Chapter Conscience Clause to Contenement of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

and make the public bleed ad libitum. In criminal law it means persons who league together to do something unlawful.

Constable (Latin, comes-stabuli) means “Master of the Horse.” The constable of England and France was at one time a military officer of state, next in rank to the crown.
   To overrun or outrun the constable. To get into debt; spend more than one's income; to talk about what you do not understand. (See below.)

“Quoth Hudibras, Friend Ralph, thou hast
Outrun the constable at last;
For thou hast fallen on a new
Dispute, as senseless as untrue.”
Butler: Hudibras, i. 3.

   Who's to pay the constable? Who is to pay the score?
   The constable arrests debtors, and, of course, represents the creditor; wherefore, to overrun the constable is to overrun your credit account. To pay the constable is to give him the money due, to prevent an arrest.

Constable de Bourbon Charles, Duc de Bourbon, a powerful enemy of Francois I. He was killed while heading the assault on Rome. (1527.)

Constantine Tolman (Cornwall). A vast egg-like stone, thirty-three feet in length, eighteen in width, and fourteen in thickness, placed on the points of two natural rocks, so that a man may creep under it. The stone upheld weighs 750 tons.

Constantine's Cross In Latin, vinces in hoc; in English, By this conquer. It is said that Constantine, on his march to Rome, saw a luminous cross in the sky, in the shape and with the motto here given. In the night before the battle of Saxa Rubra a vision appeared to him in his sleep, commanding him to inscribe the cross and the motto on the shields of his soldiers. He obeyed the voice of the vision, and prevailed. The monogram is CRistoz (Christ). (See Gibbon: Decline and Fall, chap. xix. n.)
   This may be called a standing miracle in legendary history; for, besides Andrew's cross, and the Dannebrog or red cross of Denmark (q.v.), we have the cross which appeared to Don Alonzo before the battle of Ourique in 1139, when the Moors were totally routed with incredible slaughter. As Alonzo was drawing up his men, the figure of a cross appeared in the eastern sky, and Christ, suspended on the cross, promised the Christian king a complete victory. This legend is commemorated by the device assumed by Alonzo, in a field argent five escutcheons azure, in the form of a cross, each escutcheon being charged with five bezants, in memory of the five wounds of Christ. (See Labarum)

Constituent Assembly The first of the national assemblies of the French Revolution; so called because it took an oath never to separate till it had given to France a constitution. (1788-1791.)

Constituents Those who constitute or elect members of Parliament. (Latin, constituo, to place or elect, etc.)

Constitution The fundamental laws of a state. It may be either despotic, aristocratic, democratic, or mixed.
   To give a nation a constitution is to give it fixed laws even to the limitation of the sovereign's rights, so that the people are not under the arbitrary caprice of a ruler, but under a known code of laws. A despotism or autocracy is solely under the unrestricted will of the despot or autocrat.

Constitutions of Clarendon (See Clarendon
   Apostolic Constitutions. A “Catholic” code of both doctrine and discipline collected by Clemens Romaus. The word “Apostolic,” as in the “Apostles' Creed,” does not mean made by the Apostles, but what the “Church” considered to be in accordance with apostolic teaching.

Construe To translate. To translate into English means to set an English word in the place of a foreign word, and to put the whole sentence in good grammatical order. (Latin, construo, to construct.)

Consuelo (4 syl.). The impersonation of moral purity in the midst of temptations. The heroine of George Sand's (Mad. Dudevant's) novel of the same name.