from impressment, which exemption was allowed to hold good in the West Indies, although the exemption was frequently little better than a dead letter at home and in other parts of the world. I now went to work to provision and water the schooner for a three-months' cruise; and so well did my agent work for me that, within seventy-two hours of my arrival at Port Royal, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... infernal arts." A similar statute was contained in the "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts, probably inspired by the command of Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This law, we shall see, was not a dead letter. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... eighth article of the treaty of Bucharest, concluded by Russia with the Porte, which remained a dead letter, was followed by the fifth article in the treaty of Akerman, formally securing the Servians ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... them perfect freedom in religious matters; she subjected them to no oath, as in England; the new laws were a dead letter as far as regarded the native lords, who lived under other laws and remained silent, as with the lords of the Pale. Yet nothing was of such importance in her eyes as the enforcement of those decrees; consequently, she could only accomplish her designs by deceit. George Browne, the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Isaiah, and Jeremiah, to declare to the Jews of their times that God would no more accept of burnt offerings and sacrifices! and that the ceremonial law was ipso facto abolished; because, if such passages do signify the abolishment of the Mosaic law, it must be considered as having been a dead letter ever since David, Isaiah., ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... a time enforced,[30] but by the beginning of the eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead letter; for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and laid an impost of L3 on Negroes imported.[31] This duty was really a tax on the transport trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.[32] From the year 1700 on, the citizens ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... opinion, were the forces of renewal and growth thus liberated to be kept within the bounds set by existing institutions. "The peace, the prosperity, and the very existence of the Union," he wrote, "are vested in the hands of the seven Federal judges. Without them the Constitution would be a dead letter: the Executive appeals to them for assistance against the encroachments of the legislative power; the Legislature demands their protection against the assaults of the Executive; they defend the Union from the disobedience of the States, the States from the exaggerated claims of the Union, the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... with England, but this obligation was set wholly at naught. A gigantic system of smuggling was carried on. The custom-house officials had no force at their disposal which would have enabled them to check these operations, and the law enforcing a trade with England was virtually a dead letter. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... the poor youth came hither to see whether the guardian whose wardship has hitherto been a dead letter, were indeed so utterly obdurate and helpless ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... book in order to rethink Don Quixote in opposition to the Cervantists and erudite persons, in order to make a living work of what was and still is for the majority a dead letter. What does it matter to me what Cervantes intended or did not intend to put into it and what he actually did put into it? What is living in it is what I myself discover in it, whether Cervantes put it there or not, what I myself put into and under and over ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... overwhelming. The news, flying through Asia, awoke everywhere a belief that the power of Athens was broken, and that her hostility need no longer be dreaded. The Persian monarch considered that under the altered circumstances it would be safe to treat the Peace of Callias as a dead letter, and sent down orders to the satraps of Lydia and Bithynia that they were once more to demand and collect the tribute of the Greek cities within their provinces. The satraps began to speculate on the advantages which they might derive from alliance with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... diplomatists for the purpose of settling the mutual relations of the constituent states. Each state was ordered to adopt a constitutional form of government, but, as no provision was made for enforcing this clause, it remained a dead letter. Prussia regained her provinces on the left bank of the Rhine, with a population exceeding 1,000,000, and was allotted the northern part of Saxony, with a population of 800,000, besides retaining her original share of Poland, with the province of Posen, which ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the character of the music. These sonatas are of great historic interest. This preface, also the evident necessity for additional (inner part) notes at times, especially in the slow movements of E. Bach and other composers of that day, make one feel that, as it now stands, much of Bach's music is a dead letter. Here we are face to face with a question which in a kindred matter has given rise to much controversy. If the music is to produce its proper effect, something must be done. To that (in the case of Emanuel Bach's sonatas) all reasonable musicians must agree. Yet not, perhaps, as to what ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... them to pass which would have been most honourable to him and to them, if there were not abundant proofs that it was meant to be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty of conscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation was put forth announcing in boastful language to the English people that their rightful King had now ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was indirectly conveyed in a letter from her old lawyer. He had written to her in her London lodgings, first of all, but the letter was returned from the Dead Letter Office. Then he had written to Slane, but as he received no answer to that letter and it was not returned, he went in person to inquire about it. Dan declared that he knew nothing about the letter, or about Beth either, if she had left London; ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... gospel that is acted out in the commercial world to-day. All good intentions, all right convictions, all wise counsels of religious teachers, are side-tracked and become as a dead letter if they stand in the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... months. If we take this trouble we may realize the value of the figure; otherwise, as this number surpasses all that we are in the habit of realizing, it will have no significance for us, and will be a dead letter. ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... in Persia. An English-speaking Persian at Bushire told me that, with the exception of the women of the wandering Eeliaut tribes, there were few chaste wives in Persia. Although the nominal punishment for adultery is death, the law, as it stands at present, is little else than a dead letter, and, as in some more civilized countries, husbands who are fond of intrigue, do not scruple to allow their wives a similar liberty. Not half an hour's walk from the Tomb of Hafiz, at the summit of the mountain, is a deep well, so deep that no one has ever yet succeeded in sounding ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Lord French—complained on the 29th of July that the Nationalists had given no help to the Government in obtaining voluntary recruits in Ireland, and, "instead of taking Sinn Fein by the throat, had tried to go one better,"[101] the compulsory powers of the Military Service Act remained a dead letter. ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... looking towards another, and all looking towards the Court, it was impossible but that the motive which solely influenced every man's hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct; till at last the servility became universal, in spite of the dead letter of any laws or ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... out of the forest hard by. The slaves also raised their own bacon, but unfortunately the price of meat was so high as to make its use only an occasional luxury. North Carolina passed a law commanding the planters to give their slaves meat at certain intervals, but the law remained a dead letter. Other states, by legal enactment, fixed the amount of meal that should be given ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... who had to take part in the procession were to set down and take up; but, owing to the immense number of the carriages, the ignorance of many of the coachmen as to the prescribed regulations, and the obstinacy of others, the rules very soon became a dead letter, and every man seemed disposed to take his own way. This, as might be expected, caused such confusion that it was long past midnight before anything like order was restored. There were smashed panels and broken windows in abundance, but no serious accidents ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... blame an ignorant peasantry for making false statements, when laws were framed by the leaders of public opinion in England which released the Irish tenants from every moral obligation, and made their assumed responsibilities and agreements a dead letter; while orators, living on the wages of patriotism, were allowed to preach sedition and plunder to an excitable people? The result was that the work of demoralisation made rapid progress, perjury became a joke, assassination was merely 'removal,' and men who had been brutally murdered ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... ineptitude, incompetence, unproductivity^; indocility^; invalidity, disqualification; inefficiency, wastefulness. telum imbelle [Lat.], brutum fulmen [Lat.], blank, blank cartridge, flash in the pan, vox et proeterea nihil [Lat.], dead letter, bit of waste paper, dummy; paper tiger; Quaker gun. inefficacy &c (inutility) 645 [Obs.]; failure &c 732. helplessness &c adj.; prostration, paralysis, palsy, apoplexy, syncope, sideration^, deliquium [Lat.], collapse, exhaustion, softening ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... brought many strange ideas with them to their new home, as we all well know, and we find these reflected in their statute books in the form of many "blue laws," some of which may yet be found in changed garb in the form of constantly disregarded "dead letter" laws in our own Public Statutes. Interesting as a general discussion of this subject is, as showing the character and purposes of the founders of the Republic, we can follow but one division of the Sunday law in its various ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... authority over Irish measures. Therefore, the acts of the local legislature of Ireland should lie for three months' continuous session upon the table of the House of Commons, subject to adverse action of the House, but becoming operative unless disapproved. The provision would be a dead letter unless improper legislation were enacted, but if there were improper legislation, then it would be salutary. The clause, I said, was needed to assure timid people that no secession ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... the proclamations for enforcing them, were not a dead letter is shewn by the criminal records. On the 8th of March 1550, Robert Hathwy, John Sym, and James Lourie, burgesses of Edinburgh, confess their guilt in transgressing a regulation against purchasing Bordeaux wines dearer than L.22, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... resolved upon by the late (p. 201) parliament at Coventry[199] had not been put into execution; and states that the rebels were never at any time so high or proud, from an assurance that it, like the others, would become a dead letter.[200] ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... peroration to these remarks of mine which have strayed so woefully from their jovial text, save that I ought fairly to confess that my last impression of the Carnival was altogether Carnivalesque.. The merry-making of Shrove Tuesday had life and felicity; the dead letter of tradition broke out into nature and grace. I pocketed my scepticism and spent a long afternoon on the Corso. Almost every one was a masker, but you had no need to conform; the pelting rain of confetti effectually disguised you. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... House of Commons. The power of Edward the Seventh is but a shadow of that exercised almost without let or hindrance by the predecessors of Queen Victoria. The veto power, so potent an instrumentality in the hands of the American President, is to all intents a dead letter in the mythical British Constitution. For a century and a half it has remained in practical abeyance. It is believed that its attempted exercise at this day would produce revolution; possibly endanger ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... rushed through on a holiday, on which most of the members thought that no session would be held. Later on, when objection was taken to such a method, the Deputy, it is said, silenced the resisters by assuring them that they were mere formalities which must remain a dead letter.[29] ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... especially true of those laws intended to prevent our citizens from hunting on the Indian lands, residing in their country, and trading with them without a license from the United States. These have generally been a dead letter upon the national statute book, and the encroachments of the lawless frontiers-men, the trader, the land speculator, and the vender of spirituous liquors, have impoverished degraded, and vitiated, more or less, every tribe within the limits of the United ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... adopted—that is, Sumner's plan—but it included the danger that the Southern States might have adopted universal suffrage and negro citizenship for the sake of Congressional representation, and afterwards have converted it into a dead letter, as it is at present. Andrew considered Lincoln's attempts at reconstruction as ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... will be no harm in agreeing to forfeit him if you fail," rejoined Wallace; "for if you certainly do feed him, then your agreement to forfeit him will be a dead letter." ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... free, by the same laws of climate and resources which determined that the entire West would remain free. Before the Mexican War the Senator had become convinced that the extension of slavery had reached its limit; that the Missouri Compromise was a dead letter except as a psychological palliative; that Nature had already ordained that slave labor should be forever excluded from all Western territory both north and south of that line. His reply to Calhoun's contention that a balance must be maintained between ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... violated ever since its enactment. Indeed, in spite of commendable efforts on the part of the authorities who represent the United States in that Territory, the law has in very rare instances been enforced, and, for a cause to which reference will presently be made, is practically a dead letter. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... has it, I prefer Mr. Locker when he is tender and not untouched with melancholy, as in "The Portrait of a Lady," and Mr. Austin Dobson, when he is not flirting, but in earnest, as in the "Song of Four Seasons" and "The Dead Letter." He has ingenuity, pathos, mastery of his art, and, though the least pedantic of ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... should employ it, he would generally take up his Horace and read aloud one of his more mournful odes—with such attention to the rhythm, I must add, as, although plentiful enough among scholars in respect of the dead letter, is rarely found with them in respect of ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... against nature even with mutual consent; the penalty is one hundred strokes with the bamboo and a month's imprisonment; if there is violence, the penalty is decapitation; I am not able to say how far the law is a dead letter. According to Matignon, so far as homosexuality exists in China, it is carried on with much more decorum and restraint than it is in Europe, and he thinks it may be put down to the credit of the Chinese that, unlike Europeans, they never practice unnatural connection with women. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dead letter. On February 8, 1734, Gilles Hocquart, the Intendant at Quebec issued an ordinance in which he recited that in 1732 Captain Joanne of the Navy brought a Carib slave of his to Canada and employed him as a sailor; that he had deserted when Captain Joanne was ready ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... preceding articles we have taken a short view of the principal absolute rights which appertain to every Englishman. But in vain would these rights be declared, ascertained, and protected by the dead letter of the laws, if the constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual enjoyment. It has therefore established certain other auxiliary subordinate rights of the subject, which serve principally ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... unrest" from the mind of labor, while at the same time he had given a notable illustration to all his people of the folly of outrunning too far the sentiments of your age, and the arrant rot of placing edicts upon the statute books that at once become a dead letter unless backed by despotic force, and feeling the security of his position, stood before his petitioners, lightly leaning on his left foot, with his right hand in the breast of his coat, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... and with the punishment of those concerned in the importation than with the proper limitation of the traffic by water.[1] On March 2, 1807, the act was passed forbidding the slave-trade after the close of the year. In course of time it came very near to being a dead letter, as may be seen from presidential messages, reports of cabinet officers, letters of collectors of revenue, letters of district attorneys, reports of committees of Congress, reports of naval commanders, statements on the floor of Congress, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... primitive place—primitive in what related to the justice-room and the justices—things were not conducted with the regularity of the law. The law there was often a dead letter. No very grave cases were decided there; they went to Lynneborough. A month at the treadmill, or a week's imprisonment, or a bout of juvenile whipping, were pretty near the harshest sentences pronounced. Thus, in this examination, as in others, evidence was advanced that was ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... settled before the close of the present Congress in a manner acceptable to a large majority of the American people. What, then, is left? "Personal Liberty bills" in some of the States; and these are being repealed as rapidly as possible; and so far as practical results are concerned, they have been a dead letter on the statute books ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... take a quarter of an hour more. (Laughter and applause.) When I took office the anti-trust law was practically a dead letter and the interstate commerce law in as poor a condition. I had to revive both laws. I did. I enforced both. It will be easy enough to do now what I did then, but the reason that it is easy now is because I did it when it was hard. ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... affected by the wind, except under circumstances of very rapid motion. The ideal of the face is often solemn—seldom beautiful; occasionally ludicrous failures occur: in the smallest designs the face is very often a dead letter, or worse: and in all, Giotto's handling is generally to be distinguished from that of any of his followers by its bluntness. In the school work we find sweeter types of feature, greater finish, stricter care, more delicate outline, fewer errors, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... within reach, will plead my excuse. Moreover, should Her Majesty's Government not deem, it advisable to enforce the rights of the Crown, as set forth in the proclamation, it may be allowed to fall to the ground, and to become a mere dead letter. ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... east of the Canadian border, birds are destroyed on sight and nests robbed wherever found. The laws are a dead letter because there is no one ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... had advanced since then. The Church had returned in its full power and privileges together with the monarchy, and everything went back into its old groove. Every Act passed for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church was declared a dead letter. Those of the ejected incumbents who remained alive entered again into their parsonages, and occupied their pulpits as of old; the surviving bishops returned to their sees; and the whole existing statute law regarding the Church revived ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... even discuss the question of the divinity of Christ was considered blasphemy, and the person so offending was punished most severely by the criminal laws. At the present time this wretched remnant of the dark ages is practically a dead letter. The friends of Shelley suffered from this most intolerant spirit. Keats, it is believed by many, was wounded unto death for daring to speak on behalf of freedom, and we are given glimpses in the Adonais of his feelings on the subject; Leigh Hunt and his brother ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... the ordinance remained a dead letter was that, while it fixed the limits within which local governments might act, it left the creation of those governments wholly to the future. At Vincennes, for example, the ordinance made no change in the political habits of ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... against witchcraft had become practically a dead letter, but it was not till 1735 that they were repealed. Still, the abolition of the legal penalty did not kill the popular belief in the power and reality of witchcraft; and even now, at this present day, we find proof ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... continues, it is scarcely possible that we should become again an exporting nation with regard to corn. The bounty has long been a dead letter; and will probably remain so. We may at present then confine our inquiry to the restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn with a ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... on the same points. Unless he found them nearly unanimous in their interpretation and approbation of it, he would conclude that juries would not unite in enforcing it, and that it would consequently be a dead letter. And he would be safe in coming to ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... left Portland at last, and promised faithfully to send word to a certain friend of Monckton's, in London, where he was, and what he was doing. Meantime he begged his way northward from Portland, for the southern provinces were a dead letter ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Christ's command remains so largely a dead letter is to be found in our unwillingness to acknowledge that we have committed an injury. That another should have wronged us we find no difficulty in believing; that we have wronged another is very hard to believe. Look at the very form of Peter's question: "How oft shall my ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... suffered with the rest 290 From vice and folly, wretchedness and fear; Of this I little saw, cared less for it, But something must have felt. Call ye these appearances Which I beheld of shepherds in my youth, This sanctity of Nature given to man, 295 A shadow, a delusion? ye who pore On the dead letter, miss the spirit of things; Whose truth is not a motion or a shape Instinct with vital functions, but a block Or waxen image which yourselves have made, 300 And ye adore! But blessed be the God Of Nature and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of their enemies. Far from their armed companions, there was little protection for their lives or their property. The edict of the preceding September, assuring to peaceable Protestants freedom from molestation in their homes, was as much a dead letter as any of its predecessors. The government, the courts of justice, and the populace, were equally eager to oppress them. At Orleans the "lieutenant-general" placed all the Huguenots of the city, without distinction of age or sex, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... that this phase of the party's program would have to be sacrificed in order to make the party leader responsible in the true sense for the program as a whole. But that plank had not been seriously intended, and by 1916 the march of events had made it a dead letter. ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... old order had collapsed in shapeless ruin; but the promised Utopia had not been realised to take its place. In many directions the forces of reaction were at work. Religion, striving to maintain itself upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of the chance that his adventures would go down to posterity in the form of recorded biography. We suspect that he rather eschewed books, parchment deeds, and clerkly contrivances, as forms of evil; and held the dead letter of little consequence. His associates were as little likely to preserve any records, but those of memory, of the daily incidents and exploits, which indicate character and assume high interest, when they relate to a person like the subject of this narrative. ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... which crowns the defects of the Confederation remains yet to be mentioned, the want of a judiciary power. Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation. The treaties of the United States, to have any force at all, must be considered as part of the law of the land. Their true import, as far as respects ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... parents or guardians ere he take any step in courtship. Fines, imprisonment, or the whipping-post awaited him, did he "inveigle the affections of any maide or maide servant" by making love to her without proper authority. Numberless examples might be given to prove that this law was no dead letter. In 1647, in Stratford, Will Colefoxe was fined L5 for "laboring to invegle the affection of Write his daughter." In 1672 Jonathan Coventry, of Plymouth town, was indicted for "making a motion of marriage" to Katharine Dudley ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... faith. In the provinces ruled over by King Charles the Holy Inquisition prosecuted heresy in a curious manner and the secular arm saw to it that the sentences pronounced by the Church did not remain a dead letter. The Armagnacs burned witches just as much as the French and the Burgundians. For the present doubtless they did not believe the Maid to be possessed by devils; most of them on the contrary were inclined to regard her as a saint. But might they not be undeceived? ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Reverend Martha Kendall had called at City Hall and laid before the Mayor a definite plan, the result of which was that the woman minister was made Inspector of Markets, there being such an office provided for in the old City Charter, although it had remained a dead letter on the books. And no sooner did the Reverend Martha Kendall receive her appointment than she went to the club and asked to have a special committee appointed from that organization to work with her for clean markets and ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... Government in 1851, having, in compliance with popular clamour, passed a bill by which Catholic prelates were prohibited, under many penalties, from assuming territorial titles of sees, found itself, from the very first, obliged to treat this enactment as a dead letter, in consequence of the legal difficulties and complications which arose from it. Common sense suggested its removal from the statute-book. This was not effected without considerable effort to escape from that necessity by some less humiliating alternative. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... especially of the consistories (the members of which are appointed by the Government, mediately, however, now, through the Oberkirchenrath), are decidedly opposed to the separation; and, as they speak for the churches, the provision of the constitution allowing the separation is a dead letter. There is no denying that, if it were now to be fully carried out, the consequences to the church might be, for a time at least, disastrous. The people have always been used to the present system; they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... seek to know these things that we may know them, that we may discourse on them, we disappoint the great end and scope of the whole scriptures; and we debase and degrade spiritual things as far as religion exalts natural things in the spiritual use. We transform it into a carnal, empty, and dead letter, as religion, where it is truly, spiritualizeth earthly and carnal things into ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... United States. This was not the mere will of governmental officials; the Mexican statutory law prohibited the granting of licenses to citizens of the United States. This law was, however, often made a dead letter by Americans; for, they frequently, but stealthily evaded it. In order, therefore, to hoodwink the Mexican authorities, Mr. Young had to resort to various expedients. His preparations were so carefully and secretly made, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Scriptures, seeks life and finds death; seeks light and finds darkness, whether it be in the Old or in the New Testament."[41] "He who thinks that he can be made truly righteous by means of a Book is ascribing to the dead letter what belongs to the Spirit."[42] He does not belittle or undervalue the Scriptures—he knew them almost by heart and took the precious time out of his brief life to help to translate the Prophets into German—but ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... hot oysters, chicken salad, every known variety of sandwich, ices and cakes was taken standing for the most part, Madame Zattiany, however, once more enthroned at the head of the room, women as well as men dancing attendance upon her. Prohibition, a dead letter to all who could afford to patronize the underground mart, had but added to the spice of life, and it was patent that Miss Dwight had a cellar. More cocktails, highballs, sherry, were passed continuously, and two enthusiastic guests made a punch. Fashionable young actors ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... be? He had spent several years in society that seemed callous to fear,—that knew not what it was to be a Christian; where the utmost coolness was necessary to the preservation of life; where bravery was all and education a dead letter. Fearless Frank, too, had seen all phases of rough western life, probably, but his temperament was more nervous and excitable, his passions tenfold harder to restrain. Still, he managed to exercise a cool exterior now, that equaled that of his opposite—his hated enemy. Mystery, as Frank ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... emigrants, requiring them to cease to give them shelter, and announcing that if they should refuse to remove them from their dominions he should consider their refusal a sufficient ground for war; while, to show that he did not intend this menace to be a dead letter, he soon afterward announced to the Assembly that he had ordered a powerful army of a hundred and fifty thousand men to be moved toward the frontier, under the command of Marshal Luckner, Marshal Rochambeau, and General La Fayette, and ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... 'Ivanhoe.' The first swept the world's admiration for the medieval chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it. As far as our South is concerned, the good work done by Cervantes is pretty nearly a dead letter, so effectually has Scott's pernicious work ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Hungary possesses a most admirable and enlightened law guaranteeing "the Equal Rights of Nationalities" (1868); in practice, it has remained almost from the very first a dead letter. Let us take the field of education. Every effort, legal and illegal, has been made to Magyarise the educational system, with the result that in all the primary and secondary schools under State control Magyar is ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... against Edith's writing—I fear the person would never get the letter—it would go straight to the Dead Letter Office," said Mrs. Wilson, ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... warmth, light, and so on; the very thing, namely, which no European scientist, steering an even course between Tyndall and Schropfer, has, as yet, defined. This concealed meaning has totally escaped Professor Max Muller's attention, and this is why, clinging to the dead letter, he never hesitates before cutting a Gordian knot. How then can he be permitted to pronounce upon the antiquity of the Vedas, when he is so far from the right understanding of the ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... a siege, and to accept the position of a subject-ally (c. 456 B.C.). The tribute was fixed at 30 talents. By the terms of the Thirty Years' Truce (445 B.C.) Athens covenanted to restore to Aegina her autonomy, but the clause remained a dead letter. In the first winter of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) Athens expelled the Aeginetans, and established a cleruchy in their island. The exiles were settled by Sparta in Thyreatis, on the frontiers of Laconia and Argolis. Even in their new home they were not safe from Athenian rancour.1 A force ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... illustration of that great truth, which ought to be familiar to all statesmen and politicians, that a law passed by the national legislature to operate locally upon a people not represented, will always remain practically a dead letter upon the statute book, if it be in opposition to the wishes and supposed interests of those who are to be affected by it, and at the same time charged with its execution. The Ordinance of 1787 was practically a dead letter. It did not make the country, to which it applied, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... told now. Much of it, no doubt, was unconstitutional; but it was hoped that the laws enacted would serve their purpose before the question of constitutionality could be submitted to the judiciary and a decision obtained. These laws did serve their purpose, and now remain "a dead letter" upon the statute books of the United States, no one taking interest enough in them to give them a ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Emory, already assembling in transports at Fort Monroe. An additional force of ten thousand men, he was told, would be sent to him from Boston and New York as soon as possible. Though this order was never formally revoked or modified, yet in fact it was from the first a dead letter, and Banks, who received it in New York, remained there to complete the organization and to look after the collection and transport of the additional force mentioned in Halleck's instructions. Including the eight regiments of Emory, but not counting four regiments of infantry ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... of Virginia, conceived that this foreign settlement trenched upon the rights granted by the English crown to its subjects, and by a display of superior force constrained the Dutch colony to acknowledge British sovereignty (1613);[351] but this submission became a dead letter some years later, when large bodies of emigrants arrived from the Low Countries (1620);[352] the little trading post soon rose into a town, and a fort was erected for its defense. The site of this establishment was on the island of Manhattan;[353] the founders ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Moses than Blackstone, the Jewish code of laws, than the English system of jurisprudence? Women have compelled their legislators in every state in this Union to so modify their statutes for women that the old common law is now almost a dead letter. Why not compel Bishops and Revising Committees to modify their creeds and dogmas? Forty years ago it seemed as ridiculous to timid, time-serving and retrograde folk for women to demand an expurgated edition of the laws, as it now does to demand an expurgated edition of the Liturgies and ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... you want to go through all these things, Floyd, you can do it at your leisure. We can't talk business until we know what basis it is to be on, and the will is a sort of dead letter without further instructions. I have a little errand to do which will take ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and reliable history of the Maine law, we addressed a letter to Hon. Neal Dow, of Portland, Maine, asking him to furnish us, for this volume, with the facts and evidence by which our readers could for themselves judge whether the law were a dead letter, as some asserted, or effective and salutory. In reply, Mr. Dow has kindly furnished us with the following deeply interesting and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Freteau, Rabout-Saint-Etienne, Volney, Sieyes, are hatching out a long arrears of resentments or hopes, and who only await the opportunity to impose their system with all the intolerance of dogmatism and of faith. To minds of this stamp the past is a dead letter; example is no authority; realities are of no account; they live in their own Utopia. Sieyes, the most important of them all, judges that "the whole English constitution is charlatanism, designed for imposing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Slauchter of Salmonde in tyme forbidden be the Law, he shall pay fourtie shillings for the unlaw, and at the third tyme gif he be convict of sik Trespasse he shall tyne his life." But the law had fallen into disuse—was, in fact, a dead letter; practically there was no "tyme forbidden," or at least the close season was as much honoured in the breach as in the observance, and, especially in the upper waters of Tweed and her tributaries, countless numbers of spawning fish ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... stock, to the post, to the stones I trod on; his words rang in mine ears, but I kept them from mine heart. I remember he alleged many a Scripture, but those I valued not; the Scriptures, thought I, what are they? A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings' price.[39] Alas! What is the Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, George on horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that teaches ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... had been gradually relaxed. The repeal of two, the Five Mile and the Conventicle Acts, had, as we have seen in the last chapter, been recent measures of Lord Liverpool. But the Test Act still remained, though it had long been practically a dead letter. The Union with Scotland, where the majority of the population was Presbyterian, had rendered it almost impossible to maintain the exclusion of Englishmen resembling the Scotch in their religious tenets from preferments, and even from seats in the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Roosevelt's own words are significant: "Although under the decision of the courts the National Government had power over the railways, I found, when I became President, that this power was either not exercised at all or exercised with utter inefficiency. The law against rebates was a dead letter. All the unscrupulous railway men had been allowed to violate it with impunity; and because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and decent railway men had been forced to violate it themselves, under penalty of being beaten by their less scrupulous rivals. It was not the fault of these decent ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... bound to see that the laws are obeyed, and they do not deserve the name of a Government if they submit to, much less if they connive at, a permanent state of anarchy in any part of the country. They know that the law in Ireland is a dead letter, that neither to statute nor common law do the lower orders of Irish Catholics (the bulk of the nation) pay the slightest obedience, and that they are countenanced and urged on in their disobedience by those agitators with whom the Government act in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... readiest means of nullifying the Restrictions. The Irish Cabinet and its servants can at any moment reduce an unpopular law to a nullity. Even in England a resolution of the House of Commons may be enough to turn a law into a dead letter. The Imperial Cabinet at this moment could go very near making the Vaccination Acts of no effect, and by declining to have troops sent to Hull could, as I have already pointed out, give victory to the Trades Unionists. Nor is it necessary that the Cabinet should ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... an important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of the ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead letter. ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... agreed with his subordinate's reason for asking for the deportation as well as in its desirability. The offense was having buried a child, who had died of cholera, without church ceremonies. The law prescribed and public health demanded it. But the law was a dead letter and the public health was never considered when these cut into church revenues, as ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... stocks and other investments. Nobody knew just what his investments were, and only he knew how few they were and how unprofitable they had become. Those were days when, as now, disbursing officers were forbidden to gamble, but when, not as now, the law was a dead letter. Burleigh had gambled for years; had, with little remorse, ruined more than one man, and yet stood now awe-stricken and dismayed and wronged by Fate, since luck had turned at last against him. Large sums had been lost to players inexorable as he himself had ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... with a most malignant and distorted vision. Meanwhile, though Mr. Allsop was popular with the higher classes and with such of the extreme poor as his charity relieved, his pastoral influence generally was a dead letter. His curate, who preached for him—a good young man, but extremely dull-was not one of those preachers who fill a church. Tradesmen wanted an excuse to stay away or choose another place of worship; and they contrived to hear some passages in the sermons—over ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... effect the abolition of dual-ownership by converting the occupiers of Irish farms into owners of the soil. Let it be granted that this policy had been advocated by John Bright and enshrined in the Land Law Acts of 1870 and 1881. It must be added that these pious intentions remained a "dead letter" until adequate machinery for giving them effect was provided by the Land Purchase Acts, commonly called the Ashbourne Acts, of 1885 and 1889. The method pursued was as follows. Any individual landlord could agree with any ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... truth in its entirety isn't given to man to know—such knowledge, no doubt, would be beyond human endurance. But we make a step towards it, when we learn that there is rottenness and evil in the world, masquerading as right and morality—when we learn to know the living spirit from the dead letter. I have not cared to stop in this struggle of life to question. You, perhaps, wouldn't dare to alone. Together, dear one, we will work it out. Be sure there is a way—we may not find it in the end, but we ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... spent in war against the barons and Prince Louis of France. "They have placed twenty-five kings over me!" he shouted, in his fury, referring to the twenty-five leading men who had been appointed to see that the Great Charter did not become a dead letter. But the twenty-five did their duty, and the war ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Philbrick's went, "missent," to Beaufort, N. C., which is, I believe, Bofort. Had the pronunciation been written on the envelope, as one hears it among the "black inhabitants," it would have gone to the Dead Letter Office, unless, by good luck, the S. C. had brought it as far ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... away, and the negotiations between the Courts of Scotland and of France, respecting the marriage of King Alexander and Fair Jolande, were continued; but, during that period, even the name of Patrick Douglas, the Scottish soldier, began to be forgotten—his learning became a dead letter, and his feats of arms continued no longer the theme of tongues. It is seldom that kings are such tardy wooers; but between the union of the good Alexander and the beautiful Jolande many obstacles were thrown. When, however, their nuptials were finally agreed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... a "natural scavenger," but its virtues are only imperfectly known. As a therapeutic agent it is almost without a peer, and yet it is so little used that it is practically a dead letter. Chemists are burning the midnight oil in their laboratories searching for new weapons with which to fight sepsis, while hot, boiled water, which is one of the best antiseptics in existence, is almost ignored. It may be asked why (if it is such an invaluable remedial agent) it is not more extensively ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... all traitors Against our royal state have lost the heads Wherewith they plotted in their treasonous malice, Have talk'd together, and are well agreed That those old statutes touching Lollardism To bring the heretic to the stake, should be No longer a dead letter, but requicken'd. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... law, and have an equal right 'to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' perhaps these Democrats may be willing to let these provisions in behalf of slavery be dropped out of the Constitution when they shall have become no longer any thing but a dead letter—with no power of political victory and reward in them. As a living contradiction to the Declaration of Independence they have been the source of all our woes. It is not necessary to blame the framers of our Constitution for introducing them. They did it for the best, as they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she said. "A dead letter! If he had sent it back to me, I think it would have cured me; but now there is no cure for me at all. If he had read it, he would have come,—if he had only read it; but it is a dead letter, ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... their respective duties, and leadeth to an acquisition (by the ruler himself) of virtue (profit, and salvation). When the king properly abideth by the penal code, without making any portion of it a dead letter, then that best of periods called the Krita Yuga setteth in. Let not this doubt be thine, viz., whether the era is the cause of the king, or the king the cause of the era, for (know this to be certain that) the king ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... better days, "had been wholly neglected." In short, the Acts passed in our different Islands for the pretended purpose of bettering the condition of the slaves have been all of them most shamefully neglected; and they remain only a dead letter; or they are as much a nullity, as if they had never ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk: the writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... or Brazilian, who visited this country for business or information, might come under this law, unless public opinion rendered it a mere dead letter. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... cession of the whole northeastern promontory from the Sultan of Sulu, who was its suzerain, the hostility of the natives, who resented their transfer to alien rule, was so pronounced that the treaty soon became virtually a dead letter and by the end of the century British influence in Borneo was to all intents and purposes at an end. Nor was it resumed until 1838, when an adventurous Englishman, James Brooke, landed at Kuching and eventually made himself the "White Rajah" ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... murderer has only to hide or destroy the body of the victim, or sink it into the sea? Then, if he is not seen to kill, the law is powerless and the murderer can snap his finger in the face of retributive justice. If this is the law, then the law for the highest crime is a dead letter. The great commonwealth winks at murder and invites every man to kill his enemy, provided he kill him in secret and hide him. I repeat, your Honor,"—the man's voice was now loud and angry and rang through the court room—"that this doctrine ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... collection of taxes, recruiting, punishment of great crimes, as a general thing do systematically go on; but outside of such recognized necessities, all legislative decrees which affect customs, morals, private interests, and certain abuses, are a dead letter, owing to the sullen opposition of the people. At the very moment when this book is going to press, this dumb resistance, which opposed Louis XIV. in Brittany, may still be seen and felt. See the unfortunate results of the game-laws, to which we are now ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Anti-Trust Law was a dead letter until Mr. Roosevelt instructed the Attorney-General to prosecute its violators, both great and small. No fear or favor was shown in the enforcement of the laws against the rich and poor alike. There were many other notable features of his ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... to whom centuries were as moments, whose very correspondence, as I had noticed, came through the Dead Letter Office, and who spoke in the tongues of ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
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