Word Finder - petition

definition

A formal, written request made to an official person or organized body, often containing many signatures.

definition

A compilation of signatures built in order to exert moral authority in support of a specific cause.

definition

A formal written request for judicial action.

definition

A prayer; a supplication; an entreaty.

definition

To make a request to, commonly in written form.

example

The villagers petitioned the council to demolish the dangerous building.

The plea was included in a petition to the first parliament of Charles II.

This petition, of course, was rejected.

With the royal sanction a petition was addressed to Sixtus IV.

No, I can't petition him myself--that would be too bold.

Opposition on petition could be heard before a select committee or a joint committee as in the case of private bills.

He was not released until the accession of Mary, parliament restoring his dukedom on his petition for reversal of the attainder.

The committee on commerce, to whom the petition was referred, reported favourably.

His petition to the king for a trial by his peers on this indictment was refused, and an attempt to prosecute the publishers of the false evidence in the king's bench was unsuccessful.

In that month, however, such a request was dangerous; there was excitement in the city over the presentation of the petition, and the private attacks to which Desmoulins had often been subject were now followed by a warrant for the arrest of himself and Danton.

In 1908 an act was passed providing for local option in regard to the sale of intoxicating liquors, by an election to be called an initiative petition, signed by at least 35% of the electors of a county.

In 1783 the first petition to the House of Commons for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery went up from the Quakers; and in the long agitation which ensued the Society took a prominent part.

Personal liberty, liberty of conscience, speech, assembly, petition, association, press, liberty of movement and security of home, were without real guarantee even within the extremely small limits in which they nominally existed.

Edward received the petition at Ghent, and made the required oath.

The king's advisers now urged him to arrest Shaftesbury; he was seized on the 2nd of July 1681, and committed to the Tower, the judges refusing his petition to be tried or admitted to bail.

Incensed by the elevation to the rank of embassies of the Italian legation in Paris and the French legation to the Quirinal, and by the introduction of the Italian bill against clerical abuses, the French Clerical party not only attacked Italy and her representative, General Cialdini, in the Chamber of Deputies, but promoted a monster petition against the Italian bill.

Even the coup detat of the 16th of May 1877 (when Macmahon dismissed the Jules Simon cabinet for opposing the Clerical petition) hardly availed to change the attitude of Depretis.

The charter of incorporation granted in 1614 states that by the invasion of the Spaniards it had been treacherously spoiled and burnt but that its strength, prosperity and usefulness for navigation, and the acceptable and laudable services of the inhabitants in rebuilding and fortifying it, and their enterprise in erecting a pier, have moved the king to grant the petition for its incorporation.

After a time the sentence was partially recalled on the petition of her friends, and she was permitted to pass the closing years of her life on her own estate near Moscow, where she died on the 4th of January 1810.

It was in this year that a petition from Cape Town merchants asking for the creation of a British colony at Natal was met by the statement that the Cape finances would not permit the establishment of a new dependency.

This petition, the outcome of the second Uitlander movement for reform, was signed by 21,000 British subjects, and stated the Uitlander position at considerable length.

On a petition from the inhabitants the town was reincorporated by a new charter in 1885.

In 1869 an Irish lad, O'Connor, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment and a whipping for presenting a pistol at the queen, with a petition, in St James's Park; but this time it was the queen herself who privately remitted the corporal punishment, and she even pushed clemency to the length of sending her aggressor to Australia at her own expense.

The assaults of the South in defence of slavery upon free speech, free press, the right of petition and trial by jury, he pronounced "exorbitant claims. ..

They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect.

Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on Denisov's behalf.

Setbacks and local codes may restrict the size of the addition greatly, an architect will know how to navigate these restrictions and how to petition for a variance should one be needed.

Each petition is throughly explained and when filled in, it is sent to the petitioner's two United States Senators and Congressional Representative.

According to the statement on the petition's website, GUN not only allows the killing of American Indians, but encourages and even requires it in order to progress.

The AAID has created a petition that urges for the boycott of the offending video game and all products distributed by Activision.

Wine lovers can help us ensure that the place names of all great winemaking regions are protected by signing our petition to protect place and origin.

Canon Caruana and other leaders of the Maltese aspired to obtain for Malta the freedom of the Roman Catholic religion guaranteed by England in Canada and other dependencies, and promoted a petition in order that Malta should come under the strong power of England rather than revert to the kingdom of the two Sicilies.

In cases where the patron is himself a clerk in orders, and wishes to be admitted to the benefice, he must proceed by way of petition instead of by deed of presentation, reciting that the benefice is in his own patronage, and petitioning the bishop to examine him and admit him.

In cases where the bishop himself is patron of the benefice, no presentation or petition is required to be tendered by the clerk, but the bishop having satisfied himself of the sufficiency of the clerk, collates him to the benefice and office.

After petition signed by a number of voters not less than 25% of the number voting at the preceding municipal election, any member of the council may be removed by popular vote, to which all public franchises must be submitted, and by which the council may be compelled to pass any law or ordinance.

Lord's Prayer, with a short introduction and the expansion of the last petition into a prayer known as the " Embolismus."

She used all her influence in favour of the unfortunate Raleigh, answering his petition to her for protection with a personal letter of appeal to Buckingham to save his life.

A petition for a divorce may be presented after a residence within the state of one year immediately preceding, and a decree may be granted against the defendant if judged guilty of adultery, desertion for two years without reasonable cause, habitual drunkenness, such inhuman treatment as to endanger the life of the plaintiff, or if convicted of felony after marriage.

In February 1757 the assembly, " finding the proprietary obstinately persisted in manacling their deputies with instructions inconsistent not only with the privileges of the people, but with the service of the crown, resolv'd to petition the king against them," and appointed Franklin as their agent to present the petition.

But the question of taxing the estates of the proprietors came up in a new form, and a petition from the assembly was drawn by Franklin, requesting the king " to resume the government " of Pennsylvania.

The new assembly sent Franklin again to England as its special agent to take charge of another petition for a change of government, which, however, came to nothing.

The Massachusetts assembly on receiving the letters resolved to petition the crown for the removal of both Hutchinson and Oliver.

The petition was refused and was condemned as scandalous, and Franklin, who took upon himself the responsibility for the publication of the letters, in the hearing before the privy council at the Cockpit on the 29th of January 1 774 was insulted and was called a thief by Alexander Wedderburn (the solicitor-general, who appeared for Hutchinson and Oliver), and was removed from his position as head of the post office in the American colonies.

As president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin signed a petition to Congress (12th February 1790) for immediate abolition of slavery, and six weeks later in his most brilliant manner parodied the attack on the petition made by James Jackson (1757-1806) of Georgia, taking off Jackson's quotations of Scripture with pretended texts from the Koran cited by a member of the Divan of Algiers in opposition to a petition asking for the prohibition of holding Christians in slavery.

This provision, introducing an entirely new principle into the American governmental system, came into effect in January 1903, and was employed in the following year when a previously elected councilman who was "recalled" by petition and was unsuccessful in the 1904 election brought suit to hold his office, and on a mere technicality the Supreme Court of the state declared the recall election invalid.

The following year, 1532, parliament presented a petition to the king (which had been most carefully elaborated by the monarch's own advisers) containing twelve charges against the bishops, relating to their courts, fees, injudicious appointments and abusive treatment of heretics, which combined to cause an unprecedented and " marvellous disorder of the godly quiet, peace and tranquillity" of the realm.

Almost all state employees are under civil service rules; the same is true of the city of Boston; and of the clerical, stenographic, prison, police, civil engineering, fire, labourforeman, inspection and bridge tender services of all cities; and under a law (1894) by which cities and towns may on petition enlarge the application of their civil service rules.

The town hall is not large enough for an assemblage of all the voters, but actually the attendance is usually limited to about Zoo, and since 1901 there has been in force a kind of referendum, under which any measure passed by a town-meeting attended by 700 or more voters may be referred, upon petition of loo legal voters, to a regular vote at the polls.

Though heartily disliked in Holland, Leicester made himself so popular in Utrecht that the burgher guard even presented him with a petition that he would, assume the sovereignty.

After the successful Aurelian had granted the petition of the embassy, Synesius returned to Cyrene in 400, and spent the next ten years partly in that city, when unavoidable business called him there, but chiefly on an estate in the interior of the province, where in his own words "books and the chase" made up his life.

It denied his right to levy certain war taxes, and when it had in vain protested to him against his arbitrary measures it sent a petition, in 1644, to the States-General for his recall, and this was granted.