Crossword-Solution: PECULATE 8 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 12

This may be crime; but it looks light in my eyes when I gaze around, and survey on all sides the masked traitors who acknowledge large debts to society, who profess to obey its laws, adore its institutions, and, above all--oh, how righteously!--attack all those who attack it, and who yet lie and cheat and defraud and peculate,--publicly reaping all the comforts, privately filching all the profits.

These, demands, however, originated during the wars in Europe which followed the French revolution, so that it remained for Mexico to peculate on our commerce and persecute our people during a period of entire international peace, and without any excuse save the direct villainy of her government, or the corrupt ignorance of her subordinate officers.

Thus, with a very small amount of labour, the peasant of Syria can afford to have an idle time of it, were he not in terror of government taxes; for although the system of taxation is fairly and justly arranged, and in reality the sums levied are small in proportion to the income, still there are understrappers, besides their own Christian Nazir and Sheikhs, who peculate to a large extent under the plea of some false necessity.

Possessed of an integrity which gave perfect security that he would participate in no jobs himself, he had at the same time that knowledge of men and of business, that patient industry, and that discriminating judgment which would permit no others to peculate.

The papal government did not peculate, but the hated _sbirri_--the papal police--were often responsible for a missing bale of cloth or a burglary, and a child who had been left a fortune by her aunt only learnt when she was grown up that the _curato_ of the Pantheon who had been made _erede fiduciario_ (trustee) and executor of the testament had not thereby been constituted sole beneficiary.