in all conscience

in all conscience

1. Alternative form of in conscience

   I cannot, in all conscience, have somebody doing so much work for us and not getting paid.

   • c. 1703-20, “A Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage”, in Thomas Sheridan, John Nichols, John Boyle, Patrick Delany, John Hawkesworth, Deane Swift, William Bowyer, John Birch, George Faulkner, editors, The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, volume 5, Jonathan Swift:

     […] half a dozen fools are, in all conscience, as many as you should require; […]

   • 1902, Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether:

     He needed every penny of profit the Sofala could make. Little enough it was, in all conscience!

   • 2014, Clements R. Markham, Cuzco and Lima, page 285:

     It would seem as if the touch of a democratic and anarchical independence had paralysed improvement, which was, in all conscience, slow enough, even in the viceregal times.

   • 2014, Belva Boroditsky Thomas, The Longest Adventure, page 201:

     But could you, in all conscience, deprive these good people, who are, after all, trying to do their best, of meaningful employment, of earning their livelihoods?

   • 2015, Wendy Doniger, Martha C. Nussbaum, Pluralism and Democracy in India:

     There was a clear sectarian bias in the proposition that Christian groups or churches were being funded from abroad and no professional news organization or editor could in all conscience let such writings pass for news.

   • 2015, Schubert M. Ogden, To Preach the Truth: Selected Sermons and Homilies, page 6:

     God has nowhere been left without witness, and, in ways beyond our knowing, women and men who have never heard the Christian gospel, or having heard it, have, in all conscience, declined to accept it have known God's “uncovenanted mercies” and, by reason of what Anglican theologians often refer to as the ministry of the “unincarnate Logos,” have come to be of the truth that Jesus is.