But it is one thing to establish these conditions [the Chinese Ordinance], and another to remove them suddenly.–Westminster Gazette.
What economy of life and money would not have been spared the empire of the Tsars had it not rendered war certain.–Times. (It is the empire. The instance is not quoted for not, though that too is wrong, but for the confusion between loss and economy)
The question of 'raids' is one which necessarily comes home to every human being living within at least thirty miles of our enormously long coast line.—Lonsdale Hale. (An odd puzzle. Within thirty means less than thirty; at least thirty means not less than thirty. The meaning is clear enough, however, and perhaps the expression is defensible; but it would have been better to say: within a strip at least thirty miles broad along our enormous coast line)
The fact that a negative idea can often be either included in a word or kept separate from it leads to a special form of confusion, the construction proper to the resolved form being used with the compound and vice versa.
My feelings, Sir, are moderately unspeakable, and that is a fact.–American. (not moderately speakable: moderately belongs only to half of unspeakable)
...who did not aim, like the Presbyterians, at a change in Church government, but rejected the notion of a national Church at all.–J. R. Green. (Reject is equivalent to will not have. I reject altogether: I will not have at all)
And your correspondent does not seem to know, or not to realize, the conditions of the problem.–Times. (Seems, not does not seem, has to be supplied in the second clause)
I confess myself altogether unable to formulate such a principle, much less to prove it.–Balfour. (Less does not suit unable, but able; but the usage of much less and much more is hopelessly chaotic)
War between these two great nations would be an inexplicable impossibility.–Choate. (Inexplicable does not qualify the whole of impossibility; to make sense we must divide impossibility into impossible event, and take inexplicable only with event)
And the cry has this justification,—that no age can see itself in a proper perspective, and is therefore incapable of giving its virtues and vices their relative places.—Spectator. (No age is equivalent to not any age, and out of this we have to take any age as subject to the last sentence; this is common, but untidy and blameworthy device)
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