Word Finder - proprietors

definition

An owner.

definition

A sole owner of an unincorporated business, also called a sole proprietor.

definition

One of the owners of an unincorporated business, a partner.

definition

(history) One or more persons to whom a colonial territory is assigned, like a fief, including its administration.

example

From 10 September 1621 till 12 June 1632, Sir William Alexander, styled Earl of Stirling and Viscount of Canada, was proprietor of the Scottish colony Nova Scotia.

The proprietors struggled in vain to bring about a closer union.

But for both proprietors and Jesuits a surprise was in store.

The reformers of the previous reign had endeavoured to make the emancipated peasantry administratively and economically independent of the landed proprietors; the conservatives of this later era, proceeding on the assumption that the peasants did not know how to make a proper use of the liberty prematurely conferred upon them, endeavoured to re-establish the influence of the landed proprietors by appointing from amongst them " land-chiefs," who were to exercise over the peasants of their district a certain amount of patriarchal jurisdiction.

But these constitutions, several times revised, actually served only as a theoretical standard for the proprietors and were abrogated altogether in 1693, and the colonists were governed by instructions which granted them much greater privileges.

The class of coloni appears to have been composed partly of tenants by contract who had incurred large arrears of rent and were detained on the estates as debtors (obaerati), partly of foreign captives or immigrants who were settled in this condition on the land, and partly of small proprietors and other poor men who voluntarily adopted the status as an improvement in their position.

The planters and mine proprietors cried out against this as a national calamity.

But it is a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly.

The Roman Catholic landowners lost their estates, all or part according to their degree of guilt, and these were distributed among Cromwell's soldiers and the creditors of the government; Cromwell also invited new settlers from home and from New England, two-thirds of the whole land of Ireland being thus transferred to new proprietors.

At Saluzzo in Piedmont there is a stock with hanging ears, arched face and tall stature, kept for its dairy qualities; and in the Biellese the merino breed is maintained by some of the larger proprietors.

With the aid of Sella he concluded conventions for the redemption of the chief Italian railways from their French and Austrian proprietors.

Polish proprietors settled in large numbers on the Cossack territory, and great efforts were made, with the assistance of the Jesuits, to bring the Orthodox population under papal authority.

In that year an act was passed by parliament establishing an agreement with seven of the Lords Proprietors for the surrender of their claims to both provinces.

At the beginning of the 19th century a subscription was raised by the proprietors of land in the neighbourhood for improving the harbour, and an act was obtained by which they were incorporated under the title "The Grimsby Haven Co."

The Peloponnesian War introduced a change; s and after that time the proprietors resided at Athens, and the cultivation was in the hands of slaves.

The latter, however, were to be maintained at the expense of the proprietors up to their eighteenth year, and during that time to be kept, as apprentices, to such work as was suitable for their age.

In the 18th century we find the distinction between the three classes named above effaced and all of them merged in the class of serfs, who were the property either of the landed proprietors or of the state.

They were not even adscripti glebae, though forbidden to migrate; an imperial ukase of 1721 says, " the proprietors sell their peasants and domestic servants, not even in families, but one by one, like cattle."

Peter the Great imposed a poll-tax on all the members of the rural population, making the proprietors responsible for the tax charged on their serfs; and the " free wandering people " who were not willing to enter the army were required to settle on the land either as members of a commune or as serfs of some proprietor.

The proprietors could transport without trial their unruly serfs to Siberia or send them to the mines for life, and those who presented complaints against their masters were punished with the knout and condemned to the mines.

For about a century and a half before that time, levee building had been undertaken in a more or less spasmodic and tentative way, first by riparian proprietors, then by local combinations of public and private interests, and finally by the state, acting through levee districts, advised by a Board of Engineers.

Governors were appointed by the lords proprietors, and there are copious records in the state papers of the attempts made to develop the resources of the islands.

In 1784 and 1786 sums were voted in parliament to indemnify the descendants of the old lords proprietors, and the islands.

Cicero speaks of it as a prcsperous country town, which had not as yet fallen into the hands of large proprietors; and inscriptions show that under the empire it was still flourishing.

The counties were, it appears, farmed out; but in the 7th century the royal choice became restricted to the larger landed proprietors, who gradually emancipated themselves from royal control, and in.

Nearly all the land is in the hands of peasant proprietors, who cultivate sweet potatoes, peas, beans, corn, &c., and rear sheep and goats.

Natal colonists were not merely the first in the field with the transport traffic to the new goldfields; they became some of the earliest proprietors of mines, and for several years many of the largest mining companies had their chief offices at Pietermaritzburg or Durban.

He laid out the ground of the several proprietors in the rebuilding of the city, and had no rest early or late from persons soliciting him to set out their ground for them at once.

When centrifugals were adopted for purging the whole crop (they had long been used for curing the second or third sugars), the system then obtaining of running the sugar into wagons or coolers, which was necessary for the second and third sugars' cooked only to string point, was continued, but latterly " crystallization in movement, a development of the system which forty years ago or more existed in refineries and in Cuba, has come into general use, and with great advantage, especially where proprietors have been able to erect appropriate buildings and machinery for carrying out the system efficiently.

In 1659 the elder Mayhew sold a joint interest in the greater part of the island of Nantucket for £ 3 0 and two beaver hats to nine partners; early in the following year the first ten admitted ten others as equal proprietors, and later, in order to encourage them to settle here, special half-grants were offered to tradesmen.

The original twenty proprietors, however, endeavoured to exclude the tradesmen from any voice in the government, and this caused strife.

In 1786 the proprietors had the manor surveyed.

The Connecticut grantees were incorporated in 1803 as "the proprietors of the half-million acres of land lying south of Lake Erie."

The Palazzo del Tribunale (law courts) is a fine building, and the upper town contains several good houses of rich proprietors of the province; while the lower portion is unhealthy.

Notwithstanding the alarm occasioned by Braddock's defeat, the old quarrel between the proprietors of Pennsylvania and the assembly prevented any adequate preparations for defence; " with incredible meanness " the proprietors had instructed their governors to approve no act for levying the necessary taxes, unless the vast estates of the proprietors were by the same act exempted.

As to the proprietors Franklin succeeded in 1760 in securing an understanding that the assembly should pass an act exempting from taxation the unsurveyed waste lands of the Penn estate, the surveyed waste lands being assessed at the usual rate for other property of that description.

Thus the proprietors finally acknowledged the right of the assembly to tax their estates.

Franklin, appealed to by the governor, raised a troop sufficient to frighten away the " Paxton boys," and for the moment there seemed a possibility of an understanding between Franklin and the proprietors.

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.

In the autumn election of 1764 the influence of the proprietors was exerted against Franklin, and by an adverse majority of 25 votes in 4000 he failed to be re-elected to the assembly.

The settlers by degrees threw off the control of the proprietors who had received grants from the crown and had promoted the first settlements.

The class of peasant proprietors being restricted to a small number of wealthy peasants, the bulk have remained tenants at will; they are very miserable, and about one-fourth of them are continually wandering in search of work.

In eight years of hard work as director of a special land commission he settled the titles of land acquired by the French nation at the Revolution, and placed on an unassailable basis the rights of the proprietors who had bought this land from the government.

The forests of Saxony are extensive and have long been well cared for both by government and by private proprietors.

The first chamber consists of the adult princes of the blood, two representatives of the Lutheran and one of the Roman Catholic Church, a representative of Leipzig university, the proprietor (or a deputy) of the Herrschaft of Wildenfels, a proprietor of the mediatized domains, two of Standesherrschaften, one of those of four estates in fee, the superintendent at Leipzig, a deputy of the collegiate institution at Wurzen, 12 deputies elected by owners of nobiliar estates, ten landed proprietors and five other members nominated by the king and the burgomasters of eight towns.

Its object was to exhibit by means of certain formulas the way in which the products of agriculture, which is the only source of wealth, would in a state of perfect liberty be distributed among the several classes of the community (namely, the productive classes of the proprietors and cultivators of land, and the unproductive class composed of manufacturers and merchants), and to represent by other formulas the modes of distribution which take place under systems of Governmental restraint and regulation, with the evil results arising to the whole society from different degrees of such violations of the natural order.

The Ardennes are the holiday ground of the Belgian people, and much of this region is still unknown except to the few persons who by a happy chance have discovered its remoter and hitherto well-guarded charms. There is still an immense quantity of wild game to be found in the Ardennes, including red and roe deer, wild boar, &c. The shooting is preserved either by the few great landed proprietors left in the country, or by the communes, who let the right of shooting to individuals.

Lord Beaverbrook became one of the chief proprietors of the London Daily Express, and in 1916-7 published Canada in Flanders.

He came of a family of small farmer proprietors, who had held land during three centuries.

Since the landed proprietors disposed of churches and convents, and the kings of bishoprics and abbeys, it became possible for them too to commit the sin of simony; hence a final expansion, in the iith century, of the meaning of the term.

Though a word of not very strict application, it is now frequently used of the rural population of such countries as France, where the land is chiefly held by small holders, "peasant proprietors."