"Commons" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lord Chatham's eloquence, much of his transcendent influence in public, must be attributed to the confidence which he showed in his own superiority. "I trample upon impossibilities!" was an exclamation which no inferiour mind would dare to make. Would the house of commons have permitted any one but lord Chatham to have answered an oration by "Tell me, gentle shepherd, where?" The danger of failing, the hazard that he runs of becoming ridiculous who verges upon the moral sublime, is taken into ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of bloodhounds, which placed Britons on a level with the Spanish crusaders, aroused general disgust. Attempts were made in the House of Commons by General Macleod, Sheridan, and Courtenay to represent the Maroons as men worthily struggling for liberty. Dundas, while pruning these sprays of rhetoric, declared that Ministers would thereafter prohibit the use of bloodhounds. These troubles with the slaves prejudiced Parliament ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... number, which by this means are increased to twenty-one. A. Posthumius the dictator defeats at the lake Regillus Tarquin the Proud, making war upon the Romans with an army of Latins. Secession of the commons to the Sacred Mount; brought back by Menenius Agrippa. Five tribunes of the people created. Corioli taken by C. Martius; from that he is surnamed Coriolanus. Banishment and subsequent conduct of C. M. Coriolanus. The Agrarian law first made. Sp. Cassius condemned and put to death. Oppia, a vestal ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... internal taxation, why, it was asked, should the colonies have a voice in Parliament? Birmingham and Manchester, great centres of population, were not represented, while that uninhabited heap of stones, Old Sarum, sent a member to the Commons. Resting on these abuses, even Pitt and Burke were content to argue that taxation of America was just. For them it was a question whether that right should ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... sometimes questioned, but it can hardly be doubted that the average man will read the newspaper with the sentiments of which he agrees. "I inquired about newspaper opinion," said Joseph Chamberlain in the House of Commons last May. "I knew no other way of getting at popular opinion." During the years between 1854 and 1860 the daily journals were a pretty good reflection of public sentiment in the United States. Wherever, for instance, you found the New York Weekly Tribune ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... name of Brion, Peace did, as a fact, patent an invention for raising sunken vessels, and it is said that in pursuing their project, the two men had obtained an interview with Mr. Plimsoll at the House of Commons. In any case, the Patent Gazette records the ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... there isn't much animal life left in these parts now, at any rate," Andy Sudds said. "I don't see what we're going to do if something doesn't turn up for food. We're going to be on short commons." ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... considerable wealth, he lived by choice in the plainest fashion, delighting to be known as one of the people. He dressed at all times in the kind of suit which a Northumbrian pitman wears when not actually at work. Years afterwards, when he had just thrilled all England by a great speech in the House of Commons on the subject of Russian oppression, I chanced to meet him one day in Pall Mall, and, stopping to talk to him, was amused to see the glances of curiosity which were cast at the strangely attired man who had found his way to ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... Sir John Jervis, was returning from the House of Commons, of which he was then a member; when, in the Treasury Passage, he perceived Captain Locker at a distance, whom he instantly knew, from the singularity of his looking through an eye-glass fitted at ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... great success; he won for himself a vice-chancellorship and a knighthood, and then the Lord Chancellorship of England, with the barony of Hatherley. A third, a brother of the last, Western Wood, was doing good service in the House of Commons. A fourth, a cousin of the last two, had thrown himself with such spirit and energy into mining work, that he had accumulated a fortune. In fact all the scattered branches had made their several ways in the world, save that elder one to which my father belonged. That had vegetated ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... things, Licinius Stolo raised a great sedition in the city, and brought the people to dissension with the senate, contending, that of two consuls one should be chosen out of the commons, and not both out of the patricians. Tribunes of the people were chosen, but the election of consuls was interrupted and prevented by the people. And as this absence of any supreme magistrate was leading to yet further ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... least, 500 per annum. About which time he [being then on the commission of the peace] was made choice of by the whole body of the county of Kent at an assize, to deliver the Kentish petition to the House of Commons, for the restoring the king to his rights, and for settling the government, &c. For which piece of service he was committed [April 30, 1642] to the Gatehouse at Westminster, where he made that celebrated song called, STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE, &c. After three or four months' [six or seven ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... martial might. The soldier unhorsed, and fresh mounted to boor, Ere you can think it 'twill be as before. As yet we're together firm bound in the land, The hilt is yet fast in the soldier's hand. But let 'em divide us, and soon we shall find, Short commons is all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Duberlys, a giddy, rather rackety young couple who had taken the Dower House for a year. Lady Carwitchet seemed perfectly content. She revelled in the soft living and good fare of the Manor House, the drives in Leta's big barouche, and Domenico's dinners, as one to whom short commons were not unknown. She had a hungry way of grabbing and grasping at everything she could—the shillings she won at whist, the best fruit at dessert, the postage stamps in the library inkstand—that was infinitely suggestive. Sometimes I could have pitied her, she was so greedy, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... supporters. He was a consistent liberal as far as he felt liberalism to be perfectly safe, but he had the most vivid dislike of Gladstone and his ways; a dislike dating from their earliest contact in the House of Commons, long before Gladstone adopted Home Rule. And to this nature the character of MacDonald responded as the natural executive. The following letter which I received from Mr. Walter in reply to mine of grief at the death of MacDonald, tells the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... contentions in our constitutional history, but to do so they had to go behind both the Stuarts and the Tudors; and to apply the principles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in 1640 was, in effect, to institute a revolution. In our own time, to maintain the right of the Commons against the Lords is, on the face of it, to adhere to old constitutional right, but to do so under the new circumstances which have made the Commons representative of the nation as a whole is, in reality, to establish democracy for ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... us'd me (since you will have it so) the basest, the most Foot-boy-like, without respect of what I was, or what you might be by me; you have us'd me, as I would use a jade, ride him off's legs, then turn him to the Commons; you have us'd me with discretion, and I thank ye. If you have many more such pretty Servants, pray build an Hospital, and when they are old, pray keep ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of the House of Commons, Francis had found many who agreed with him as to the necessity for some great change. All accounts from America, and even those from Australia, proved that the wide extension of the suffrage without some precaution to secure ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... having returned to the Hall, and the prisoners being again called to the bar, Lord Balmerino was desired to choose his counsel. He named Mr. Forester, and Mr. Wilbraham, the latter being a very able lawyer in the House of Commons. Lord Hardwicke is said to have remarked privately, that Wilbraham, he was sure, "would as soon be hanged as plead such a cause." But he was mistaken: the conclusion of the trial was again deferred until the following day, Friday, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... that at the time of the first Reform Bill (1830) the members of the House of Commons were threatened with dire consequences if they could not give what the mob considered ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... says: "The ingenuity of lawyers and direct landlord legislation steadily increased the powers of great landowners and encroached upon the rights of the people, till at length the monstrous doctrine arose that a landless Englishman has no right whatever to enjoyment even of the unenclosed commons and heaths and the mountain and forest wastes of his native country, but is everywhere in the eye of the law a trespasser whenever he ventures off a public road or pathway."[9] By the sixteenth century the English peasantry had been evicted even from ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... House of Commons' returns in 1815, there were no fewer than 925,439 individuals in England and Wales, being about one-eleventh of the then existing population, members of Friendly Societies, formed for the express purpose of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... in Rome between the commons and the nobles, it appeared to the Veientines and Etruscans that now was their time to deal a fatal blow to the Roman supremacy. Accordingly, they assembled an army and invaded the territories of Rome. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... presume Marquis and Mr. and Pole and Sir A. are returned by this time, and eke the bewildered Frere whose conduct was canvassed by the Commons."—[MS.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... of Dublin he completely broke down in his first attempt at public speaking, and the great city which has since showered upon him the highest honors it can give, rejected him. In 1875, he entered the House of Commons for the first time as member for Meath. For the first few years of his Parliamentary life he was mainly distinguished for the skill and unwearied persistency of his tactics as an obstructionist, though he also succeeded in ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... mourned The household gods. For outward they too turned, The spirits of the streams and water-brooks, And nymphs who haunt the pastures, or in nooks Of woodlands dwell. There like a lag of geese Flew in long straying lines the Oreades That in wild dunes and commons have their haunt; There sped the Hamadryads; there aslant, As from the sea, but wheeling ere they crost Their sisters, thronged the river-nymphs, a host; And now the Gods of homestead and the hearth, Like sad-faced ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... jealous of the other, though maybe the black damsels of their own country have a different opinion from ours on the subject. One evening we were going down the Sheba river, which was pretty broad you mind, sir. The wind was light, and the water as smooth as glass. We had been on somewhat short commons for a month or two, for the slave-dealers prevented the people when they could from bringing off fresh provisions. Suddenly the lookout from the masthead, who had been in a South ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... or seven-and-twenty years ago, an effort was made to revive the fashion of ladies visiting the House of Commons. The late Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, upon one or two occasions made her appearance, with a female attendant, in the side-gallery. The royal visit soon became generally known, and several other females were tempted to follow the example. Among these was Mrs. Sheridan, the wife ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... Springett, a young and charming Quakeress. Guli Springett's father had died when she was but twenty-three years old, after such valiant service on the Parliamentary side in the civil war that he had been knighted by the Speaker of the House of Commons. Her mother, thus bereft, had married Isaac Pennington, a quiet country gentleman, in whose company, after some search for satisfaction in religion, she had become a Quaker. Pennington's Quakerism, together with the sufferings ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... man of prayer, a devout student of the Word of God; and though he was in the world, and took far more than his share of the ordinary duties of life, he was not of the world. Mr. Gladstone was right when he said from his seat in the House of Commons, "Such examples are fruitful in the future, and I trust that there will grow from the contemplation of that character and those deeds other men who in future time may emulate his noble and most Christian example." Gordon ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... too disconcerting a glimpse of the rigours and perils of journalism to wish to continue it. He had scored supremely and, for him, to score was life itself. His reputation as a card was far, far higher than ever. Had he so desired, he could have been elected to the House of Commons on the strength of ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... year 1793, when the democrats in Paris threatened the downfall and utter subversion of kings, lords, and commons. As became us who were of the council, we drew up an address to his majesty, assuring him that our lives and fortunes were at his disposal. To the which dutiful address, we received, by return of post, a very gracious answer; and, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... opportunity for turning the feast into a fast—as the early Church had done, it will be remembered, with the Kalends festival—came in 1644. In that year Christmas Day happened to fall upon the last Wednesday of the month, a day appointed by the Lords and Commons for a Fast and Humiliation. In its zeal against carnal pleasures Parliament published the following "Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... Load, lie either in seuerall, or in wastrell, that is, in enclosed grounds, or in commons. In Seuerall, no man can search for Tynne, without leaue first obtained from the Lord of the soile; who, when any Myne is found, may worke it wholly himselfe, or associate partners, or set it out at a farme certaine, or leaue it vn wrought at his pleasure. In Wastrell, it ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... to give another show, this time on Jeffries' Commons and under canvas, or rather, inside of canvas. Since the night the side wall fell as Dr. Playford and he were leaving the tent, the boy had been revolving this plan in his mind. He felt certain he could ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... was sufficient for the Carbury house. Since that time the Carbury property has considerably increased in value, and the rents have been raised. Even the acreage has been extended by the enclosure of commons. But the income is no longer comfortably adequate to the wants of an English gentleman's household. If a moderate estate in land be left to a man now, there arises the question whether he is not damaged unless an income also be left to him wherewith to keep up the estate. Land is a luxury, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... of social and industrial justice is outlined in "Principles of Labor Legislation" (1916), by John R. Commons and John B. Andrews. The problems of conservation and the history of governmental policy are set forth by C. R. Van Hise in "The Conservation of Natural Resources in the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... level ancient rights, privileges, and prescriptions under the ponderous roller of the monarchical administration. He looked back with regret to the day when the three orders of the state, clergy, nobles, and commons, had a place and a power in the direction of national affairs. The three orders still subsisted, in form, if not in substance, in some of the provinces of France; and Frontenac conceived the idea of reproducing ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... last surely lodged in the pillar-box, all these doubts came back upon him with tenfold force, and his sleep that night would have been short-commons for ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... delight if the lecturer accidentally knocks over the drinking glass on the table, but no individual ever laughs when a similar accident happens in a private room. Read the reports of speeches in the House of Commons. You will read that Lloyd George, in a speech, says: "And now let us turn to Ireland (loud laughter)." But in cold print it isn't ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... and looked into the social and political condition of many countries, having mixed much with men and women at home and abroad, Errington thought it time to take his place in the great commonwealth—to marry, and to try for a seat in the House of Commons. He therefore selected Lady Alice Mordaunt. She was rather pretty, graceful, gentle, and quite at his service. He really like her in a sort of fatherly way; he looked forward with quiet pleasure to making ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... snow. At home the father they scarcely saw, who was wholly indifferent, who took his meals in his room, and would come down at night to the rectory parlour and read aloud the appallingly dreary debates of the House of Commons: without, the silence of the adjoining graveyard, the great treeless desert, and the moors that from autumn to summer were swept by the pitiless wind from ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Ireland become Parts of the same Empire with England Diminution of the Importance of England after the Accession of James I Doctrine of Divine Right The Separation between the Church and the Puritans becomes wider Accession and Character of Charles I Tactics of the Opposition in the House of Commons Petition of Right Petition of Right violated; Character and Designs of Wentworth Character of Laud Star Chamber and High Commission Ship-Money Resistance to the Liturgy in Scotland A Parliament called ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he made one other effort to emancipate himself from the drudgery of authourship. He applied to Dr. Adams, to consult Dr. Smalbroke of the Commons, whether a person might be permitted to practice as an advocate there, without a doctor's degree in Civil Law. 'I am (said he) a total stranger to these studies; but whatever is a profession, and maintains numbers, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... what he calls boetram; and for being, generallie, daintie at his sizes, which she sayth is an ill example to soe manie young people, and becometh not one with soe little money in's purse: howbeit, I think 'tis not nicetie, but a weak stomach, which makes him loathe our salt-meat commons from Michaelmasse to Easter, and eschew fish of y'e coarser sort. He cannot breakfaste on colde milk like father, but liketh furmity a little spiced. At dinner, he pecks at, rather than eats, ruffs and reeves, lapwings, or anie smalle birds ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... with James, and set up Charles, On good Queen Bess's side; That all true Commons, Lords, and Earls, May ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the Admiralty,' in which all things therein comprehended are engrossed on vellum, in an ancient character; which hath been from time to time kept in the registry of the High Court of Admiralty, for the use of the Judges. When Mr. Luders made enquiry at the office in Doctors' Commons, in 1808, he was informed by the proper officers there, that they had never seen such book, and knew nothing of it, nor where to find it. The fact is, the book in question was put into Lord Thurlow's hands when Attorney-General, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... of the National House of Representatives should have the same force in this country as the usages of the House of Commons have in England, in determining the general principles of the common parliamentary law of the land; but it does not follow that in every matter of detail the rules of Congress can be appealed to as the common law governing every deliberative assembly. In these matters ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert
... commons, in their last sessions of parliament became humble petitioners to us, that, for many weighty reasons, much concerning the interest of our kingdom, and the trade thereof, we would by our royal power utterly prohibit the use of all foreign tobacco, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... features. I. The executive power was to be lodged in Five Directors, chosen from time to time, who were to have no share in the legislation. II. There was to be a Council of Five Hundred, answering generally to our House of Commons: and III. A smaller assembly, called the Council of Ancients, intended to fulfil in some measure the purposes ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... 1790, was introduced by Pitt himself in the House of Commons on the 7th of March 1791. Sixteen days later Adam Lymburner, a representative merchant of Quebec, whom Carleton described as 'a quiet, decent man, not unfriendly to the administration,' pleaded for hours before the committee of the House of Commons against the division ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... lose their Right of sending Representatives to Parliament. For certainly a Waste or a Desert has no Right to be represented, nor by our original Constitution was ever intended to be: yet I would by no means have those Deputies lost to the Commons, but transferr'd to wiser, more industrious, and better peopled Places, worthy (thro their Numbers and Wealth) of ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... am about to relate to my juvenile readers took place in the year 1647. By referring to the history of England, of that date, they will find that King Charles the First, against whom the Commons of England had rebelled, after a civil war of nearly five years, had been defeated, and was confined as a prisoner at Hampton Court. The Cavaliers, or the party who fought for King Charles, had all been dispersed and the Parliamentary ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... political ascendency at Tehran, is sufficiently evident from the history of the period, but is admirably illustrated by the diplomatic argument placed in chapter lxxvi in the mouth of Fath Ali Shah. Finally, can a pupil of Party Government, and much more a member of the House of Commons, read without a delicious emotion this description of the system under which is conducted the government of the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... principles, and a good heart—qualities which no well-constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the force of his character that raised him; and this character not impressed upon him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, by himself. There were many in the House of Commons of far greater ability and eloquence. But no one surpassed him in the combination of an adequate portion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to show what moderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture and goodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... two unexpected disadvantages of the system were generally experienced. In times of peace the Territorial Force had been able to influence public policy through the County Associations and the House of Commons. After embodiment, the Force itself became necessarily inarticulate under the conditions that govern all military service. Far less influential than the Regulars and far less numerous than the New Army, it went abroad ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... subjected to many changes largely through the edicts of the rulers. In the latter church many controversies were waged over ceremonial lights and their use has been among the indictments of a number of officials of the church in impeachment cases before the House of Commons. Many uses of light in religious ceremonies were revived in cathedrals after the Restoration and they became wide-spread in England in the nineteenth century. As late as 1889 the Archbishop of Canterbury ruled that certain ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... gentlemen who are appointed by the Commons to manage this prosecution, have directed me to inform your Lordships, that they have very carefully and attentively weighed the magnitude of the subject which they bring before you with the time which the nature and circumstances of affairs ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a Town and a Village.—The other night it was warmly contested in the Reform debate in the House of Commons, whether Bilston and Sedgeley, in Staffordshire, were towns or villages. Mr. Croker spoke of the "village of Bilston," and the "rural district of Sedgeley," but Sir John Wrottesley maintained that the right hon. gentleman would find nothing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... as to cheat at cards. I declare I think the card-sharper the least degraded person of the two. He doesn't encourage his inferiors to be false to a public trust. In short, my dear sir, everything wears out in this world—and why should the House of Commons be an exception ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... imitation of the title of the presiding officer of the British House of Commons, who was originally called the speaker because he acted as spokesman in communicating to the king the ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... magnificent elms, with an old grey stone church standing in it, one of the oldest churches in the State. There were a number of stores, interspersed with private dwellings, and everything wore a sort of leisurely aspect. A little farther up was another park,—commons, they were called then. The modest old houses and large gardens and fields gave it a still ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... her husband by making him keep as many Lents in the same year as her sister did the King of Naples. The Queen not knowing what the Emperor meant, he explained himself, and said, 'When the King of Naples offends his Queen she keeps him on short commons and 'soupe maigre' till he has expiated the offence by the penance of humbling himself; and then, and not till then, permits him to return and share the nuptial ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Had justest cause, unlawful 'tis to judge: Each side had great partakers; Caesar's cause The gods abetted, Cato lik'd the other.[591] Both differ'd much. Pompey was struck in years, 130 And by long rest forgot to manage arms, And, being popular, sought by liberal gifts To gain the light unstable commons' love, And joy'd to hear his theatre's applause: He lived secure, boasting his former deeds, And thought his name sufficient to uphold him: Like to a tall oak in a fruitful field, Bearing old spoils and conquerors' monuments, Who, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... interruptions to which we have several times been exposed from the destruction of our open-air Park-wires (through snow-storms and gales), I have made an arrangement for leading the whole of our wires in underground pipes as far as the Greenwich Railway Station."—"The Committee of the House of Commons, to whom the Greenwich and Woolwich Line of the South Eastern Railway was referred, finally assented to the adoption of a line which I indicated, passing between the buildings of the Hospital Schools and the public road to Woolwich."—"The ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... Parliament elections: none; the monarchy is hereditary; governor general appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister for a five-year term; following legislative elections, the leader of the majority party or the leader of the majority coalition in the House of Commons is automatically designated prime minister ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... upon West-Indian affairs, which Lord Brougham delivered in the House of Commons in 1823, there is some account of the religious instruction of the slaves as conducted by the curates. He alludes in particular to the testimony of a worthy curate, who stated that he had been twenty or thirty years ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... bicameral Parliament comprised of House of Lords (consists of approximately 500 life peers, 92 hereditary peers and 26 clergy) and House of Commons (659 seats; members are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms unless the House is dissolved earlier) note: in 1998 elections were held for a Northern Ireland Assembly (because of unresolved disputes among existing parties, the transfer of power from London to Northern Ireland ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... buying a horse Did bear with it, and very pleasant all the while Doubtfull whether her daughter will like of it or no Endeavouring to strike tallys for money for Tangier For, for her part, she should not be buried in the commons Had what pleasure almost I would with her Hath a good heart to bear, or a cunning one to conceal his evil I have promised, but know not when I shall perform I kissed the bride in bed, and so the curtaines drawne ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... of England's new Chains Discovered,' this was read in many Baptist meeting-houses, and the congregations called upon to subscribe it: fortunately, they were peaceably disposed, and denounced it to the House of Commons in a petition, dated April 2, 1649. Mr. Kiffin and the others were called in, when the Speaker returned them this answer—'The House doth take notice of the good affection to the Parliament and public you have expressed, both in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sentinels on every hand about the valley in which New Geneva stood, the smell of the superabundant apple blossoms, and the tinkle and tankle and tonkle of hundreds of bells on the cows grazing on the "commons," as the open lots were called. On this almost painfully quiet morning D'Entremont noticed the people going one way and another to the early Sunday schools in the three churches. Just as he came to the pump that stood in front of the "public square" he met Priscilla. At her heels were ten ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... circumstances, but as usual practices, by a patriotic senator some years since, in endeavoring to obtain a legislative enactment in mitigation of the sufferings of the brute tribes. The design vanished to nothing in the House of Commons, under the effect of argument and ridicule from a person distinguished for intellectual cultivation; whose resistance was not only against that specific measure, but avowedly against the principle ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... a tradition of short commons, usually extending even to stories of starvation, in the accounts of all early settlements in new lands, and the records of the Pilgrims show no exception to the rule. These early planters went through a fiery furnace of affliction. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... distant cousin died, and he became a millionaire, With a county seat in Parliament, a moor or two of grouse, And a taste for making inconvenient speeches in the House! Then it flashed upon Britannia that the fittest of rewards Was, to take him from the Commons and to put him in the Lords! And who so fit to sit in it, deny it if you can, As this very great—this very good—this very gifted man? (Though I'm more than half afraid That it sometimes may be said That we never should have revelled in that source of proper pride, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rent nor live upon their lands, to the great damage and loss as well of the Lords as of the Commons, it is accorded and assented that the bailiff for husbandry shall take by the years 13s. 3d. and his clothing once by the year at most; the master hind 10s., the carter 10s., the shepherd 10s., the oxherd 6s. 8d., the swineherd ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... to Oxford about the time that the examinations were reformed and rendered really efficient. This only increased his renown, for the name of Ferrars figured among the earliest double-firsts. Those were days when a crack university reputation often opened the doors of the House of Commons to a young aspirant; at least, after a season. But Ferrars had not to wait. His father, who watched his career with the passionate interest with which a Newmarket man watches the development of some gifted yearling, took care that all the odds should be in his favour in the race of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... done in the House of Commons," says a Labour speaker. He forgets that the cleaners are at work in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... decade of the seventeenth century there were three thousand husbands and fathers and brothers in Algerine prisons, and it was no wonder that the wives and daughters thronged the approaches to the House of Commons and besieged the members with their ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... immoderate rain and waters: for a thanksgiving also for the blessed change of weather; and the begging the continuance of it to us for our comfort: And likewise for beseeching a Blessing upon the High Court of Parliament now assembled: Set forth by his Majesty's authority. A sermon was preached before the Commons by Thomas Greenfield, preacher of Lincoln's Inn. The Lords taxed themselves for the poor—an earl, 30s., a baron, 20s. Those absent from prayers were to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in this present Parliament, how did they endeavour to prepossess the Members of the House of Commons with strange, and false prejudices and assertions drawn from irrational, and groundless suppositions, making us the greatest Tyrants in the World, inferring ridiculously that a Lady, or Charitable Gentlewoman (for in that believing Sex they have gain'd a great deal ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... of the people, and such the sentiments of their representatives and exponents, the Lords and Commons. ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... adventurer who leads his life, not on the Stock Exchange amidst the bulls and bears, or in the House of Commons waiting to clutch the golden keys, or in South Africa with the pioneers and promoters, but with himself and his own vagrant moods and fancies. There was no need for Borrow to travel far afield in search of adventures. Mumpers' Dell was for him as good an environment as Mexico; a village in Spain ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... splendour of this kingdom, and the provisions necessary for so vast a multitude of soldiers, is a thing incredible, except by those who know the nature and quality of the people and government. I have seen with my own eyes these people, both the commons and soldiers, feed upon all kinds of beasts or animals, however filthy or unclean, everything that hath life serving them for food: Yea, I have even seen them eat scorpions and serpents, and all kinds of herbs, even grass. Hence, if their vast armies can only get enough of water, they can maintain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... of small things if thou call upon in due season thou shalt find; but ask not for great things; since whatsoever a god of the commons can give to a labouring man, of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... step in this discreditable incident occurred on July 23rd, on which day Mr. Moore denounced Mr. Bailey in the House of Commons for his partisanship towards the Nationalists, and gave a graphic picture of the private letter which Mr. Bailey had written to him to protest against his personal attacks. Mr. Redmond rose and asked that Mr. Russell should read to the House Mr. ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... with the earth as with other creatures that through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted." From speech made in the House of Commons, 1597 ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... Scotch thistles, English sparrows, and rabbits, three most unfortunate importations, have multiplied with equal rapidity until serious alarm fills the minds of the colonists. But in England a special committee appointed by the House of Commons to investigate the character of the alleged pest has yet to learn whether the sparrow's services as an insect-destroyer do not outweigh the injury it does to ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... official examination by the House of Commons, we have several excellent narratives, written by officers who served with Burgoyne, all of which materially contribute to an intelligent study of the campaign, from a purely military point of view. These narratives are really histories ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... hermits, had wrestled with sickness, temptation, and despair four mortal years; and with the inaccessible and thorny niche, a hole in a precipice, where the boy hermit Benedict buried himself, and lived three years on the pittance the good monk Romanus could spare him from his scanty commons, and subdivided that mouthful with his friend, a raven; and the hollow tree of his patron St. Bavon; and the earthly purgatory at Fribourg, where lived a nameless saint in a horrid cavern, his eyes chilled with perpetual gloom, and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... recollect that of Lord Cochrane, confined for the memorable Stock Exchange hoax. The means by which it was effected, I believe, have never been discovered; but certain it is, that he was in the House of Commons, while a prisoner in the King's Bench, and on the first night of his subsequent liberation, gave the casting vote against a proposed ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... ... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical establishments. Some of them may go further...." (DISRAELI in the House of Commons, July ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... sure! A question will be asked in the House of Commons. The Chief Secretary will reply: 'The matter is under the deliberation of the Board of Works, with whose counsels we do not ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... claims with spiritual censures, and the nation was obliged to resolve upon the course which, in the event of their resorting to that extremity, it would follow. The lay lords[6] and the House of Commons found no difficulty in arriving at a conclusion. They passed a fresh penal statute with prohibitions even more emphatically stringent, and decided that "if any man brought into this realm any sentence, summons, or excommunication, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... return to England somewhat abruptly. Lord Monmouth had not visited his native country since his marriage; but the period that had elapsed since that event had considerably improved the prospects of his party. The majority of the Whig Cabinet in the House of Commons by 1840 had become little more than nominal; and though it was circulated among their friends, as if from the highest authority, that 'one was enough,' there seemed daily a better chance of their being deprived even of that magical unit. For the first time in the history of this country since the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... performed their duties with much zeal and assiduity, were hardly able to overtake the amount of business before them. It was not without much flattery and coaxing that the adroit Premier, of all men best formed for a general leader of the House of Commons, could persuade the unfortunate members that an unfaltering attendance of some six hours a-day in a sweltering and ill-ventilated room, where their ears were regaled with a constant repetition of the jargon connected with curves, gradients, and traffic-tables, was their great and primary duty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... OUTLINE. The history of England during this period is largely a record of strife and confusion. The struggle of the House of Commons against the despotism of kings; the Hundred Years War with France, in which those whose fathers had been Celts, Danes, Saxons, Normans, were now fighting shoulder to shoulder as Englishmen all; the suffering of the common people, resulting in the Peasant Rebellion; the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... day, she espouses the cause of Hastings with a presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons. She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent man. She is at a loss to conceive how the managers can look at the defendant and not blush. Windham comes to her from the managers' box, to offer her ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... for fifty years a judge of Doctor's Commons, pointedly said: "A knowledge that persons uniting in marriage must continue husbands and wives, often makes them good husbands and wives; for necessity is a powerful master to teach the duties ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... the general assembly of the people, who signify their approval or dissent by tumultuous cries, but have no power of altering or reversing the measures proposed by the nobles. Thus we have already the three main elements of political life: king, lords, and commons—though the position of the last is at present ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... written a letter to the Press against forcible, feeding. Misunderstood by the crowd was Mrs. Trudge, who wheeled a perambulator containing two babies. The onlookers thought that Mrs. Trudge was about to take her innocent offspring to the House of Commons, and those out of hat-pin range murmured, "Shime," "Give the kids a chawnce." They did not know that Mrs. Trudge was no base slave of man, that she had no children of her own, and that the wax babies she wheeled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... out in the House of Commons that, unless increased salaries are given to Members, there will be a strike. Fears are entertained, however, that a settlement will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... Roman—a patrician order of nobility, founded on the interested motive to uphold slavery; but allowing plebeian representation, to some extent, to the non-slaveholding classes. Others in the South had preference for constitutional monarchy, with a class of privileged legislators, and House of Commons, composing a government of checks and balances, analogous to the English government. Whatever the plan adopted, the leading idea was to institute a government that should be impervious, through one branch, to the future ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... military discipline, any other officer would have been court-martialled. Even his friends feared that by his foolishness his career in the army was at an end. Instead, his escapade was made a question in the House of Commons, and the fact brought him such publicity that the Daily Graphic paid him handsomely to write on the Cuban Revolution, and the Spanish Government rewarded him with the Order of ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... they ain't, and I suppose our captain intends to fight, as he don't seem inclined to run. I only hopes as how he will fight, and sink rather than give in. I've no fancy to be made prisoner, and to be kept on short commons among blackamoors, as we ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... begin our travels in Sussex with the best, then Midhurst is the starting point, for no other spot has so much to offer: a quiet country town, gabled and venerable, unmodernised and unambitious, with a river, a Tudor ruin, a park of deer, heather commons, immense woods, and the Downs only three miles distant. Moreover, Midhurst is also the centre of a very useful little railway system, which, having only a single line in each direction, while serving the traveller, never annoys him by disfiguring the country or letting loose upon ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... members of the state, and broils, with the character of civil war in miniature, were of frequent occurrence. The submergence of the aristocratic element, the nobles, destroyed a natural balance of power between the bishop-prince and the people. The commons exerted power beyond their intelligence. Annual elections, party contests headed by rival demagogues kept the capital, and, to a lesser extent, the smaller towns of the little ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... opportunity of taking her by the hand with the boot, and so found matter to talk a little the longer to her, but I was ready to laugh at myself to see how my anger would not operate, my disappointment coming to me by such a messenger. Thence to Doctors' Commons and there consulted Dr. Turner about some differences we have with the officers of the East India ships about goods brought by them without paying freight, which we demand of them. So home to my office, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... early part of 1812 an agitation for a government grant in recognition of Crompton's work made great progress. Mr. Perceval, the then Prime Minister, was proceeding to the House of Commons to move that a grant of L20,000 be made to Crompton, when he was shot by an assassin named Bellingham. There is no doubt, had this disastrous affair never happened and Perceval made his proposal, a grant much larger than was actually voted ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... annoyances Acquaintances and friends Returns to America Elected member of the Assembly English taxation of the colonies English coercion Franklin again sent to England At the bar of the House of Commons Repeal of the Stamp Act Franklin appointed agent for Massachusetts The Hutchinson letters Franklin a member of the Continental Congress Sent as envoy to France His tact and wisdom Unbounded popularity in France ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... bigotry makes me liberal. To symbolise the Christianity of the House of Commons in its present form is to substitute a new Church and creed for the old Catholic one; and as this is delusive, I would do nothing to countenance it. Better have the Legislature declared what it really is—not professedly Christian, and ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... moonlight, starlight, firelight, candlelight, and be in all homes, and all nooks and corners, and be supposed to be cognisant of everything, and go everywhere, without the least difficulty. Which may be in the Theatre, the Palace, the House of Commons, the Prisons, the Unions, the Churches, on the Railroad, on the Sea, abroad and at home: a kind of semi-omniscient, omnipresent, intangible creature. I don't think it would do to call the paper THE SHADOW: ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Protestants, from that inscription of which the Papists always complained, was the offspring of this period, and realized one of those decorations which Wren had lavished upon his air-drawn Babylon. This lofty column was ordered by the Commons, in commemoration of the extinction of the great fire and the rebuilding of the city: it stands on the site of the old church of St. Margaret, and within a hundred feet of the spot where the conflagration began. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... carried away from Sicily: and the same thing he did moreover to the men of Euboia in Sicily, making a distinction between them: and he dealt thus with these two cities because he thought that a body of commons was a most ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... was so deeply stirred by the manner in which English investors and borrowing states had suffered from the system by which the business of international finance was handled, that a Select Committee of the House of Commons was "appointed to inquire into the circumstances attending the making of contracts for Loans with certain Foreign States and also the causes which have led to the non-payment of the principal moneys and interest due in respect of such loans." Its report ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers |
