"Commute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hanging—the doom of traitors. He did not fear to die, but that doom repelled him and he begged to be shot instead. Washington, however, in view of his great crime and as a most necessary example in that crisis, firmly refused to commute the sentence. So, on the second of ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... from punishment when convicted of a state offence, society would perhaps be disorganized, and certainly a free state would cease to exist. The question therefore shrinks to this—was it or was it not ungrateful in the people to relax the penalty of death, legally incurred, and commute it to a heavy fine? I fear we shall find few instances of greater clemency in monarchies, however mild. Miltiades unhappily died. But nature slew him, not the Athenian people. And it cannot be said with greater ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before the military court attached to the array or corps by the troops of which he shall have been captured, or by such other military court as the President may direct, and in such manner and under such regulations as the President shall prescribe; and, after conviction, the President may commute the punishment in such manner and on such terms as he may ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... replace, cut out, serve as a substitute; step into stand in the shoes of; jury rig, make a shift with, put up with; borrow from Peter to pay Paul, take money out of one pocket and put it in another, cannibalize; commute, redeem, compound for. Adj. substituted &c.; ersatz; phony; vicarious, subdititious[obs3]. Adv. instead; in place of, in lieu of, in the stead of, in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... circumstances under which the crime was committed, it was urged that Mr. Lyndon's services to the country as an inventor should be taken into consideration. Within twenty-four hours over a million people had signed a petition in his favour, and the following day His Majesty was pleased to commute the sentence to one of ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... decapitation, but with a recommendation to mercy. Next, one Pussort, a malignant tool of the Chancellor, inveighed against Fouquet for four hours, so violently that he injured his case. His voice was for the gallows,—but, in consideration of the criminal's rank, he would consent to commute the cord for the axe. After him, four voted for death; then, five for banishment. Six to six. Anxiety had now reached a distressing point. The Chancellor stormed and threatened; but in vain. On the twenty-fifth of December the result was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... population. All annual stipends or allowances, charged upon the reserves before the passage of the imperial act of 1853, were continued during the lives of existing incumbents, though the latter could commute their stipends or allowances for their value in money, and in this way create a small permanent endowment for the advantage of the church to which ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... interlude in his career, a period of patient waiting. Such is far from having been the case. The missions are eminent works of Catholic zeal, and there is not any vocation known to the active ministry which may not commute with them on equal terms. Human nature has never felt influences more deeply religious than those set at work by missions, recalling the effects of the preaching of the Apostles themselves. Remorse of conscience, loathing for sin, terror at the divine wrath, confidence ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... when the tyrant and the brutal guard had left the cell, he began to pace up and down, sorely disturbed. He had somehow cherished the hope that the miscreant would be induced to commute the sentence to lengthy imprisonment. But the diabolical vengeance which he had seen in the tyrant's eye undermined all hope. Some friends were admitted to his cell, and they informed him that they had pleaded for him, but ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... "respectfully pray the President, in consideration of the sex and age of the said Mary E. Surratt, if he can, upon all the facts in the case, find it consistent with his sense of duty to the country, to commute the sentence of death, which the Court have been constrained to pronounce, to imprisonment in the penitentiary for life." This recommendation for executive clemency remained unknown to the public until it was incidentally ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... months before the campaign Tietzow was an unemployed electrical engineer who had difficulty paying the three-dollar weekly rent for his hall bed-room at the Aldine Ave. address. After Schwinn's visit and meeting with him, Tietzow began to commute by air between Chicago and Buffalo where he opened ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... to which Theosophists are not addicted. Considering their infirmity in that way, it would be hardly fair to take them as seriously as they take themselves, but when any considerable number of apparently earnest citizens unite in a petition to the Governor of their State, to commute the death sentence of a convicted assassin without alleging a doubt of his guilt the phenomenon challenges a certain attention to what they do allege. What these amiable persons hold, it seems, is what was held by Alphonse Karr: the expediency of abolishing the death penalty; but apparently ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... acquainted with the result of the interview, both his gratitude and surprise were great. He comprehended far better than Kate could the extent of the favour which the Governor had offered to bestow. It was, indeed, extraordinary to commute what was really a sentence of death against a notorious and dangerous pirate for the sake of a beautiful and pleading woman. An ambitious idea shot through the merchant's brain. The Governor was a widower; he had met Kate ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill was to commute the rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general rule, twenty years' purchase on the net rental of the estate (that is to say, the rent received by him after deducting all outgoings), and paying him the purchase-money in L3 per cent. stock taken at par. The stock ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al. |
