But he declaring that any overtures they had to make must be made in public to the Syracusans as a free people, envoys now went and came between the tyrant and the people, with fair proposals, and assurances that they should have abatements of their tributes and taxes, and freedom from the burdens of military expeditions, all which should be made according to their own approbation and consent with him.
"Plutarch-Lives-of-the-noble-Grecians-and-Romans"
Clough, Arthur Hugh
His literary skill was of the most mechanical kind; but at the close of 1709, when hopes of peace had been raised only to be disappointed, and the country was suffering from the distress of a prolonged war, people were more in a mood to listen to a preacher who disdained to check the sweep of his rhetoric by qualifications or abatements, and luxuriated in denouncing the Queen's Ministers from the pulpit under scriptural allegories.
"Daniel Defoe"
William Minto
I have given the opinions of these contending parties in their extreme development; but they both admit abatements which bring them somewhat nearer to one another.
"Luck or Cunning?"
Samuel Butler