"Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his power to deceive the public and to withhold or to publish at will hidden things: his power in this terrifies the professional politicians who hold nominal authority: in a word, the newspaper owner controls the professional politician because he can and does blackmail the professional politician, especially upon his private life. But if he does not command a large public this power to blackmail does not exist; and he can only command a large public—that is, a large circulation—by ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... resolve itself into a question of taste regarding two species of legislative "honesty." Does one prefer that species which, in the words of the late Speaker Reed, manifests itself in "staying bought," or that species which flowers in legislative blackmail? The truth of the matter is that Marshall's decision has been condemned by ill-informed or ill-intentioned critics for evils which are much more simply and much more adequately explained by general human cupidity ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... quietly. "And you can rise in the Senate on Tuesday and move your vote of want of confidence and object to our concession, and when you have resumed your seat the Secretary of Mines will rise in his turn and tell the Senate how you stole out here in the night and tried to blackmail me, and begged me to bribe you to be silent, and that you offered to throw over your friends and to take all that we would give you and keep it yourself. That will make you popular with your friends, and will show the ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... branded as flighty, irrational, not to be depended upon. Her living would be taken away, but something even worse might happen. She stood the chance of landing herself in a libel action, she might indeed be accused of having the intent to blackmail. She knew one case of the kind—the woman in question had ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... dog who, suspecting I had some secret in emigrating here, tried to blackmail and ruin me," said Blandford, with a sudden expression of hatred that seemed inconsistent with anything that Ezekiel had ever known of his old master's character—"a scoundrel who tried to break up my new life as another had broken up the old." He stopped and recovered ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... tried to blackmail me!" said Bloeckman, and then, his voice rising to a faintly shrill note of pride: "He got what was coming ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... "You don't have to dress it up like this," I protested. "This is blackmail or extortion, I'm not sure which. I'm not joining anything you bunch of creeps ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... career had the Prime Minister known so flagrant an instance of blackmail unpunishable by law as that which the Princess Charlotte sprung on him when, in brief interview, she dictated the terms on which alone the Ann Juggins episode was to be allowed to sink into oblivion. And perhaps one ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... company of armed slave owners had crossed the borders at night, and destroyed the homes of a group of Northern settlers, Sumner said: "Border incursions, which in barbarous lands fretted and harried an exposed people, are here renewed, with this peculiarity, that our border robbers do not simply levy blackmail and drive off a few cattle, they do not seize a few persons and sweep them away into captivity, like the African slave-traders whom we brand as tyrants, but they commit a succession of deeds in which border sorrows and African wrongs are revived together on American ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... I don't blame the Bowery. You can beat Tammany Hall permanently in one way—by making the government of a city as human, as kindly, as jolly as Tammany Hall. I am aware of the contract-grafts, the franchise-steals, the dirty streets, the bribing and the blackmail, the vice-and-crime partnerships, the Big Business alliances of Tammany Hall. And yet it seems to me that Tammany has a better perception of human need, and comes nearer to being what a government should be, than any scheme yet proposed by a group of "uptown good government" ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... nightgowned world, sent, like herself, supperless for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime. Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements—a successful sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate, looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society, brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped comfortably, three on each bed, while Sissy told her adventures. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... It has seldom enjoyed a peaceful and settled government. The consequence is that general lawlessness prevails in the districts remote from the towns; while in the forests that clothe the side of Mount Etna, there are numerous hordes of bandits who set the authorities at defiance, levy blackmail throughout the surrounding villages, and carry off wealthy inhabitants, and put them to ransom. No one in his senses would think of ascending that mountain, unless he had something like ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... the ruled, and by the assertion of the individual rights of chiefs. Sultans, rajahs, maharajahs, datus, etc., under ordinary circumstances have been and still are in most of the unprotected States unable to control the chiefs under them, who have independently levied taxes and blackmail till the harassed cultivators came scarcely to care to possess property which might at any time be seized. Forced labor for a quarter of the laboring year was obligatory on all males, besides military service ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... every luxury they could desire—all with money stolen from the city. Did any man dare to denounce their robberies, they turned upon him with one accord, and the whole power of the Ring was used to crush their daring assailant. They encouraged their adherents to levy blackmail upon the citizens of New York, and it came to be well understood in the great city that no man, however innocent, arrested on a civil process, could hope to regain the liberty which was his birthright, without paying the iniquitous toll levied upon him by some portion of the Ring. Even the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... riff-raff had been inadvertently enrolled in the native police force, and received heavy sentences for theft, blackmail, and violent abuse of their functions. Indeed it took nearly a couple of years to weed out the disreputable members of this body. The total army forces in the Islands amounted to about 70,000 men, and at the end of 1900 it was decided to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... speculating as to what the man's object could have been. Alfred said vulgar curiosity; but Beth suspected that there was more than that in the manoeuvre; and when Dicksie suggested acutely that Gard had intended to blackmail them, she and Alfred both exclaimed ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... made as to whether he was compos mentis. The parties who made the inquiry reported that he was not insane, but was actuated by a fiendish malignity, a love of notoriety and the expectation of extorting money by blackmail. For years—indeed until September, 1871—he continued to besiege and annoy the grand juries of the United States courts with his imaginary grievances, until he became an intolerable nuisance. His exemption from punishment ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... constantly hovering round the traveller, and obliging him to exercise ceaseless vigilance, but the inhabitants of the villages through which he passed, the local lords and the kings of the countries which he traversed, had no scruple in levying blackmail upon him in obliging him to pay dearly for right of way through their marches or territory.** There were less risks in choosing a sea route: the Euphrates on one side, the Tigris, the Ulai, and the Uknu on the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... man has a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do not believe ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I would now be going peaceful, with the kind policeman instead of being a willing victim of a very pleasant form of blackmail." ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... empowered to protect the civil rights of some citizens, why, they asked, was it pushing so hard for a civil rights bill? The fact was, several legislators argued, the Department of Defense was interfering with the civil rights of businessmen and practicing a crude form of economic blackmail.[21-72] ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... or four weeks Walter Tyrrel remained in town, awaiting the result of the Wharfedale Viaduct competition. With some difficulty he raised and paid over meanwhile to Erasmus Walker the ten thousand pounds of blackmail—for it was little else—agreed upon between them. The great engineer accepted the money with as little compunction as men who earn large incomes always display in taking payment for doing nothing. It is an enviable state of mind, unattainable by most of us who work ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... to tell him, and we mustn't forget, as Mr. Upton says, that he was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes the boy did meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... take it," Val assured her hotly. "Pirate's Haven is ours. This looks to me like blackmail. He'll threaten to stir up a lot of trouble unless we ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... growled. "Why, blackmail her! If it is true, she will pay you anything to keep your mouth shut. If once you can tell a woman's secret, your future's made. All San Francisco will be at your mercy—God knows who'll escape! After her ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Captain Sharp told his story to the commander of the Guardian-Mother at Aden, that Mazagan had been operating on his own hook in Egypt and elsewhere to "blackmail" the trustee of Louis. The Pacha had ordered a new steamer to be built for him in England; and when she arrived at Gibraltar, he had given the command of her to Captain Sharp, to whom he owed his ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... then, as there are now, other ways of preying upon our fellow-creatures and levying blackmail from them, without going to the length of highway robbery—cold work, and a ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... touch me," he shouted fiercely, "I'll break your skulls! This is blackmail! I'll send for the ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in exchange for protection? True that they practise blackmail and extortion? Of course it's true. Whenever a big temptation appears loose in a city half the people who get a look at it trip and fall. Oh, I'd like to reform this city, Miss Barbara—and this country. I'd like to ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... authority, I have no hesitation in saying that there are evil-disposed, Indians, especially of late years, who deliberately seek to provoke disagreeable incidents by their own misbehaviour, either in the hope of levying blackmail or in order to make political capital by posing as the victims of English brutality. But even when Englishmen put themselves entirely in the wrong, there is perhaps a tendency amongst Anglo-Indians—chiefly amongst the non-official ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... and mountainous country, inhabited by a mongrel race of savages, known as Shans and Kakhyens, who, while nominally owing allegiance to one or the other of their more civilized neighbors, practically find their chief support in levying blackmail on all ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... allusion to the half-effaced initials upon his arm, and die of fright when he had a letter from Fordingham? Then I remembered that Fordingham was in Hampshire, and that this Mr. Beddoes, whom the seaman had gone to visit and presumably to blackmail, had also been mentioned as living in Hampshire. The letter, then, might either come from Hudson, the seaman, saying that he had betrayed the guilty secret which appeared to exist, or it might come from Beddoes, warning an old confederate that such a betrayal was imminent. So far ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... o'clock that morning desiring to see the girl. They had talked together on the veranda, where the visitor stated he had effected a settlement and obtained an acknowledgment from Martinez, who was trying to blackmail him and others; that a certain paper had been prepared by the lawyer for use in the disreputable business; that the man had said he had asked Janet to secure it from an old chair in his office; and he wished to learn ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... the pillage of Lombardy. His actions were only a development of existing revolutionary customs; but never had these demoralizing measures been so thoroughly enforced as in the present system of liberation and blackmail. Lombardy was ransacked with an almost Vandal rapacity. Bonaparte desired little for himself. His aim ever was power rather than wealth. Riches he valued only as a means to political supremacy. But he took care to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... manufacturer who employed them, gave up their trade, and, withdrawing to a marshy district between two arms of the Euphrates, made up their minds to live by robbery. A band of needy youths soon gathered about them, and they became the terror of the entire neighborhood. They exacted a blackmail from the peaceable population of shepherds and others who lived near them, made occasional plundering raids to a distance, and required an acknowledgment (bakhshish) from travellers. Their doings having become notorious, the satrap ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... accompanied by a unique and unpleasant experience. A knavish fellow, living in a cottage close to the foot of the garden, sought to blackmail the new comer, under threat of legal proceedings, alleging that a catchment well for surface drainage had made his basement damp. Unfortunately for his case, it could be shown that the pipes had not yet been connected with the well, and when he carried out his threat, he gained ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... where it is, sir. Those fellows do nothing but sleep all day, and then after dark they get up and begin to prowl. They spy, some of 'em, on the young people courting, and follow 'em 'ome and blackmail 'em. They're a bad lot, sir. They wouldn't work if they ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... that Shakespear was at a social disadvantage through his lack of middle-class training. They are rowdy, ill-mannered, abusive, mischievous, fond of quoting obscene schoolboy anecdotes, adepts in that sort of blackmail which consists in mercilessly libelling and insulting every writer whose opinions are sufficiently heterodox to make it almost impossible for him to risk perhaps five years of a slender income by an appeal to a prejudiced orthodox jury; and they ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... of sycee, make up a tolerably valuable bag, and would often fall a prey to the highwaymen which infest many of the provinces, but that most offices anticipate these casualties by compounding for a certain annual sum which is paid regularly to the leader of the gang. For this blackmail the robbers of the district not only agree to abstain from pilfering themselves, but also to keep all others from doing so too. The arrangement suits the local officials admirably, as they escape those pains and penalties which would be exacted if it came to be known ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... of nephew to have!" Francis declared. "Abandon these futile attempts at blackmail and just come ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... want a man to keep still, make it worth his while—but don't say anything to him about it. That opens the way to blackmail. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... been found. Earth needed a star-drive badly; a few more years, and the need would be desperate. And if a group of power-hungry men could control a star-drive and hold it for profit, they could blackmail an entire planet for centuries, and build an empire in space that could ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... nothing. Miss Valenka had had the sense to turn him down hard; and I believe he stole that necklace of Van Ruyne's from her during the short time she had it—either just to get her into trouble and be revenged on her, or to get her into his power. Whichever it was—to blackmail her—for he'd cadged on her for money before her father died—or to scare her into going to him for help—I'd like to hunt the worthless hound down for it. And I'd never ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Jack," explained the General: "Ripaldi must have tried to blackmail Quadling, as he proposed, and Quadling turned the tables on him. They fought, no doubt, and Quadling killed him, possibly in self-defence. He would have said so, but in his peculiar position as an absconding defaulter he did not dare. That is how I read it, and I believe that now these ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... marvelous that so wide-spread a propaganda was only vaguely known to the Government, and did not beget a crowd of informers. One man, it is true, who showed a disposition to use his secret knowledge for purposes of blackmail, was found dead in the streets of Cascaes. On the whole, not only secrecy but ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... not a mere levy of blackmail that was now to satisfy the partisan chieftains. One was determined upon robbing him of his wife—while the other coveted his money—and therefore the subterfuges of Don Fernando were not ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... in stock were mostly small and shop-soiled and Neepy Thang had to set out at once before he had had as much as a week in London. I will briefly sketch his project. Not many knew it, for where the form of business is blackmail the fewer creditors you have the better (which of course in various degrees applies ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... payment of brokerage, is illegal. It is worth while considering whether it would not be wise to confer on the Government the right of civil action against the beneficiary of a rebate for at least twice the value of the rebate; this would help stop what is really blackmail. Elevator allowances should be stopped, for they have now grown to such an extent that they are demoralizing and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to help her. She draws upon her stock of knowledge. 'Can she be secretly married to him? A wife of the past turned up to blackmail him? That's ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... two papers and put them into my pocket. I did not then feel, nor have I since been able to understand, all the indignation which has been poured on Lord Clive's head for this artifice, by which a treacherous, overreaching scoundrel was robbed of the blackmail he had tried to extort. As to the charge which has been made against that great man of having caused Admiral Watson's name to be forged to the second treaty, I can only say that it was the general opinion at the time that the gallant Admiral was fully aware of what was ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... fail to regard with uneasiness a liberation of the economic activities of 400,000,000 people."[70] Accordingly the proposal lapsed. It must be understood that throughout the war the Japanese were in a position to blackmail the Allies, because their sympathies were with Germany, they believed Germany would win, and they filled their newspapers with scurrilous attacks on the British, accusing them ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... the darkness, laughing mirthlessly, and with muttered imprecations LeGrand Blossom turned in the opposite direction, passing within a few feet of the hidden detective. "Blackmail, or is it a division of the spoils?" mused Colonel Ashley. "I've got to find out which. Mr. Blossom, I think I'll have to stick to you until you fall into ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... "But—but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? ... And there are men I know—women, too—scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that information somehow; and make ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... neither does that matter. Briefly, this is his history. He was originally a witch-finder—about as low an occupation as exists amongst aboriginal savages. Then he got up in the world and became an Obi-man, which gives an opportunity to wealth via blackmail. Finally, he reached the highest honour in hellish service. He became a user of Voodoo, which seems to be a service of the utmost baseness and cruelty. I was told some of his deeds of cruelty, which are simply sickening. They made me long for an opportunity of helping ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... over, sir. They say I insult them by thinking they would ever do such a thing. That was when I went and asked 'em for my money. Last thing was, when I told 'em it was their doing, and they set me at it, they said I were trying to blackmail 'em— that they never thought I meant such a thing, and that if I warn't off they'd hand ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... once he had secured Lady Sue's fortune; but she was shrewd enough to reckon that the more completely she was mixed up in his nefarious projects, the more absolutely forced would he be to accede to her demands later on. The word blackmail had not been invented in those days, but the deed itself existed and what Editha had in her mind when she risked ostracism for Sir Marmaduke's sake was ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... of competitive examination was applied to a large number of offices. Now at last, the reformers thought, American politics would be purified. But, no! The corruption, simply took a new and more alarming turn. Direct money contributions took the place of the spoils. It became the practice to levy blackmail on corporations either to be let alone, or for the purpose of fleecing the public. The monopolies granted to protected industries are the source of a large share of these "campaign funds." The Legislatures are crowded by professional lobbyists, and ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... letter to Lord Donal and set the poor young man's mind at rest. So you see, Miss Jennie, you will have to talk very sweetly and politely to me and not make any threats, because I am like those dreadful persons in the sensational plays who possess the guilty secrets of other people and blackmail them. But you are a nice girl, and I won't say anything you don't want to hear said. Now, what is it you wish to find ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... system is a combination of gratitude and blackmail. The merit system is an attempt to secure efficiency without recognizing friendship or fear. We can safely allow the participation of merit system employees in an agitation so long as they do not go to the point where official advantage may be had through the agitation by ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... car, whose driver was already planning the ways to spend the money which he was to make by a little scientific blackmail. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... believe you can blackmail me into a partnership?" I turned at bay. "You must have seen that I wanted to ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sure about that—we'll put it up to our lawyers. Maybe they'll call it conspiracy, maybe blackmail. They'll make it whatever carries a ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... cannot complain if words are ascribed to them which they never uttered, if they are held guilty of deeds from which they would shrink in horror. Law and custom are alike powerless to fight this tyranny, which is the most ingenious and irksome form of blackmail ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... trust funds which the complainant recognized were legally in the hands of Aguinaldo. It could be carried on only with great difficulty without his presence and without his account books. Meetings were held, and Artacho was denounced as attempting to extort blackmail, but he refused to yield, and Aguinaldo, rather than explain the inner workings of the Hongkong junta before a British court, prepared for flight. A summons was issued for his appearance before the supreme court of Hongkong on April 13, 1898, but ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... "Blackmail. He was too smart. He'd been sure Grundy was smuggling the stuff, and raking off from him. He didn't care who killed Hendrix as much as how much Grundy would pay to keep his mouth shut—with murder around, ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... the detective denouncing him, he would denounce the detective. Of the police he would become an ally. He would call upon them to arrest a man who was planning to blackmail ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... trade from Kabul eastward to the borders of Kashmir territory. If you say that you are a Meahgan or Kaka Khel, words signifying one and the same thing, you have not only access where others are questioned, and a sort of blackmail levied on them, but you are treated hospitably, and your daily wants supplied free of cost—as was often the case with us. Of course the Meaghans have to make some return. It is done in this wise: a fair lasting from five to seven days is yearly held ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... administer than in the district in which they dispense justice and which, without permission, they should never leave. Sometimes these district magistrates will go to any length to obtain moral support from the politicians of the neighbourhood. They extort this as a sort of blackmail given in exchange for the electoral influence which they can bring to bear in their municipal capacity. They attach far less importance to being quashed by the bench, than to the eventual support of the deputy. Those who come into ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... have I eggsplained? Zat night you mean, I did schleep in mine hat because I had got a cold in my head. I vas not dronk, no more zan you. Vat you found in my pocket vas a mere joke, and ze cabman who called next day vas jost vat I told him to his ogly face—a blackmail." ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... he learned were now being employed in the recruiting of the Catholic regiment. Blackmail had been resorted to with splendid results. In several instances enormous debts had been liquidated in favor of the recruits. Even commissions in the army of His Majesty had been offered as a bounty. There was ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... here in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the surrounding mountains, attended only by Usman Shah. A few months earlier, this ruffian was sent down from Leh with six other soldiers and an officer to guard the fort, where they became the terror of all who crossed the bridge by their outrageous levies of blackmail. My swashbuckler quarrelled with the officer over a disreputable affair, and one night stabbed him mortally, induced his six comrades to plunge their knives into the body, sewed it up in a blanket, and threw it ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... usually exercised a dominant influence in those states under the laws of which they had incorporated; and this influence was so beneficial to them that they were quite willing for the sake of preserving it to subsidize the political machine and pay a certain amount of blackmail. In this way the Pennsylvania Railroad Company exercised a dominant influence in the politics of Pennsylvania and New Jersey; the New York Central was not afraid of anything that could happen at Albany; the Boston and Maine ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... retreat of the Mongols, who had suffered too heavy a loss to feel elated at their repulse of Suta. At the same time no solid peace had been obtained, and the Mongols continued to harass the borders, and to exact blackmail from all who traversed the desert. When Hongwou endeavored to attain a settlement by a stroke of policy his efforts were not more successful. His kind reception of the Mongol Prince Maitilipala has been referred ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... edifying books, replete with talent if not with sincerity, as well as an innumerable mass of satires, pamphlets, statements, diatribes which caused all the princes of his day to tremble, and through making them tremble also brought gold into the coffers of Aretino; he had raised blackmail to the height of ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... was the very last person in the world, saving only, perhaps, Carol herself, whom Garthorne would have wished to see just then and there, and as soon as he had made sure that Dora Murray really was sitting within a few yards of him he began to be haunted by ugly fears of blackmail and exposure—which showed how very little he had learnt of Dora's character during the time that Carol had ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... majority being young in their first season and with little or no experience of human guile. No one cares to shoot them, in the abundance of larger game, and the absence of stones from the fat prairie-soil places them out of danger from the small boy. Their only foe is the hawk, who levies blackmail on them as coolly and regularly as any other plumed cateran. Partly, perhaps, by reason of this outside pressure, they are cheek by jowl with the poultry,—the cow-bunting, which is the pet prey of the hawk, following them into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... and science of government consists in being honest." With a back door to every ordinance that touched the lives of the people, if indeed the whole thing was not the subject of open ridicule or the vehicle of official blackmail, it seemed as if we had provided a perfect municipal machinery for bringing the law into contempt with the young, and so for wrecking citizenship ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... away from here, far, far away. So far away that you won't be able to blackmail Jack Harpe. See? Yore knowledge won't be worth a whoop to you then. An' I'll find out what I want to know ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... person," I flung at him. "You're trying to frighten me—to blackmail me—into selling you my lace for thirty shillings, when maybe it's worth twenty times that. But if any one calls the police, it will be me, to give you in ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... tale with engaging frankness. 'Bertie's a simple Simon,' Lady Georgina commented to me; 'but he's also a rogue; and Higginson saw his way to make excellent capital of him in both capacities—first use him as a catspaw, and then blackmail him.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... from her hands to the carpet. Blackmail! Cunningly and cleverly wrapped up, but blackmail all the same, the reference to his knowledge of what he believed to be her past! He knew that she was one who would read and understand, that she would read, as ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... The third edition opens with a preface (signed Asa G. Eddy) attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ground ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... first begun to educate and organize the people of Remsen City, the boss industry was in its early form. That is, Kelly and House were really rivals in the collecting of big campaign funds by various forms of blackmail, in struggling for offices for themselves and their followers, in levying upon vice and crime through the police. In these ways they made the money, the lion's share of which naturally fell to them as leaders, as organizers of plunder. But that stage ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... settled in Damascus before he expressed his intention of visiting the historic Tadmor in the desert. It was an eight days' journey, and the position of the two wells on the way was kept a secret by Jane Digby's tribe, who levied blackmail on all visitors to the famous ruins. The charge was the monstrous one of L250; but Burton—at all times a sworn foe to cupidity—resolved to go without paying. Says Mrs. Burton, "Jane Digby was in a very ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... for rape death, which, indeed, is the common law, but which law has extraordinary consequences when the age is raised, as it is in many States, to eighteen. Two more States adopt the laws against abduction and one a statute against blackmail. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... I am afraid, slightly resembles a sort of sanctimonious blackmail, Winifred. The combination of morality, religion, and yourself is too powerful for me to combat.... So if my choice must be between permitting morality to publicly besmirch this young girl's reputation, and affixing my signature to the agreement you suggest, I have no choice but ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild but very definite terrorism which they exercise. Country residents, when a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time the strangers, if not interfered with, will go. Interference with them is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red cock,' whose crowings usually cost a good deal ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... destruction was, no doubt, attributable to the action of the sepoys and rabble of the city, who during the siege, and in the state of anarchy which prevailed during that period, had looted to their hearts' content, levying blackmail on the richer inhabitants and pursuing their evil course without let or hindrance. Still, that which had escaped the plundering and devastating hands of the sepoys was most effectually ruined by our men. Not a single house or building ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... taken—they came for other purposes. For the photographic work of Mr. Collins was strictly commercial—and peculiar. There were fingerprints to be photographed and identified for purpose of private revenge, photographs of people to be merged and repictured in compromising closeness for reasons of blackmail. And even X-Ray photography was included in the scope ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... old days she had shared her bread and cheese with those hungrier than herself, and had taken but little thought for those who had bread and to spare, so now she felt but transient interest in those among her new associates who were successfully struggling against the blackmail of luxury, the leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins the soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose names are written in the ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... lay in his cell he chewed the cud of revenge. Yes, let them take him before the magistrate; it was not he that was afraid of justice. He would expose her, the false Catholic, the she-cat! A pretty convert! Another man would have preferred to blackmail her, he told himself with righteous indignation, especially in such straits of poverty. But he—the thought had scarcely crossed his mind. He had not even thought of her helping him, only of the joy of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of similar character patrolled Teviotdale, while Andrew Gemmells was attached to Ettrick and Yarrow. This was Blind Willie Craw. Willie was the Society Journal of Hawick, and levied blackmail on the inhabitants. He is thus described by Mr. Grieve, in the Diary already quoted: "He lived at Branxholme Town, in a free house set apart for the gamekeeper, and for many a year carried all the bread from Hawick used in my father's family. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... come to my house and ask me to teach her how to speak properly so that she could get a place in a flower-shop. This gentleman and my housekeeper have been here all the time. [Bullying him] How dare you come here and attempt to blackmail me? You sent ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... harm was done, but the revelation of the shameful conditions of affairs in a Raad of which so much good was expected did as much as anything could do to destroy all hope. It was a painful exhibition, and the sordid details which came to light, the unblushing attempts to levy blackmail on those who were threatened with pillage by would-be concessionaires, the shameless conduct of Raad members fighting as hirelings to impose a fresh burden on their own country, sickened ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... I am nil; mentally and physically my faculties are at your disposal. Do you happen to know anything in the lady's past or present that she would not care to have exploited? Blackmail, yes? I have no scruples. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... to swing 'em into a bunch and control 'em than be blackmailed by 'em, Brydges! If every penny grafter didn't hold up the corporation, every damned little squirt of a county supervisor and road contractor and town councilman, if they didn't hold the corporation up for blackmail way the highwaymen of old used to hold up the lone traveller, if they didn't hold us up for blackmail, Brydges, it wouldn't be necessary for us to man that gang across the way ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... your hands a secret of the Lamottes; you need not stare, we ain't fools down here at the factories. Maybe I know what that secret is, and maybe I don't. It's no matter. I know more of your doings than you give me credit for, John Burrill. Now, what must you do? Blackmail would have satisfied a sensible man; but straightway you are seized with the idea that you were born to be a gentleman. You! Then you form your plan; and you force, by means of the power in your hands, that beautiful young lady ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... on. And I know as well as you do that, if you get into serious trouble through this loan, at least five men we could both name would have to step in and save the bank and cover up the scandal. You'll blackmail them, just as you've blackmailed them before, and they you. Blackmail's a legitimate part of the game. Nobody appreciates that better than you." It was no time for the smug hypocrisies under which we people down town usually conduct ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... whistled. Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive! Nita in a new light—an over-generous Nita! Or—was Nita herself paying blackmail on a ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... good fellow. Your excellent patron will reward us, no doubt, amply." And he muttered to himself: "If I don't bleed that Lucius Ahenobarbus, that Roman donkey, out of two-thirds of his new fortune; if I don't levy blackmail on him without mercy when he's committed himself, and becomes a partner in crime, I'm no fox of a Hellene. I wonder that he is the son of a man like Domitius, who was so shrewd in that old ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... married, hang me if she hadn't cleared out. No scene, no tears, no maledictions—just good, hard sense, Bingle, that's what it was. Not many of them would have been so decent about it. They usually make a bluff or something of the sort—money, you know, regular blackmail. But she didn't. She got out as quietly as a mouse, left no trace behind, no regrets, no complaints. Just a note saying she understood and wishing ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... that," he said, laying a hand on the excited man's arm. "Remember, that Wales would never dare breathe a word of it; Carmen has no reputation or standing whatsoever now in this city; and Ames would make out a case of blackmail against you so quickly that it would sweep you right into the Tombs. Go easy. And first, let us get ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... man has no respect for either democracy or liberty. His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal suffrage would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining his object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of those who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large capitalists; they are well able to start factories ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the price one pound is printed on the ticket, I couldn't get it until I had paid ten shillings extra. There was no time to get a proper explanation, so I want you to do so. Very likely it is sheer blackmail by that man in the booking-office, whom I never cared for. You had better see the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... printer, who lived in the market-place, was believed to be the chief instigator. His character was indifferent, and he had money invested in Gregory's shop; and the business was in so bad a way that there was a temptation to seek for some large haul by way of blackmail. Mrs. Leigh Perrot was selected as the victim, people thought, because her husband was so extremely devoted to her that he would be sure to do anything to save her from the least vexation. If so, the conspirators ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or 1739, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... said, "but you misunderstand me entirely.... Even if I do help my sister in the house, and even if I do go on errands, I would never have consented to go on such an one.... I said to my sister: It's marriage or nothing.... We don't go in for blackmail, of that you may be sure." "Well, my dear man," Niebeldingk laughed, "If ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... kept his eye open for a favourable chance to fall back upon Italy and wrench concessions of money and honours from the Court of Ravenna. Supported by his army of mercenaries and adventurers in the pay of the Empire like himself, his dealings with Honorius were a kind of continual blackmail. If the Imperial Government refused to pay the sums which he protested it owed him for the maintenance of his troops, he would pay himself by force. Rome, where fabulous riches had accumulated for so many ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... proposition is just about what I fancied it would be—an attempt at blackmail. But it's abortive. I do own the property of which you speak, but in understanding so precisely the sort of business done there, you have the advantage of me. This renting has all been conducted through agents whom ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... officers of the law. And there were more degenerate miscreants still, who connived with the Police and went unscathed. As if the vast sums collected from these willing bribers were not enough, the Police added a system of blackmail to be levied on those who were not deliberately vicious, but who sought convenience. If you walked downtown you found the sidewalk in front of certain stores almost barricaded by packing-boxes, whereas next door the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... can pay him the equivalent of five hundred sterling in blackmail. I am afraid it will be a long time," answered ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... throwing that awful paper on the desk before him. "Now cinch 'em, Fred Obermuller, as they cinched you. It'll be the holiest blackmail that ever—oh, and will you pay ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... suspect, not one who came with any other object than to steal and to lie. From the top to the bottom of the house all was pillage and waste. Bois l'Hery's horses were unsound, Schwalbach's gallery was a swindle, Moessard's articles a recognised blackmail. De Gery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses, with proofs in support of it. But he specially recommended to Jansoulet's attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the real danger of the situation. Attracted by the Nabob's name, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Ive been here hardly ten minutes; and already he's tried to borrow 150 pounds from me. Then he proposed that I should get the money for him by blackmailing his wife; and youve just interrupted him in the act of suggesting that I should blackmail my patients into sitting to him ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... any attempt is made to blackmail or coerce Mr. Melrose, he will be obliged, much against his will, to draw the attention of the Italian police to certain matters relating to Mr. Smeath, of which he has the evidence in his possession. He warns Mrs. Melrose ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
