it must be admitted, a policy that they put forward, instead of a policy put forward, the participles hesitating and believing would have had owners.
While hesitating to accept this terrible indictment of French infancy, it must be admitted that French literature in all its strength and wealth is a grown-up literature.—Spectator.
He and those with whom he acted were responsible for the policy promulgated—a policy put forward in all seriousness and honesty believing it to be essential to the obtaining of the better government of Ireland.—Times.
7. Participles that seem to belong to a noun, but do not.
Letters on the constant stopping of omnibuses, thus causing considerable suffering to the horses.
Does causing agree with letters? Then the letters annoy the horses. With stopping? Then stopping causes suffering by stopping (thus). With omnibuses? The horses possibly blame those innocents, but we can hardly suppose a human being, even the writer of the sentence, so illogical. The word thus, however, is often considered to have a kind of dispensing power, freeing its participle from all obligations; so:
The Prince was, by the special command of his Majesty the Emperor, made the guardian of H.I.H. the Crown Prince, thus necessitating the Prince's constant presence in the capital of Japan.—Times.
A very wealthy man can never be sure even of friendship,—while the highest, strongest and noblest kind of love is nearly always denied to him, in this way carrying out the fulfilment of those strange but true words:—'How hardly shall he that is a rich man enter the Kingdom of Heaven!'—Corelli.
It is not love that carries out, but the power that denies love, which is not mentioned.
8. Really bad unattached or wrongly attached participles. The reader will generally find no difficulty in seeing what has led to the blunder, and if he will take the trouble to do this, will be less likely to make similar blunders himself.
And then stooping to take up the key to let myself into the garden, he started and looked as if he heard somebody near the door.–Richardson.
