Debasement

“ Those who suffer by the debasement of the standard, We must, therefore, enter into a more particular examination of those opposite and jarring interests; we must inquire into the interests 590which have suffered, and which continue to suffer, from the actual debasement of the standard, and into those which must suffer upon a restitution of it according to the plan proposed. ”

“ A mirage is an optical illusion.
demean signifies “to behave” and does not mean debase or degrade. A man demeans (i. e., comports) himself as a gentleman; but even if he should demean himself as a churl, the verb would not imply a lowering of his dignity or debasement; his debasement would result alone from the conduct he pursued.
denominate. Compare NOMINATE.
depositary, depository: Discriminated in the best usage, depositary denoting a person with whom, and [63] depository a place in which anything is deposited for safe-keeping. ”

“ If it be true that every man has a right to complain of the debasement of the standard so far as he is thereby defrauded of that weight of the fine metals which he was entitled to receive, surely every man has a right to complain of the rising of the standard, who thereby becomes obliged to repay more weight of the fine metals than ever he received value for. ”

“ If it be said, that this right implies a title to be indemnified by a reformation, or a restitution of the standard, for the loss I have sustained by the gradual debasement of it: I reply, that a state must examine the nature of my claim, and do me justice, without all doubt; but it does not follow as a consequence, that because a creditor in an old contract has been a loser by his debtor, that therefore all the creditors in the nation should share in the benefit of his restitution, at the expence of debtors, from whom they have suffered no loss. ”

“ GROAT (adapted from the Dutch groot, great, thick; cf. Ger. Groschen; the Med. Lat. grossus gives Ital. grosso, Fr. gros, as names for the coin) , a name applied as early as the 13th century on the continent of Europe to any large or thick coin. The groat was almost universally a silver coin, but its value varied considerably, as well at different times as in different countries. The English groat was first coined in 1351, of a value somewhat higher than a penny. The continuous debasement of both the penny and the groat left the latter finally worth four pennies. ”

“ Monsieur, as executor under the will of the late Comtesse de Merret, I come in her name to beg you to discontinue the practice. One moment! I am not a Turk, and do not wish to make a crime of it. And besides, you are free to be ignorant of the circumstances which compel me to leave the finest mansion in Vendome to fall into ruin. Nevertheless, monsieur, you must be a man of education, and you should know that the laws forbid, under heavy penalties, any trespass on enclosed property. A hedge is the same as a wall. ”

“ In this you will not succeed, I venture to prophesy, so long as legal plunder is the basis of the legislation within.
It is absolutely necessary that this question of legal plunder should be determined, and there are only three solutions of it:—
When the few plunder the many. When everybody plunders everybody else. When nobody plunders anybody. Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we have to make our choice. ”

“ When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by force or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is perpetrated. ”

“ Among the Romans, if goods were lost which a man had entrusted to his neighbor, the depositary was obliged to pay their full value. But if a man had been driven by necessity, as in case of fire, to lodge his goods with one of his neighbors, and the goods were lost, the depositary was obliged to pay double their value, because of his unfaithfulness in a case of such distress, where his dishonesty, connected with the destruction by the fire, had completed the ruin of the sufferer. ”

“ If the bank had been rechartered, the public deposits suffered to remain undisturbed where the law required them to be made, and the land bill had gone into operation, it is my firm conviction that we should have had no more individual distress and ruin than is common, in ordinary and regular times, to a trading and commercial community. ”

“ Time and experience has furnished the debtors with ways and means to evade the force of this statute, and to secure their estate against the reach of it, which renders it often insignificant, and consequently, the knave against whom the law was particularly bent gets off, while he only who fails of mere necessity, and whose honest principle will not permit him to practise those methods, is exposed to the fury of this act. And as things are now ordered, nothing is more easy than for a man to order his estate so that a statute shall have no power over it, or at least but a little. ”

“ This court, therefore, being the proper court for personal actions, fines of lands are levied here; for they are fictitious actions, founded on a fictitious breach of covenant.
Mixed actions are designed for the recovery of a specific thing, and also damages, and consequently partake of the nature both of real and personal actions. For instance: If a tenant for life, or years, or at will, commits waste, he forfeits to the owner of the inheritance the place wherein the waste was done, and treble damages. The action of waste, therefore being brought to recover both, is a mixed action. ”

“ Taking the words in their ordinary sense, a general power to dispose of land or real estate and to take in return therefor such proceeds as one thinks best, will include the power of disposing of them in exchange for other lands. ”

“ Then a period of stability followed, which lasted until just before the Reformation, when a crisis unparalleled in severity began, a crisis which probably was the proximate cause of the confiscation of the conventual estates.
206 In 1526 the penny suddenly lost a grain and a half, or about twelve and a half per cent, and then, when further reductions of weight would have made the piece too flimsy, the government resorted to adulteration. In 1542, a ten-grain penny was coined with one part in five of alloy ”

“ Besides these principles on which the regulation of the intendant is founded, I ought at the same time to inform you that I myself opposed on my part, as far as I reasonably could, the measure of suspending the deposit, until the reasons adduced by the intendant brought it to my view; that as all events can not be prevented, and as with time and different circumstances various others occur which can not be foreseen, a just and rational interpretation is always necessary. ”

“ Of the Bastille nothing remains but the foundations; it was demolished and levelled with the ground in about eleven months; the expences at the end of the first three months amounted to about twenty thousand pounds sterling. The materials were sold for half that sum, and the nation paid the remainder. ”

“ That is human nature. Let him begin at the beginning, and while his house is going up be assisted and instructed. Frankly, I am afraid that in the difficulty of fixing on an ideal scheme and ideal ways of working it, we shall forget that the moment of demobilisation is unique. Any scheme, however rough and ready, which will fix men or their intention of settling on the land in Britain at the moment of demobilisation will be worth a hundred better-laid plans which have waited for perfection till that one precious moment is overpast. ”

“ And the humiliation of leaving to my heirs an estate burdened with a perpetual rent. Still one must pay what he owes, no matter how foolish a use may have been made of the money. That accounts for one hogshead, but the five others? ”

“ Under this double pressure the peasantry had rapidly sunk into insolvency, and the whole real estate of the Deccan was passing into the hands of usurers, while the farmers had become serfs toiling on the soil they had once owned, to satisfy an inextinguishable debt. ”

“ A reliable man, bent on leaving this world and becoming an ascetic, may place a certain sealed deposit with some secret mark in the custody of a man, and, returning after a number of years, ask for it. If the depositary dishonestly denies it, he shall not only be made to restore it, but be liable to the punishment for theft.
A childish man with a sealed deposit with some secret mark may, while going through a street at night, feel frightened at his being captured by the police for untimely walking, and, placing the deposit in the custody of a man, go on his way. ”

“ For instance, when the return of a deposit is not made in an honest spirit, but is intended either to work the injury of him who receives it back again, or by way of a snare to bear out a denial in the case of another deposit of greater value, in that case a proper action is done in an improper manner. ”

“ The requirement in that rule, that 'every assignee and the clerk of said court shall deposit all sums received by them severally, on account of any bankrupt's estate, in one designated depository,' seems to us to be abundantly satisfied by interpreting it as meaning that the assignee and the clerk shall deposit all sums received by them severally, that is, respectively, on account of any bankrupt's estate, in one designated depository. ”

“ On the contrary, as the number of inclosure bills increased the condition of the agricultural labourer became worse and worse, till a man had but seven shillings a week to support himself, his wife, and seven children.
In reference to the conversion into private property of what was not private property, it may be remarked here that, according to the system of law established in England at the Conquest, in those waste lands, which are usually called commons, the property of the soil is generally in the lord of the manor. ”

“ Everybody, in the first place, knows everybody else, and creditor and debtor being bound to meet each other daily all their lives long, nobody likes to take this odious course. When a defaulter—to use the provincial term for a debtor, for they do not mince their words in the provinces when speaking of this legalized method of helping yourself to another man's goods—when a defaulter plans a failure on a large scale, he takes sanctuary in Paris. Paris is a kind of City of Refuge for provincial bankrupts, an almost impenetrable retreat ”

“ If a man has given anything whatever on deposit, and, where he has made his deposit, something of his has been lost together with something belonging to the owner of the house, either by house-breaking or a rebellion, the owner of the house who is in default shall make good all that has been given him on deposit, which he has lost, and shall return it to the owner of the goods. ”

“ So that you see it is absolutely necessary from these facts, seeing that our record entirely consists of accumulations of mud, superimposed one on the other; seeing in the next place that any particular spots on which accumulations have occurred, have been constantly moving up and down, and sometimes out of the reach of a deposit, and at other times its own deposit broken up and carried away, it follows that our record must be in the highest degree imperfect, and we have hardly a trace left of thick deposits, or any definite knowledge of the area that they occupied, in a great many cases. ”

“ Thus the fact of actual possession, improvement, and occupation, by himself, for six years commencing in 1749, is proved by the direct as well as the historical and traditionary evidence; and it was a fulfilment of the condition subsequent contained in the ratification, relating to possession.
Authorities show that the 'abandonment' must be on the part of the owner a complete renunciation and giving up of the thing, with intent not henceforth to reassert any dominion over it. ”

“ To offset this evil the American Red Cross established a chain of soldiers’ banks at the principal demobilization centers. In these banks the discharged men could deposit their money, drawing it out by check after they reached their homes. ”

“ Of depositions of two or more persons having personal cognizance of the facts or any of them as embraced in the declaration of the claimant, which depositions must set forth the means of knowledge which deponents have as to the fact of the depredation, when, where, by what Indians, and under what circumstances the depredation was committed, of what the property consisted that was so taken or destroyed by the Indians, describing it as fully as practicable, and stating the value thereof. ”

“ The stoutest adherents of the administration were alarmed; and all thinking men, not blinded by party prejudice, beheld in the act a bold and dangerous exercise of power; and no human sagacity can now foresee the tremendous consequences which will ensue. The measure was adopted not long before the approaching session of congress; and, as the concurrence of both branches might be necessary to compel a restoration of the deposits, the object was to take the chance of a possible division between them, and thereby defeat the restoration. ”

“ Even if this view be correct, it disproves not the probability that the thirty days applied to various kinds of cases.
[14] "Shall cut pieces" (partes secanto) is explained variously: "to divide the debtor's functions or capabilities", "to claim shares in the debtor's property", "to divide the price obtained for the sale of the debtor's person", "to divide the debtor's family and goods", "to announce to the magistrate their shares of the debtor's estate"; the old Roman writers, however, understand by the phrase that the creditors can cut their several shares of the debtor's body! ”