"Lenity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of inconstancy and want of system, would be taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined discontent, which nothing could satisfy; whilst we accused every measure of vigor as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as weak and irresolute. The public, he said, would not have patience to see us play the game out with our adversaries; we must produce our hand. It would be expected that those who for many years had been active in such affairs should show that they had formed some clear and decided ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... heinous scandal. Being introduced into the royal presence he limited his commission to a serious admonition, that, upon such occasions, his majesty should always shut the windows.—The king is said to have recompensed this unexpected lenity after the Restoration. He probably remembered the joke, though he might have ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... his face, and sighed convulsively, "I do not deserve this lenity. My excellent father! this is a tribute ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... greatly vexed, it is said, at the lenity of the Parliament of Paris, summoned commissions chosen amongst the Parliaments of Rouen, Dijon, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and made them reconsider the case. The provincial Parliaments decided as that ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... swell her own. Moreover, she is more beautiful than any other young lady of your acquaintance, and, polished by your example, may do honour to your taste as well as your prudence. Under these circumstances, you will, I am quite sure, look with lenity on her girlish errors, and not love her the less because her foolish fancy persuades her that she is ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... opportunity for the recovery of their country's ancient liberty; and for Sabinus, truly he was desirous of going away with his soldiers, but was not able to trust himself with the enemy, on account of what mischief he had already done them; and he took this great [pretended] lenity of theirs for an argument why he should not comply with them; and so, because he expected that Varus was coming, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... His dignity and safety thus to mourn The deserv'd end of so profest a traitor, And doth, by this his lenity, instruct Others as factious to ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... contradicted itself when its interest changed. If the question related to new measures of oppression, to the introduction of the inquisitional tribunals, etc., the numbers of the Protestants were countless and interminable. If, on the other hand, the question was of lenity towards them, of ordinances to their advantage, they were now reduced to such an insignificant number that it would not repay the trouble of making an innovation for this small body of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he passed by the window of her prison; they knew, also, that she was adjudged to suffer death, and had been preserved only by an involuntary banishment into the wilderness. The new outrage, by which she had provoked her fate, seemed to render further lenity impossible; and a gentleman in military dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the door of the meeting-house, and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her feet press the floor, however, when ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... facts and statistics about the East; this book gives the East itself in vital actual reality. Its style is conversational; or the soliloquy rather of a man convincing and amusing himself as he proceeds, without reverence for others' faith, or lenity towards others' prejudices. It is a real book, not a sham; it equals Anastasius, rivals 'Vathek;' its terseness, vigour, bold imagery, recall the grand style of Fuller and of South, to which the author adds a spirit, freshness, delicacy, all his own." Kinglake, ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... defiance of those who were formerly its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same powers—rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us, as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and Spain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom of Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. But these powers put a just ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the Lords. The Lords adhered to their original resolution. Conference after conference was held. Compromise after compromise was suggested. From the imperfect reports which have come down to us it appears that every argument in favour of lenity was forcibly urged by Burnet. But the Commons were firm: time pressed: the unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in every department of the public service; and the peers very reluctantly gave way. They at the same time added a clause empowering the King to bestow pecuniary ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... King's wounded soldiers, who but an hour before would have shot him if they could have come at him, and in making a collection for their refreshment, of wine, linen, money, etc., in the town where he lived. * * * The capture of the privateer was, solely owing to the ill-judged lenity and brotherly kindness of Captain Johnson, who not considering his English prisoners in the same light that he would French or Spanish, put them under no sort of confinement, but permitted them to walk the decks as freely as his own people at all times. Taking advantage of ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... having fled from the laws of his country for twelve years, the Court was disposed to show no lenity. He was therefore sentenced to pay a fine of one shilling, and be imprisoned ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... he said: "If the executive is chargeable with 'premeditating the destruction of Mr. Monroe in his appointment, because he was the centre around which the Republican party rallied in the Senate' (a circumstance quite new to me), it is to be hoped he will give it credit for its lenity toward that gentleman in having designated several others, not of the Senate, as victims to this office before the sacrifice of Mr. Monroe was even had in contemplation. As this must be some consolation to him and his friends, I hope ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... infer, that there was little difference between the Northumbrian and the border Scottish; a circumstance interesting in itself, and decisive of the occasional friendly intercourse among the marchmen. From all those combining circumstances arose the lenity of the borderers in their incursions and the equivocal moderation which they sometimes observed towards ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... disorder in the punishment of offenders; and wish to be governed, not by temper but by reason, in the manner of treating them. We are sensible that our cause has suffered by the two following errors: first, by ill-judged lenity to traitorous persons in some cases; and, secondly, by only a passionate treatment of them in others. For the future we disown both, and wish to be steady in our proceedings, and serious ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... they afford curious anecdotes of the system of academic and domestic education then pursued, and are accompanied with his own sagacious and candid reflections. Peacham was an Aschamite in respect to lenity of discipline; as the following extracts, from the foregoing work, (edit. 1661) will unequivocally prove. Peacham first observes upon the different modes of education: "But we see on the contrary, out of the master's carterly judgment, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... two powerful contending parties, concentrating their terrors, and perfecting their deep designs to crush each other before they entirely annihilate a fallen foe, bears no more resemblance to the wise lenity of a regular government towards the refractory subjects it has subdued, than the fearful stillness which is the precursor of a thunder-storm does to the serene tranquillity of a summer's day. No sooner were the Presbyterian republicans subdued by the fanatics, who had gained ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... full length with Alexander Monypenny, proposed as trustee on the part of the Bank of Scotland, and found him decidedly in favour of the most moderate measures, and taking burthen on himself for the Bank of Scotland proceeding with such lenity as might enable me to have some time and opportunity to clear these affairs out. I repose trust in Mr. M. entirely. His father, old Colonel Monypenny, was my early friend, kind and hospitable to me when I was a mere boy. He had much of old Withers ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... such art and caution will have a right to the same lenity as was used by the Lacedemonians; who did not punish theft, but the want of ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... which we have to say that, when we remember what butter is in civilized Europe, and compare it with what it is in America, we wonder at the forbearance and lenity of travelers in their strictures ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... holds the pen. That any man who insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is essentially mad we never doubted. But for the madness, that retains enough of rationality to be wilfully mischievous, we can have no more lenity than for the appetites of a wild beast. The poetry of the work is contemptible—a mere collection of bloated words heaped on each other without order, harmony, or meaning; the refuse of a schoolboy's common-place ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... insomuch that she took no rest for divers nights, and endured very great torment night and day. The statute of 1562 includes 'fond and fantastic prophecies' (a very common sort of political offences in that age) in the category of forbidden arts. With unaccustomed lenity it punished a first conviction with the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination that they, as well as you, had an interest ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... thought his tone might have been more unqualified, and marvelled again at the curious lenity of judgment he had always shown of late towards Mr. Wendover. And all his judgments of himself and others were generally so ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... passed in great quiet after 1660: Charles II, according to Clarendon, with a wise and humorous lenity, not thinking it 'necessary to inquire after a man so long forgotten.' His letters reveal a man of affectionate and honest disposition; he uses the Puritan phraseology of the day without leaving a sense of nausea in the reader's ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... lie under such manifest Obligations to attack publick Immorality, wherever it is found, and by whatsoever Patrons of Power, Dignity, and Interest it is shelter'd and supported, thar, as I have suggested, it is not easy to imagine whence their Lenity and Tenderness for the Theatre can proceed. But if the true Reason of it, whatever it is, and which is so hard to be accounted for, were remov'd, and our Divines would interest themselves with Zeal in the Cause of Vertue, in respect to our Dramatick Entertainments, ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... recalled and reprimanded, it was not because of his barbarities many of which transcend the possibilities of decent print—but because of a lenity which this venal gentleman began to display when he discovered that many of his victims were willing to pay handsomely ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offenses have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... which has no picturesqueness, and which chiefly appeals to the sense of humor in the men who never dreamt of laughing at him. The man who was in the last degree amiable was to the last degree unyielding where conscience was concerned; the soul which was so tender had no weakness in it; his lenity was the divination of a finer justice. His honesty made all men trust him when they doubted his opinions; his good sense made them doubt their own opinions, when they had as little ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the abbot, "father Michael were to be hanged with him: an ungrateful monster, after I had rescued him from the fangs of civil justice, to reward my lenity by not leaving a bone unbruised among the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... accused of popery, and Swift wrote to Lord Carteret that the charge was generally believed to be false: "The father is the most universally beloved of any man I ever knew in his station.... You cannot do any personal thing more acceptable to the people of Ireland than in inclining towards lenity to Mr. Proby and his family." Proby was probably a near relative of Sir Thomas Proby, Bart., M.P., of Elton, Hunts, at whose death in 1689 the baronetcy expired. Mrs. Proby seems to have ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... unshaken fidelity. The leaders in the plot were arrested, tried, and cashiered. The rest, humbled and dispirited, begged to be permitted to withdraw their resignations. Many of them declared their repentance even with tears. The younger offenders Clive treated with lenity. To the ringleaders he was inflexibly severe; but his severity was pure from all taint of private malevolence. While he sternly upheld the just authority of his office, he passed by personal insults and injuries with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspirators was accused ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... necessary to that end. Relentless rigor is the only measure adequate to the occasion. It is the weakness of civilization that it hesitates to be cruelly kind. The mistake of the military authorities in regard to the New York riot, was lenity. The prompt and vigorous bombardment, in the beginning of the rising, of a block of the houses in which the rioters were safely ensconced, while covertly firing on the soldiers and policemen, would have done ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... behind him: The assassin escaped by a back-door. The regent told his attendants that he was wounded, and returned to his lodgings; it was at first thought the wound was not mortal, but his pain increasing, he began to think of death. Some about him told him, That this was the fruit of his lenity, in sparing so many notorious offenders, and among the rest his own murderer; but he replied, "Your importunity shall not make me repent my clemency." Having settled his private affairs, he committed the care of the young king to the nobles there present, and without speaking a reproachful ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... our distressed situation, as suffering extremely by heat and stagnant air; for only two of us were allowed to come upon deck at a time; but he answered that he had given orders for our safe treatment, and safe keeping; and he was determined not to lose his ship by too much lenity. In a word, we found the fellow's heart to be as hard as the bed we slept on. Soon after, however, our situation became so dangerous and alarming, that one of the marine corps informed the captain that if he wished to preserve us ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... had struck such terror into the hearts of the inhabitants, who knew there was no army that could advance to their assistance, that they surrendered at the Conqueror's approach. To them William behaved with lenity and kindness. His severity at Romney and his lenity at Dover had their effect. There being no central authority, no army in the field, each town and district was left to shift for itself; and assuredly none ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... the assailants took possession of the gunroom; seized the arms, and killed all who resisted. This vigorous assault soon carried the ship by a surrender at discretion. She proved to be a rich prize; and the prisoners were treated with lenity, which was not always the course adopted by the buccaneers when they were disappointed in the amount of their expected plunder. Many were the crews compelled to pay with their lives for the poverty of their cargoes. In the present case Le Grande retained for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... surrendered. The emperor treated it with lenity, but a great treasure in gold, silver, silk, and precious stones fell into his hands, with all the animals and arms. Zenobia being brought into his presence, he sternly asked her how she had dared to take arms against the emperors of Rome. She answered, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... The new King came forth, and took his place at the head of the board. He commenced his administration, according to usage, by a speech to the Council. He expressed his regret for the loss which he had just sustained, and he promised to imitate the singular lenity which had distinguished the late reign. He was aware, he said, that he had been accused of a fondness for arbitrary power. But that was not the only falsehood which had been told of him. He was resolved to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which were made with frankness and fervour, respecting his own and his sister's condition, he said that the situation of both was deplorable till the recovery of this property. They had been saved from utter ruin, from beggary and a jail, only by the generosity and lenity of his creditors, who did not suffer the suspicious circumstances attending Watson's disappearance to outweigh former proofs of his probity. They had never relinquished the hopes of receiving ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... was the restoration of a colonial surgeon, dismissed on a charge of culpable negligence. His neighbors, believing the penalty unjust, remonstrated in his favor, and Franklin complied with their request. This Mr. Montagu severely condemned, as fatal to the dignity of government, and ascribed the lenity of Sir John to the influence of Lady Franklin. He then announced to the governor, in a formal manner, that thenceforth he should confine his own services to the routine of his office, and that a cordial co-operation might be expected no longer. The details of business, formerly prepared ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... defenceless capital; but they were here arrested by the romantic chivalry of the Marquis of Hastings. The country had been virtually conquered; the prince, by his base treachery towards us and outrages upon others, had justly forfeited his throne; but the Governor- General, by perhaps a misplaced lenity, left it to him without any other guarantee for his future good behaviour than the recollection that he had been soundly beaten. Unfortunately he left him at the same time a sufficient quantity of fertile ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... pretense for removing an officer from his command" (he writes to Chancellor Livingston on the 12th of March, 1778) "where his misconduct rather appears to result from want of capacity than from any real intention of doing wrong...." Livingston had written complaining of Putnam's "imprudent lenity to the disaffected, and too great intercourse with the enemy"—or, in other words, that he had not persecuted the people Livingston disliked, and had shown generosity to the foe when in distress. Yet he felt compelled to add: "For my own ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... lenity, mercy, benevolence, love, excellence, virtue; beauty, loveliness, gracefulness, comeliness; refinement, elegance, courtliness, culture, polish; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... dissolved. But Crimes of Infirmity; such as are those which proceed from great provocation, from great fear, great need, or from ignorance whether the Fact be a great Crime, or not, there is place many times for Lenity, without prejudice to the Common-wealth; and Lenity when there is such place for it, is required by the Law of Nature. The Punishment of the Leaders, and teachers in a Commotion; not the poore seduced People, when they are punished, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... they dread now—but which at all times, owing to their miseries, they dread much less than we suppose, and so are more willing than we imagine to take the lives of their masters or governors, not caring for death themselves. A well-timed lenity would now be an act of policy as well as of virtue. Those whom you have reprieved, being pardoned, will be bound to you by a sort of gratitude—those of them at least who put a value upon their lives—and now that Tiro is fairly ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... all. His clemency was conspicuous; he wrote to James that he would give up Holyrood to the wounded, rather than see them homeless. Home, a Whig volunteer, and the author of a Whiggish history, acknowledges the nobility of his conduct, and his "foolish lenity" (he would not permit the execution of several persons who tried to assassinate him) is blamed by the fanatics who, in 1749, issued a wild Cameronian manifesto, "The Active Testimonies of Presbyterians." The contrast with the savage brutalities ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the party that had slain another was presently had to the gibbet, insomuch as gentlemen of great quality were hanged, their wounds bleeding, lest a natural death should prevent the example of justice. But, my lords, the course which we shall take is of far greater lenity, and yet of no less efficacy; which is to punish, in this court, all the middle acts and proceedings which tend to the duel, which I will enumerate to you anon, and so to hew and vex the root in the branches, which, no doubt, in the end will kill the root, and yet ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... from any other cause is folly. But as far as appearances went, by the judicious sacrifice of one law you procured an acquiescence in all that remained. After this experience, nobody shall persuade me, when an whole people are concerned, that acts of lenity are not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tone than would be naturally expected from us by our friends, who will, and can, know nothing of our reasons for foregoing the advantage which seems to be in our power, and for treating our opponents with such extraordinary and unaccountable lenity and forbearance. This is asking a great deal.' I owned that it was; but I urged that the paramount importance of winning over the Whig leader, and a part of the Whig party, to a decided opposition to the movement, and the prospect it held out of separating the Whigs from the Radicals, fully ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... with fifteen hundred pounds currency, but also recommended him to the Governor as a person worthy of preferment in the service of the province. After his commission arrived from the King, the Carolineans rejoiced, and promised themselves for the future great tranquillity and happiness. Plans of lenity were likewise adopted by government with respect to those Indian tribes, and every possible precaution was taken to guard them against oppression, and prevent any rupture with them. Experience had shewn that ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... him quickly but said nothing, whereat he was secretly annoyed. Why did she not express her wonder and delight at the Pope's lenity, as almost any other woman in her position would have done? Her outward appearance was that of child-like ultra- femininity,—how was it then that he felt as if she were mentally fencing with him, and that her intellectual sword-play threatened to ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... beginning to murmur; and their discontent was fomented by Duhaut, who, with a view to some ulterior design, tried to ingratiate himself with the malcontents, and become their leader. Joutel detected the mischief, and, with a lenity which he afterwards deeply regretted, contented himself with a severe rebuke to the ring-leader, and words of reproof and exhortation to his dejected band. And, lest idleness should beget farther evil, he busied them ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... conciliation not inconsistent with the being of government has been adopted without effect; when the well-disposed in those counties are unable by their influence and example to reclaim the wicked from their fury, and are compelled to associate in their own defence; when the proffered lenity has been perversely misinterpreted into an apprehension that the citizens will march with reluctance; when the opportunity of examining the serious consequences of a treasonable opposition has been employed in propagating principles of anarchy, endeavoring through emissaries to alienate the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... harassing their legs. Into the midst of this fray, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby both precipitated themselves with great ardour, as if such ground were the only ground on which they could now agree; and having, with no visible remains of their late soft- heartedness, laid about them without any lenity, and done much execution, resumed their former ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... much readiness to follow him to death or victory; and the Kentish troops, despairing of success in their stratagem, fell upon such of his retainers as had already landed, and took 150 of them prisoners. These were tried, sentenced, and executed by order of the king, who was determined to show no lenity to the rebels. Perkin being an eye-witness of the capture of his people, immediately weighed anchor, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he himself who is our everlasting high-priest, the Son of God, even Jesus Christ, build you up in faith and in truth, and in all meekness and lenity; in patience and long- ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... friend the secretary will be directed to come to your house, and read before you the articles of impeachment; and then to signify the great lenity and favor of his majesty and council, whereby you are only condemned to the loss of your eyes, which his majesty doth not question you will gratefully and humbly submit to; and twenty of his majesty's surgeons will attend in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Mr. Hallam's, not Mr. Froude's—we can deduce not tyranny, but lenity, good sense, and the frank withdrawal from a wrong position as soon as the unwillingness of the people proved it to be ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... of any duties on their side beyond "cash payment," whereas the good, old, patriarchal feeling towards your household is one which the mere introduction of money wages has not by any means superseded, and which cannot, in fact, be superseded. You would bear with lenity from a child many things, for which, in a servant, you can find nothing but the harshest names. Yet how often are these poor, uneducated, creatures little better than children! You talk, too, of ingratitude from them, when, if you reflected a little, you would ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... through the shadow which relatives and associates had thrown across his path, his eclipse was so long that society had no patience to await his return to light—no mercy for the obscuration which their ill-timed lenity to others ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... much slaughter, merely in order to avenge defeats and vindicate a military superiority which the immensely greater forces of Britain made self-evident? A great country is strong enough to be magnanimous, and shows her greatness better by justice and lenity than by a sanguinary revenge. These moral arguments, which affect different minds differently, were reinforced by a strong ground of policy. The Boers of the Orange Free State had sympathised warmly with their kinsfolk in the Transvaal, and were with difficulty kept from crossing ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... worse a vice than lenity in kings; Remiss indulgence soon undoes a realm. He teacheth how to sin that winks at sins, And bids offend that suffereth an offence. The only hope of leave increaseth crimes, And he that pardoneth one, embold'neth all To break the laws. Each patience ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... happy. Our lives were molested by few of those cares that are incident to childhood. By accident more than design, the indulgence and yielding temper of our aunt was mingled with resolution and stedfastness. She seldom deviated into either extreme of rigour or lenity. Our social pleasures were subject to no unreasonable restraints. We were instructed in most branches of useful knowledge, and were saved from the corruption and tyranny of ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... considering the deep wrongs he had suffered, and the slowness with which he had been provoked to revenge, magnanimously pardoned him; nay, according to Las Casas, he proceeded with stern justice against the Spaniard whose outrage on his wife had sunk so deeply in his heart. He extended his lenity also to the remaining chieftains of the conspiracy; promising great favors and rewards, if they should continue firm in their loyalty; but terrible punishments should they again be found in rebellion. The heart of Guarionex was subdued by this unexpected ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... pacifications unexpected of man which happened this Friday; for in the forenone (betwene nine and ten) where the fellows were greatly in doubt of my heavy displeasure, by reason of their manifold misusing of themselves against me, I did with all lenity interteyn them, and shewed the most part of the things that I had browght to pass at London for the college good, and told Mr. Carter (going away) that I must speak with him alone. Robert Leigh and Charles Legh were by. Secondly, ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... the plain truth, I am of opinion that my censorial power will not be useless to you, nor a sinecure to me. The sooner you make it both, the better for us both. I can now exercise this employment only upon hearsay, or, at most, written evidence; and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety, indecorum, or irregularity pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... expression of regret, calculated to accompany a positive refusal of the request solicited. This movement brought them so near Edith, that she could distinctly hear Claverhouse say, "It cannot be, Major Bellenden; lenity, in his case, is altogether beyond the bounds of my commission, though in any thing else I am heartily desirous to oblige you.—And here comes Evandale with news, as I think.—What tidings do you bring us, Evandale?" ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... prisoner. The paper was a bail writ, demanding the body of the accused. The officer serving had been kind enough to allow Marston his parole of honour until the next morning. He granted this in accordance with Marston's request, that by the lenity he might see Daddy ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the savages, and forever close the question by the complete conquest and reduction of all the hostile or dangerous tribes. But no assumption could be farther from the facts of the case than that the effect of lenity has been to increase the sum of Indian outrage. There is no scintilla of evidence to show that any savage tribe has been incited by the forbearance of the government to increased depredations. On the contrary, the history ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... subject to regular inspection, and that it was scarcely possible to bring them to justice for their treatment of those committed to their charge. It was argued, that it is impossible to depend upon the lenity of men who have such powers over their fellow-creatures, and that these officers must be supposed more than human if they did not occasionally abuse their authority. Of their having actually done so, many rumours had from time to time reached parliament. But in making ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... ascribe the suffering to the wrong cause. The principle is most liable to err on the side of severity; differences of taste and of opinion are sufficient grounds for quarrel and resentment. It will err on the side of lenity, when a mischief is remote ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... all the disquiets Natura had of disobliging a parent, for whom he retained the most tender, as well as dutiful regard, ever since the kind forgiveness be received from him at Wapping, which shews the great effect of lenity over a mind, where gratitude and generosity are not wholly extinguished; which, as I before observed, they never are, but by a ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... favourable reply.[59] The Inquisitors met him half-way by ordering that he should at once be supplied with a rounded spoon, sufficient for his purpose, though useless to a prisoner of suicidal tendencies.[60] At this stage, it cannot be said that Luis de Leon was treated with any want of lenity. There was no reason why he should be. He was arrested mainly on suspicion of being concerned in the (purely imaginary) Jewish propaganda imputed to his colleagues Grajal and Martinez de Cantalapiedra; the evidence against ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... mildness, peacefulness, charity, lenity, patience, self-control, forbearance, long-suffering, peace, self-restraint. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... many Passages, where I insist upon it, that impartial Justice ought to be administer'd, and that even for the Welfare of worldly-minded Men, Crimes should be severely punish'd. You would inform him likewise, that I thought Nothing more cruel, than the Lenity of Juries, and the Frequencies of Pardons, and not forget to tell him, that my Book contained several Essays on Politicks; that the greatest Part of it was a Philosophical Disquisition into the Force of the Passions, and the Nature of Society, and that they were silly People, ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... several debates upon this impeachment, it must be confessed that his majesty gave many marks of his great lenity; often urging the services you had done him, and endeavouring to extenuate your crimes. The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... deeply indeed penetrated by such unexpected condescension. "I have been longing to make a speech to your majesty upon this matter; and it was but yesterday that I entreated Mrs. Delany to make it for me, and to express to your majesty the very deep sense I feel of the lenity with which this Subject has been ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... account for his being wounded, and then, instead of judges, we shall immediately be placed in the position of culprits, and have to defend ourselves without witnesses. We therefore risk our lives from a misplaced lenity towards a ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... down through history shining with a halo of gentle lenity, for their tithingman was ordered to bear a short, small stick only, and he was "Desired to use it with clemency." However, if any boy proved "incoridgable," he could be "presented" before the elders; ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... next general orders. He then turned to the convicts, and distinctly explained to them the nature of their present situation. The greater part, he bade them recollect, had already forfeited their lives to the justice of their country: yet, by the lenity of its laws, they were now so placed that, by industry and good behaviour, they might in time regain the advantages and estimation in society of which they had deprived themselves. They not only had every encouragement ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... the rest, it is enacted thus: That, in regard King Henry gives consent, Of mere compassion and of lenity, To ease your country of distressful war, And suffer you to breathe in fruitful peace, You shall become true liegemen to his crown: And, Charles, upon condition thou wilt swear To pay him tribute and submit thyself, Thou shalt be placed as viceroy under ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... have now lost their hopes, and our friends, I hope, are recovered from their fears. To fancy that our government can be subverted by the rabble, whom its lenity has pampered into impudence, is to fear that a city may be drowned by the overflowing of its kennels. The distemper which cowardice or malice thought either decay of the vitals, or resolution of the nerves, appears, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... terms the unlimited legislative right of this country over its colonies; and, having done this, to propose the repeal, on principles, not of constitutional right, but on those of expediency, of equity, of lenity, and of the true interests present and future of that great object for which alone the colonies were founded, navigation and commerce. This plan I say, required an uncommon degree of firmness, when we consider that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... before, as between the French and English. But this policy of devastation and retaliation was disapproved of by the British Government—was confined mostly to some certain coast towns in New England, while in the South the conduct of Col. Campbell, on the subjugation of Georgia, was marked by lenity and generosity. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... number of captives were taken; and all under his command held his former orders in such reverence, that none, excepting two (and they had before shown refractory dispositions,) presumed to disobey his edict of mercy. But these men, in derision of his lenity, particularly to the female sex, selected a woman prisoner to be their victim; and slaying her, as they would have done a beast, they commenced their horrible repast upon her body. Laonce descried the scene at a distance just as they had prepared their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... you commit two persons to Bridewell for a twig?" "Yes," said the lawyer, "and with great lenity too; for if we had called it a young tree, they would have been both hanged." "Harkee," says the justice, taking aside the squire; "I should not have been so severe on this occasion, but Lady Booby desires to get them out of the parish; ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... recommendation of forbearance, lenity, and forgiveness, mixes with all the writings of that age. There are more quotations in the apostolical fathers of texts which relate to these points than of any other. Christ's sayings had struck them. "Not rendering," said Polycarp, the ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... no advocate of a mawkish lenity. When our soldiers and sailors and airmen meet our armed foes on equal terms, my prayers go with them; and the harder they strike, the better I am pleased. When a man or woman has committed a cold-blooded murder and has escaped ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... the shedding judicially of a drop of blood. Lord Durham even took care that the eight prisoners should not be sent to a convict colony. The only criticism directed against his course in Canada was on the ground of its excessive lenity. Wolfred Nelson and Robert Bouchette had certainly suffered a milder fate {110} than that of Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews, who had been hanged in Upper Canada for rebellion. Yet when the news of Durham's action reached England, it was immediately attacked as arbitrary ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... enthusiasts, to be found amongst the students, whose wild republican schemes have dazzled others and induced the different outbreaks which have occurred since the event of the three days, and having been treated with lenity in the first instance, unprecedented in the annals of every other government, they were emboldened to repeat ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... some degree as corrector of the Press. If he discharged this office sometimes in the sarcastic spirit of a Mephistopheles, this, too, was considered as part of his functions. He was the Ter'roe Fil'ius [Footnote: Terroe Filius, son of the earth; that is, a human being.] of the day; and lenity would have been considered, not as an act of discretion, but as a cowardly ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... rages in my riven breast, First against her, whom I esteem'd so pure; Then 'gainst myself, whose foolish lenity Hath fashion'd her for treason. Man is soon Inur'd to slavery, and quickly learns Submission, when of freedom quite depriv'd. If she had fallen in the savage hands Of my rude sires, and had their ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... uncontrollable power, and each went peaceably to range himself under his respective standard. 3. Thus going forth to oppose the enemy, he, after concluding a truce for a year, returned with his army, and, in six months, laid down the dictatorship, with the reputation of having exercised it with blameless lenity. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... and that the commons should appoint whomsoever they thought proper to conduct the inquiry. The office is intrusted to the consuls by the commons with the consent of the people at large, who, after having executed the task with the utmost moderation and lenity by punishing only a few, who there are sufficient grounds for believing put a period to their own lives, still could not succeed so as to prevent the people from feeling the utmost displeasure. "That constitutions, which were enacted for ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... party spirit exercises over those journals. In the latter, one or two of her works have been criticised with overwhelming power, and in a tone and spirit superlatively bitter. In the former, on the contrary, she is spoken of with studied lenity, although the Reviewer is obliged to confess that he is not one of her particular admirers, and seems to be perpetually restraining himself from indulging in the language of raillery and sarcasm. We need hardly add that the political ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... situation, but she was too necessary as a nurse for the time of her departure to be fixed, and Mr. Crabbe was unable to settle anything definitively. He found Robert—who previously had spurred him to strong measures—bent on persuading him to lenity, and especially on keeping Phoebe with Mervyn; and after a day and night of perplexity, the old gentleman took his leave, promising to come again on Bertha's recovery, and to pacify the two elder sisters by representing ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been convicted of treason for armed resistance to the levy of certain direct taxes in Pennsylvania, was regarded by many at that time as a piece of misplaced lenity on the part of Adams, dictated, it was said, by a mean desire of popularity in a case where the severest example was needed. But Adams can hardly suffer with posterity from his unwillingness to be the first president to sign a death warrant for treason, especially as there was room ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... apply. Having thus dismissed these honest fellows from their fears, I was infinitely gratified by the murmur of satisfaction which instantly ran through the ship's company; and was afterwards amply rewarded for my lenity, there being no service during all the toils and dangers of the voyage which they did not perform with a zeal and alacrity that were much to their honour and my advantage, as an example to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... look like that, my dear. I promised you I would play a father's part to the boy, and I will; but you must not expect me to be a weak indulgent father, and spoil him with foolish lenity. There, enough for one day. I daresay we shall get all ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... he said, was not a question of this or the other administration, but an act of insubordination which no ministry could overlook: that his professional prospects would be entirely destroyed if the board took cognizance of it; and that extraordinary lenity was shown in allowing him to recall it. A letter was accordingly written; but before a ship sailed, Mr. Grey came a second time to the Duke, and told him he had found, upon inquiry, that Sir Edward was right. He did more; ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... her reflections of her imperfections, which, though not apparent to any one but herself, she verily believed were uncommonly great, as she beheld them with very scrutinizing and rigid eyes, while she looked on those of others with the greatest lenity. But of all the means she used to preserve her humility, she was the most assiduous in praying to him who made her ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... to observe with what lenity we propose to treat these enormous offenders, who have already brought such a scandal on our honourable calling, that several well-meaning people have mistaken them to be of our Fraternity; in diminution to that credit and dignity wherewith we have supported our station, as we always ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... The lenity with which the Lacedaemonians treated the Messenians at first, was of no long duration.(241) When once they found the whole country had submitted, and thought the people incapable of giving them any further trouble, they returned to their natural ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... stand still. In England the news of Concord had not moved the king to lenity; he saw no lesson in the tragedy, and insisted on pressing his policy. Lord North's feeble endeavor to resign was checked, supplies were sent to Virginia to support the governor in his project of a rising of the slaves, a scheme was pressed to raise in Carolina a regiment of veteran Highlanders, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... Boone over the Indian mind, that the chiefs with one consent agreed in grateful commemoration of this treaty, that if any captive should hereafter be taken by them from Maysville, that captive should be treated with every possible degree of lenity. And it is worthy of record that such a captive was subsequently taken, and that the Indians with the most scrupulous fidelity fulfilled their pledge. Indeed, it is difficult for an impartial historian to deny, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... without something of the marvellous.' 'None, my lord,' replied Ferdinand, who too well understood the manner of the marquis. ''Tis well,' cried the marquis, 'and this is the last time,' turning to his attendants, 'that your folly shall be treated with so much lenity.' He ceased to urge the subject, and forbore to ask Ferdinand even one question before his servants, concerning the nocturnal sounds described by Peter. He quitted the dungeon with eyes steadily bent in anger and suspicion upon Ferdinand. The marquis suspected ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... rescindenda est spes ista. [29] Then, as these Zambales have many times been warned, and have promised and sworn peace and amends, and have totally defaulted, as we have already said, and have taken occasion, from the lenity shown them, to do greater mischiefs with more boldness—mistaking for timidity the kindliness that we have used toward them—it follows that, numerous though they are, we ought no longer to dissemble with them, but must punish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... this church, and yet allying themselves with men pledged to her destruction. Here, men rampant against the Minister as having strained the laws, in what regarded Ireland, for the sake of a vigour altogether unnecessary; there, men threatening impeachment—as for a lenity in the same case altogether intolerable! To the right, "how durst you diminish the army in Ireland, leaving that country, up to March 1843, with a force lower by 2400 rank and file shall the lowest that the Whigs had maintained?" To the left, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... made these false steps, into a place where you would have cause to curse the fatal inclination that seduced you: think therefore how much you owe a prince, who, instead of punishing your faults, contents himself with letting you know he is not ignorant of them.—If you make a right use of the lenity I shew on this occasion, you may perhaps retrieve some part of the influence you once had over me; but see the Swedish prisoners no more, if you hope or ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... in my friend's offer that astonished me, but the consideration for Wilde; I thought the lenity so singular in England that I feel compelled to explain it. Though an Englishman born and bred my friend was by race a Jew—a man of the widest culture, who had no sympathy whatever with the vice attributed to Oscar. Feeling consoled because ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... been so, my child,' replied my father, 'I shall certainly show them lenity, but I wish first to hear your story, and then I shall know how to proceed. So, Sir Robert, if you will please to detain these people till to-morrow, I shall ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... Reformation in the Lives and Morals even of our common People, clearly evinced in this, that (thank Heaven) fewer legal Punishments succeed an entire Circuit, in our happy Days, than did a single Assize in former Reigns: And, without Question, this Reformation must still rise higher, in Proportion to the Lenity of our worthy Legislature, and wise Indulgence of our landed Men, who must certainly find it more conducive to the Welfare of the State, and to their own Strength, Honour, and Interest, to have their Estates farmed and ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... beneficent functions of peace. The conflict was not of our seeking. Be the consequences what they may, the Sikhs will have themselves to blame, should it so happen, for the illustration of the maxim, that "when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... was neither sanguinary nor revengeful: his favourite maxim was rather to appease the minds of the discontented by lenity, than to have recourse to violent measures; to be content with losing nothing by the war, without being at the expense of gaining any advantage from the enemy; to suffer his character to be very severely handled, provided he could amass much wealth, and to spin out the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... entirely popular; and, therefore, we constantly see all the power which ought to execute the law, employed to counteract the law. Thus, for example, with a criminal code which carries its rigour to the length of atrocity, we have a criminal judicature which often carries its lenity to the length of perjury. Our law of libel is the most absurdly severe that ever existed, so absurdly severe that, if it were carried into full effect, it would be much more oppressive than a censorship. And yet, with this severe law of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... condemn them. I hope the people will not deny the first request I have ever made to them, which is, that these men, whom I have displaced, may be pardoned. I will answer for them for the future, and assure you that their conduct shall be such as to give you cause to rejoice at your lenity." ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... which was done to show them that we did contemn their sorcery. These people are very simple in all their conversation, but marvellous thievish, especially for iron, which they have in great account. They began through our lenity to show their vile nature; they began to cut our cables; they cut away the Moonlight's boat from her stern; they cut our cloth where it lay to air, though we did carefully look unto it, they stole our oars, a calliver, a boat's spear, a sword, with divers ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... acted with great moderation. He upbraided Hugh, both with disloyalty and ingratitude; but told the rest, that he considered them as men deluded and misinformed. Hugh was sworn to fidelity, and dismissed with his companions; but he was not generous enough to be reclaimed by lenity; and finding no longer any countenance among the gentlemen, endeavoured to execute the same design by meaner hands. In this practice he was detected, taken to Macdonald's castle, and imprisoned in the dungeon. When ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... to restore it to peace; and though her suspicions be perfectly groundless—though they be wild as the dreams of madmen—though they may present a mixture of the furious and the ridiculous, still the are to be treated with the greatest lenity and tenderness; and if, after all, you fail, the frailty is to be lamented as a misfortune, and not punished as a fault, seeing that it must have its foundation in a feeling towards you, which it would be the basest of ingratitude, and the most ferocious of ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... anger rages in my riven breast, First against her, whom I esteem'd so pure; Then 'gainst myself, whose foolish lenity Hath fashion'd her for treason. Man is soon Inur'd to slavery, and quickly learns Submission, when of freedom quite depriv'd. If she had fallen in the savage hands Of my rude sires, and had their holy rage Forborne ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... an asylum in Brittany. This is supposed to have happened in 1047; but the anger of the offended duke was short-lived; for the very next year, there is an account of William's restoring to Neel the lordship of St. Sauveur, "in consideration of the services he had rendered him." The same lenity, however, was not shewn with regard to Neel's lordship of Nehou; for this was permanently alienated, and was granted to the family of Riviers, or Redvers, who, some years afterwards, became powerful in England, where they had a grant of the Isle of Wight, in fee, and were created, by Henry I. ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... lying on the counter of Z, snatches it up, and tears it to pieces. A has not committed theft, as he has not acted fraudulently, though he may have committed criminal trespass and mischief."] In the chapter on manslaughter, the judge is enjoined to treat with lenity an act done in the first anger of a husband or father, provoked by the intolerable outrage of a certain kind of criminal assault. "Such an assault produced the Sicilian Vespers. Such an assault called forth the memorable blow of Wat Tyler." ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... is not through these that his memory has survived him. He was domineering, arbitrary, intolerant of opposition, irascible, vehement in prejudice, often wayward, perverse, and jealous: a persecutor of those who crossed him; yet capable, by fits, of moderation, and a magnanimous lenity; and gifted with a rare charm—not always exerted—to win the attachment of men: versed in books, polished in courts and salons; without fear, incapable of repose, keen and broad of sight, clear in judgment, prompt in decision, fruitful ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... regard to women, of their virtue he made little account. His favorite mistress was Servilia, sister of Cato and mother of Brutus. Some have even supposed that Brutus was Caesar's son, which accounts for his lenity and forbearance and affection. He was the high-priest of the Roman worship, and yet he believed neither in the gods nor in immortality. But he was always the gentleman,—natural, courteous, affable, without vanity or arrogance or egotism. He was not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... She required, to obtain her favour, the union of virtue and abilities with elegance, which meeting but rarely, she was rarely disposed to be pleased; and disdaining to conceal either contempt or aversion, she inspired in return nothing but dread or resentment; making thus, by a want of that lenity which is the milk of human kindness, and the bond of society, enemies the most numerous and illiberal by those very talents which, more meekly borne, would have rendered her ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... banditti, it was observed that he assumed and exercised to the utmost the discretionary power, which, while the law had no free course in the Highlands, was conceived to belong to the military parties who were called in to support it. He acted, for example, with great and suspicious lenity to those freebooters who made restitution on his summons, and offered personal submission to himself, while he rigorously pursued, apprehended, and sacrificed to justice, all such interlopers as dared to despise ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... true, Deborah," said Miss Bridget. "If the girl had been one of those vain trollops, of which we have too many in the parish, I should have condemned my brother for his lenity towards her. I saw two farmers' daughters at church, the other day, with bare necks. I protest they shocked me. If wenches will hang out lures for fellows, it is no matter what they suffer. I detest such creatures; and it would be much better for them that their faces had been seamed with the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... "Washington's lenity never extended to the excusing of any palpable neglect of duty. The strict regularity of his own private character was carried into everything connected with his public duties. However much he esteemed any man, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... ascertained that, while these sentiments are sedulously kept out of view in the proceedings of the government, which deals with the whole matter as if the tenants were nothing but martyrs to hard bargains, and the landlords their task-masters, of greater or less lenity, they are extensively circulated in the "infected districts," and are held to be very sound doctrines by a large number of the "bone and sinew of the land." Of course the reasoning is varied a little, to suit circumstances, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the revolt, was proclaimed king by the rebels, and Apries, who had now to rely entirely on his mercenaries, was defeated and taken prisoner in the ensuing conflict at Momemphis; the usurper treated the captive prince with great lenity, but was eventually persuaded to give him up to the people, by whom he was strangled and buried in his ancestral tomb at Sais. An inscription confirms the fact of the struggle between the native and the foreign soldiery, and proves that Apries was killed and honourably buried in the 3rd ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... warrant from Scripture for shedding the blood of their brethren on account of religious differences. But justly apprehensive that so extraordinary a declaration of opinion from such a person might not of itself suffice to establish in the minds of the English that character of lenity and moderation which he found it his interest to acquire, he determined to add some ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of Lord Cornwallis is alluded to in a subsequent letter from Lord Grenville. It was felt that his lenity in treating with the rebels was misplaced, and that the Government ought to have adopted a more decided course in extinguishing the dying ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... when, after a strict cross-examination of witnesses, after the arguments of counsel, and the judge's charge, a verdict is found against the master, that the court should allow the practice of hearing appeals to its lenity, supported solely by evidence of the captain's good conduct when on shore, (especially where the case is one in which no evidence but that of sailors could have been brought against the accused), ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... pay with the forfeit of her life for her ignorance of such a law, or because the modesty and even shame attendant upon her disgraced condition prevented her conforming to it. I appeal to your sense of justice; the wretched girl, concerning whom I write, is a fit object for the exercise of your lenity, and I venture to assure myself that you will at least effect the commutation of her punishment. Your own kind feelings will dictate all I would ask further for her. "I am, etc., etc." I felt very certain that, from the manner in which I had expressed myself, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... writer afforded his contemporaries. In the meantime, among judicious readers on both sides of the Atlantic, Stevenson stands, I think it may safely be said, as a true master of English prose; scarcely surpassed for the union of lenity and lucidity with suggestive pregnancy and poetic animation; for harmony of cadence and the well-knit structure of sentences; and for the art of imparting to words the vital quality of things, and making them convey the precise—sometimes, let it be granted, the too curiously precise—expression ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was to excuse the vices of the lower classes on the ground of their poverty and their temptations. Could anything be more immoral, more rotten in principle? There is the spirit we have to contend against—a spirit of accursed lenity in morals, often originating in so-called scientific considerations! Evil is evil—vice, vice—the devil is the devil—be circumstances what they may. I do not care to make mention of such monstrous aberrations as, for instance, the attacks we are occasionally forced to hear ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... pleasure, my sweet Renee, I promise to show all the lenity in my power; but if the charges brought against this Bonapartist hero prove correct, why, then, you really must give me leave to order his head to be cut ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... permitted them to repair to Granada—"a proof," says the pious Agapida, "that his conversion was not entirely consummated, but that there were still some lingerings of the infidel in his heart." His lenity was far from procuring him indulgence in the opinions of his countrymen; on the contrary, the inhabitants of Granada, when they learnt from the liberated garrison the stratagem by which Roma had been captured, cursed ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... that of Varus on a former occasion, and in nearly the same country. The distressing tidings filled his soul with rage and a bitter thirst for revenge. He had done his utmost to win over the Saxons by lenity and kindness, but this course now seemed to him useless, if not worse than useless. He determined to adopt opposite measures and try the effect of cruelty and severe retribution. Calling together his forces ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... the lenity of the father they take up arms against the son; conquer, pursue, take, imprison, and at last put to death the anointed of God, and destroy the very being and nature of government, setting up a sordid impostor, who had neither title to govern nor understanding to ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... as he was, I gave fair grace, however, and plenty of openings for repentance. None of them would he embrace, and he thought scorn of my lenity. And I might have gone on with such weakness longer, if I had not heard that his coach-and-four was ordered for ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to them whenever I see any thing like lenity in Mr. Middleton or his agent:—they do seem to admit here, that it was not worth while to commit a massacre for the discount of a small note of hand, and to put two thousand women and children to death, in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... and other persons in need, and of his generous fidelity to his friends. They did not, indeed, revere him as a model of virtue, but of the occasional lapses of his bachelor life from correct moral standards, which seemed to be well known and freely talked about, they spoke with affectionate lenity of judgment. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... assemble privately for worship. These are well known; and detachments are sent out every Sunday to intercept them; but the officer has always private directions to take another route. Whether this indulgence comes from the wisdom and lenity of the government, or is purchased with money of the commanding officer, I cannot determine: but certain it is, the laws of France punish capitally every protestant minister convicted of having performed the functions of his ministry in this kingdom; and one was ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Proofs of the second charge, we have under Hamilton's own hand: and of the third, as sacred assurances as human testimony is capable of giving. Humane conduct on our part, was found to produce no effect; the contrary, therefore, was to be tried. If it produces a proper lenity to our citizens in captivity, it will have the effect we meant; if it does not, we shall return a severity as terrible as universal. If the causes of our rigor against Hamilton were founded in truth, that rigor was just, and would not give right to the enemy to commence any new ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson |
