[ad. med.L. agentia = facultas agendi, n. of state f. agent-em pr. pple. of ag-ĕre to do, act.]
1. The faculty of an agent or of acting; active working or operation; action, activity.
1658. Slingsby, Diary (1836), 208. Privacy … if your Hours in it are not well employed, may become as dangerous as a place of agency.
1762. Edwards, Freed. Will, I. v. (R.), 30. The moral Agency of the Supreme Being … differs in that Respect from the moral Agency of created intelligent Beings.
1830. Coleridge, Ch. & St., 140. The State shall leave the largest portion of personal free agency to each of its citizens, that is compatible with the free agency of all.
2. Working as a means to an end; instrumentality, intermediation.
1674. Ch. & Court of Rome, 17. The Agency of the Romish Factors with the King of Spain, for the procuring a second Invasion of their Native Country.
a. 1691. Flavel, quoted in H. Miller, Sch. & Schoolm., ix. (1866), 87. That the moral infection came by way of physical agency.
1785. T. Jefferson, Corr., Wks. 1859, I. 416. To set our treaty with the piratical States into motion, through his agency.
1815. Bakewell, Introd. Geol., 439. The geologists who exclude the agency of fire from the formation of rocks.
1849. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., II. 175. A complete explanation and reconciliation were brought about by the agency of Gilbert Burnet.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., Introd. 3. Requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower to the other.
3. Action or instrumentality embodied or personified as concrete existence.
1784. Beckford, Vathek (1868), 20. An invisible agency arrested his progress.
a. 1843. Southey, To Allan Cunningham, Wks. III. 310. And still Antonides and Hooft Are living agencies.
c. 1854. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., i. (1858), 35. The agency by which the sea was dried up was ‘a strong east wind.’
4. Comm. The office or function of an agent or factor.
1732. Swift, Misc., VI. 156 (J.). Content to live cheap in a worse Country, rather than be at the Charge of Exchange and Agencies.
1800. Wellesley, Desp., 715. Foreigners deal directly with the natives, or with foreign houses of agency.
1875. Poste, Gaius, III. (ed. 2), 429. In the contract of agency … the principal is called dominus or mandator.
5. An establishment for the purpose of doing business for another, usually at a distance.
1861. Act 19 of Legisl. Counc. India, vi. In any Circle of Issue there may be also established an Agency or Agencies of Issue in connection with a Bank or otherwise.
1882. Daily News, 4 Sept., 6/3. General Foreign News (through Reuter’s Agency). Ibid., 14 Oct., 8/4. (Advt.) Solicitor to a Debt Collecting and General Trades Protection Agency. Ibid., 28 Aug., 8/7. (Advt.) Ladies requiring English and Foreign Governesses … are invited to send particulars to the Governesses’ Agency.
