Drive a coach and six through an Act of Parliament. Macaulay ("History of England," chap. xii.) gives a saying "often in the mouth of Stephen Rice [afterward Chief Baron of the Exchequer], 'I will drive a coach and six through the Act of Settlement.'"' During good behaviour. ... That after the said limitation shall take effect, judge's commissions be made quando se bene gesserit. - Statutes 12 and 13 William III. c. 2, sect. 3. Eclipse first, the rest nowhere. Declared by Captain O'Kelley at Epsom, May 3, 1769. Annals of Sporting, vol. ii. p. 271. Emerald Isle. Dr. William Drennan (1754-1820) says this expression was first used in a party song called "Erin, to her own Tune," written in 1795. The song appears to have been anonymous. Era of good feeling. The title of an article in the "Boston Centinel," July 12, 1817. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt. — JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN : Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.-DEMOSTHENES: Philippic 2, sect. 24. Fiat justitia ruat cœlum. WILLIAM WATSON: Decacordon of Ten Quodlibeticall Questions (1602). PRYNNE: Fresh Discovery of Prodigious New Wandering-Blazing Stars (second edition, London, 1646). WARD: Simple Cobbler of Aggawam in America (1647). Fiat Justitia et ruat Mundus. - Egerton Papers (1552, p. 25). Camden Society (1840). AIKIN: Court and Times of James I., vol. ii. p. 500 (1625). January 31, 1642, the Duke of Richmond in a speech before the House of Lords used these words: Regnet Justitia et ruat Cælum. (Old Parliamentary History, vol. x. p. 28. Free soil, free men, free speech, Frémont. Gentle craft. According to Brady ("Clavis Calendaria "), this designation arose Marry, because you have drank with the King, Shall be called the trade of the gentle craft. Gentlemen of the French guard, fire first. Lord C. Hay at the battle of Fontenoy, 1745. To which the Comt d'Auteroches replied, "Sir, we never fire first; please to fire your selves."-FOURNIER: L'Esprit dans l'histoire. Good as a play. An exclamation of Charles II. when in Parliament attending the dis cussion of Lord Ross's Divorce Bill. The king remained in the House of Peers while his speech was taken into consideration, -a common practice with him; for the debates amused his sated mind, and were sometimes, he used to say, as good as a comedy. MACAULAY: Review of the Life and Writings of Sir William Temple. Nullos his mallem ludos spectasse. — HORACE: Satires, ii. 8, 79. Greatest happiness of the greatest number. That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. HUTCHESON Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 3. (1720.) Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth, that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation. - BENTHAM: Works, vol. x. p. 142. The expression is used by Beccaria in the introduction to his "Essay on Crimes and Punishments." (1764) Hanging of his cat on Monday For killing of a mouse on Sunday. Drunken Barnaby's Four Journeys (edition of 1805, p. 5). Hobson's choice. Tobias Hobson (died 1630) was the first man in England that let out hackney horses. When a man came for a horse he was led into the stable, where there was a great choice, but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next to the stable-door; so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance, from whence it became a proverb when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say, "Hobson's choice." - Spectator, No. 509. THOMAS WARD (1577-1639): England's Reformation, chap. iv. p. 326. Intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle. Lord Coleridge remarked that Maule told him what he said in the "black beetle" matter: Creswell, who had been his pupil, was on the other side in a case where he was counsel, and was very lofty in his manner. Maule appealed to the court: 'My lords, we are vertebrate animals, we are mammalia! My learned friend's manner would be intolerable in Almighty God to a black beetle.'" (Repeated to a member of the legal profession in the United States.) It is a far cry to Lochow. Lochow and the adjacent districts formed the original seat of the Campbells. The expression of "a far cry to Lochow" was proverbial. (Note to Scott's "Rob Roy," chap. xxix.) Lucid interval. BACON: Henry VII. SIDNEY: On Government, vol. i. chap. ii. sect. 24. FULLER: A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, book iv, chap. ii. SOUTH: Sermon, vol. viii. p. 403. DRYDEN: Mac Flecknoe. MATHEW HENRY: Commentaries, Psalm lxxxviii. JOHNSON: Life of Lyttelton. BURKE: On the French Revolution. Nisi suadeat intervallis. BRACTON: Folio 1243 and folio 420 b. Register Original, 267 a. Mince the matter. CERVANTES: Don Quixote, Author's Preface. SHAKESPEARE: Othello, act ii. sc. 3. WILLIAM KING: Ulysses and Teresias. Months without an R. It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not an R in their name to eat an oyster. - BUTLER: Dyet's Dry Dinner. (1599.) Nation of shopkeepers. From an oration purporting to have been delivered by Samuel Adams And what is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.- Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers. — BER- New departure. This new page opened in the book of our public expenditures, and this new departure taken, which leads into the bottomless gulf of civil pensions and family gratuities.-T. H. BENTON: Speech in the U. 8. Senate against a grant to President Harrison's widow, April, 1841. Nothing succeeds like success. (Rien ne réussit comme le succès. - DUMAS: Ange Pitou, vol. i. p. 72 1854.) A French proverb. Orthodoxy is my doxy; Heterodoxy is another man's doxy. “I have heard frequent use," said the late Lord Sandwich, în a debate Paradise of fools; Fool's paradise. The earliest instance of this expression is found in William Bullein's “Dialogue,” p. 28 (1573). It is used by Shakespeare, Middleton, Milton, Pope, Fielding, Crabbe, and others. Paying through the nose. Grimm says that Odin had a poll-tax which was called in Sweden a nose-tax; it was a penny per nose, or poll. — Deutsche Rechts Alter thümer. Public trusts. It is not fit the public trusts should be lodged in the hands of any till they are first proved, and found fit for the business they are to be intrusted with. MATHEW HENRY: Commentaries, Timothy iii. To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. - BURKE: On the French Revolution. When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property. — THOMAS JEFFERSON ("Winter in Washington, 1807"), in a conversation with Baron Humboldt. See Rayner's "Life of Jefferson," p. 356 (Boston, 1834). The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party. — JOHN C. CALHOUN: Speech, July 13, 1835. The phrase, "public office is a public trust," has of late become common property.-CHARLES SUMNER (May 31, 1872). The appointing power of the pope is treated as a public trust. - W. W. The public offices are a public trust.- DORMAN B. EATON (1881). He who regards office as a public trust. — DANIEL S. LAMONT (1884). Rather your room as your company. Marriage of Wit and Wisdom (circa 1570). Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. From an inscription on the cannon near which the ashes of President John Bradshaw were lodged, on the top of a high hill near Martha Bay in Jamaica. - STILES: History of the Three Judges of King Charles I. This supposititious epitaph was found among the papers of Mr. Jefferson, and in his handwriting. It was supposed to be one of Dr. Franklin's spirit-stirring inspirations. -RANDALL: Life of Jefferson, vol. iii. p. 585. Rest and be thankful. An inscription on a stone seat on the top of one of the Highlands in Scotland. It is also the title of one of Wordsworth's poems. Rowland for an Oliver. These were two of the most famous in the list of Charlemagne's twelve peers; and their exploits are rendered so ridiculously and equally extravagant by the old romancers, that from thence arose that saying amongst our plain and sensible ancestors of giving one a "Rowland for his Oliver," to signify the matching one incredible lie with another. THOMAS WARBURTON. |