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Politic   Listen
adjective
Politic  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to polity, or civil government; political; as, the body politic. See under Body. "He with his people made all but one politic body."
2.
Pertaining to, or promoting, a policy, especially a national policy; well-devised; adapted to its end, whether right or wrong; said of things; as, a politic treaty. "Enrich'd with politic grave counsel."
3.
Sagacious in promoting a policy; ingenious in devising and advancing a system of management; devoted to a scheme or system rather than to a principle; hence, in a good sense, wise; prudent; sagacious; and in a bad sense, artful; unscrupulous; cunning; said of persons. "Politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy."
Synonyms: Wise; prudent; sagacious; discreet; provident; wary; artful; cunning.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Politic" Quotes from Famous Books



... neglected. This is the rural school. One-half of our entire school population attend the rural schools, which are still in the formative stage. The country youth is entitled to just as thorough a preparation for thoughtful and intelligent membership in the body politic as is the city youth. The State, if it is wise, will not discriminate in favor of the one as against the other, but will adjust its bounties in a manner equitable to the needs of both. Heretofore the rural schools have received very ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... of payment, irrespective of the weather. By the letter of the law, they had no case. Whether they made little or much profit was not his affair. But he was a just and kindly man, as well as reasonably politic. They had shorn well, and the weather had been discouraging. He knew too that an abrupt denial might cause a passive mutiny, if not a strike. If they set themselves to thwart him, it was in their power to shear badly, ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... monasteries now began, and large claustral libraries were soon formed. The monks then had plenty of books; wealthy clergy also had small collections. An ecclesiastic or a layman who had done a monastery some service, or whose favour it was politic to cultivate, could borrow books from the monastic library, under certain strict conditions. Some people availed themselves of this privilege; but not at any time during the manuscript period to a ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... Secretary of State, and one of the most agreeable and politic of statesmen. He was in line of succession to the great office, and understood well the importance of maintaining his hold upon President Jackson. A widower himself, the call upon which so much stress was laid at the time subjected ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... have read history to little purpose. Sir, this alarming discontent is not the growth of a day or of a year. If there be any symptoms by which it is possible to distinguish the chronic diseases of the body politic from its passing inflammations, all those symptoms exist in the present case. The taint has been gradually becoming more extensive and more malignant, through the whole lifetime of two generations. We have tried anodynes. We have tried cruel operations. What are we to try now? Who ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to know whether it was the desire of the Hurons to proceed any further. Even the gentlest of the females, however, had received too much satisfaction in the late trials to forego their expectations of a gratifying exhibition, and there was but one voice in the request to proceed. The politic chief, who had some such desire to receive so celebrated a hunter into his tribe, as a European Minister has to devise a new and available means of taxation, sought every plausible means of arresting the trial in season, for he well knew, if permitted to go far enough to arouse the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... life of the nobility, who with sacrilege and insatiable avarice have entered upon the property of the Church. This nobility is divided into three factions. The first, and not the least, is heretic; the second and the most pernicious is politic or atheist; the third and last is catholic. All these, although they differ in opinion, are the same thing in corruption of life and manners, so that there is no choice among them." He then proceeded to set forth how entirely, the salvation ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... republic of France to examine into the arts and manufactures of the great republic of America. They looked a thousand times better to me than the Edward Alberts and Albert Edwards—the royal vermin, that live on the body politic. And I would think much more of our government if it would fete and feast them, instead of wining and dining the imbeciles of ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... established out of the common fund public education as a means of diffusing intellectual gain, which is the great element of growth even in efficient toil, and also of extending into all parts of the body politic a comprehension of the governmental scheme and the organized life of the community, fusing its separate interests in a mutual understanding and regard. It has established, too, protection in the law, for the weak as against ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... king's acknowledged son, Duke of Monmouth by grace of his mother's frailties. He was a living example of the doctrine of total depravity in what purported to be a man. There was John Churchill, a very decent fellow in a politic way, though in bad company. He afterward married my laconic cousin Sarah, whose shrewdness made him the first Duke of Marlborough, and last, I regret to chronicle, was George Hamilton, resting from his labors at self-reform. Soon after dark another congenial ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... states, by which time it had become clear that they must totally fail of their purpose, for each state decided for itself whether to respond to the demands of congress. The poison of nullification thus infused into the body politic at its birth bore baleful fruit in ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... part analogous to that of the Romans in the Old World; but there is no real similarity between the two cases. The Romans acquired their mighty strength by incorporating vanquished peoples into their own body politic.[50] No American aborigines ever had a glimmering of the process of state-building after the Roman fashion. No incorporation resulted from the victories of the Iroquois. Where their burnings and massacres stopped short of extermination, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... this text, one of a ring of plague-spots on the body politic of Judah. The prophet six times proclaims 'woe' as the inevitable end of these; such 'sickness' is 'unto death' unless repentance and another course of conduct bring healing. But drunkenness appears twice in this grim catalogue, and the longest paragraph of denunciation (vv, 11-17) is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... German bureaucrats who do not consider themselves the servants of the public, but look upon the public as their servant, and whose spirit of meanness and corruption is so characteristic of the Austrian body politic; finally, the dynasty relies upon the Catholic hierarchy who hold vast landed property in Austria and regard it as the bulwark of Catholicism, and who through Clericalism strive for political power rather than for the religious welfare of their denomination. In alliance with them ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... this History will primarily deal with politics, with the History of England and, after the date of the union with Scotland, Great Britain, as a state or body politic; but as the life of a nation is complex, and its condition at any given time cannot be understood without taking into account the various forces acting upon it, notices of religious matters and of intellectual, social, and economic progress ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... proofs and got them sent off, per Mr. Freeling's cover. So there's an end of the Chronicles.[165] James rejoices in the conclusion, where there is battle and homicide of all kinds. Always politic to keep a trot for the avenue, like the Irish postilions. J.B. always calls to the boys to flog before the carriage gets out of the inn-yard. How we have driven the stage I know not and care not—except with a view to extricating my difficulties. I have lost no time in beginning the second series ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... intercourse is favorable to the acquisition of knowledge, it is most unfriendly to that individuality, independence, and purity, without which republican governments rapidly sink into decay. It was probably in this view that Mr. Jefferson said, great cities were sores upon the body politic. Needful for the purposes of commerce, required for the exchanges on which agricultural and manufacturing industry depend for their prosperity,—they are not evils which we could desire to see abated. My desire, however, is, that the rural districts shall not lose their ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... of which it was unable to meet. Among the Greeks and Romans political society supervened upon gentile society, but not until civilization had commenced. The township (and its equivalent, the city ward), with its fixed property, and the inhabitants it contained, organized as a body politic, became the unit and the basis of a new and radically different system of government. After political society was instituted this ancient and time-honored organization, with the phratry and tribe developed from it, gradually yielded up their existence. It was under gentile institutions ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... of wisdom: the State which we have called into being will be wise because politic. And policy is one among many kinds of skill,—not the skill of the carpenter, or of the worker in metal, or of the husbandman, but the skill of him who advises about the interests of the whole State. Of such a kind is the skill of the guardians, who are a small class in number, far smaller than ...
— The Republic • Plato

... that it may be said, with justice, that he served his own interests by granting these franchises; that the cities paid him taxes, and that his design was to use them as instruments of weakening the power of great nobles; but what does that prove, but that this measure was at once useful, politic, and humane?" From Kings in general the conversation turned upon Louis XV., and M. Turgot remarked that his reign would be always celebrated for the advancement of the sciences, the progress of knowledge, and of philosophy. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... in the long-boat to the southward by the Straits of Magellan; and the point they were labouring, was to prevail upon the captain to accompany them. But though he had fixed upon a quite different plan, which was to go to the northward, yet he thought it politic at present seemingly to acquiesce with them, in order to keep them quiet. When they began to stipulate with him, that he should be under some restrictions in point of command, and should do nothing without consulting his officers, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... was forever disgraced in his own eyes, when he remembered the valiant John Leclerc; and it was not to be permitted that Victor Le Roy should follow the example of the wool-comber in preference to that he had given,—that politic, wise, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... into or through or from this territory without a permit from the proper officer." To a constituency made up so largely of dishonest members, high and low, as Young himself conceded the Mormon body politic to be, the outfit of these travellers was very attractive. There was a motive, too, in inflicting punishment on them, merely because they were Arkansans, and the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... life, and by pure and instinctive good sense had broken down a barrier which men thrice their age and repute would probably have felt it imperative to maintain. But perhaps this was premature: the omnipotent Miss Power's character—practical or ideal, politic or impulsive—he as yet knew nothing of; and giving over reasoning from insufficient data he lapsed ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... however easily depreciated by ordinary men in an age of routine, are indispensable to a statesman in the conjunctures in which we live. He understands, therefore, his position; and he has the moral intrepidity which prompts him ever to dare that which his intellect assures him is politic. He is consequently, at the same time, sagacious and bold in council. As an administrator he is prompt and indefatigable. He is not a natural orator, and labours under physical deficiencies which even a Demosthenic impulse could scarcely overcome. But he is experienced in ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... Instead of reproaching his soldiers with their defeat, he loaded them with praises and with favors. Their losses in money and horses were more than repaid, and they were encouraged by the exhortations as well as the actions of their politic commander to desire nothing so much as an opportunity of revenging themselves upon their enemies. This conduct increased his reputation and popularity to so great a degree that recruits from every part of Persia ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... an ass, Scott," said Mr. Dwyer, who was too excited to be polite or politic. "You know our being here isn't a matter of choice. We came here on business, as you did, and you've ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... when fighting a serpent. His dulness of vision into the heart of his enemy was compensated by the agile sensitiveness obscuring but rendering him miraculously active, and, without supposing his need immediate, he deemed it politic to fascinate Mrs. Mountstuart and anticipate ghastly possibilities in the future by dropping a hint; not of Clara's fickleness, you may be sure; of his own, rather; or, more justly, of an altered view of Clara's character. He touched on the rogue ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... any other publication of England, apparently, if we except Punch. As for the Times, on which you all use your scissors so industriously, it is managed with vast ability, no doubt, but the blood would tingle many a time to the fingers' ends of the body politic, before that solemn organ which claims to represent the heart would dare to beat in unison. Still it would require all the wise management of the Times, or wisdom enough to do without it, and a wide range and diversity of talent, indeed, almost sweeping the circle, to make a People's ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... public interest remain in their seats during such an inquiry into their conduct. It appears very doubtful, whether, if there were grounds for such a prosecution, a proceeding in Great Britain were not more politic than one in Bengal. Such a prosecution ought not to have been ordered by the Directors, but upon grounds that would have fully authorized the recall of the gentleman in question. This prosecution, supposing it to have been seriously undertaken, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... fetter the tongue; tolerance delighting not in our progress, but in our decay; citizenship promising protection without honor, imposing burdens without holding out prospects of advancement; they all, in my opinion, are lacking in love and justice, and such baneful elements in the body politic must needs engender pestiferous diseases, affecting the whole and its ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... the thing is this: your alliance with the disaffected in Sweden still seems to me somewhat—ay, what shall I call it?— somewhat miraculous, Sir Councillor! I tell you this frankly, dear Sir! The thought that has moved the King's Council to this secret step is in truth most politic; but it is strangely at variance with the deeds of certain of your countrymen in bygone years. Be not offended, then, if my trust in your fair promises needs to be somewhat strengthened ere I can place my ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen

... his dress and liveries. But how does Syphax pretend to help Sempronius to young Juba's dress? Does he serve him in a double capacity, as general and master of his wardrobe? But why Juba's guards? For the devil of any guards has Juba appeared with yet. Well, though this is a mighty politic invention, yet, methinks, they might have done without it: for, since the advice that Syphax ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... some of the wiser and more politic gentlemen, Eustace among them, drew apart in consultation, while the Prince of Wales ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... inside, felt that the mail line would soon absorb its rival and it was politic to be "in" with the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... therefore must have been inspired by the representative of the Queen. This was bad—very bad. Coming solely from the Ottomans, it might have signified only Ottoman hatred of Christians, and a vulgar ignorance as to genteel methods of expressing it; but coming from the Christianized, educated, politic British legation, it simply intimated that we were a sort of gentlemen and ladies who would bear watching! So the party regarded it, and were incensed accordingly. The truth doubtless was, that the same precautions would have been taken against any travelers, because the English Company who ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the Communist Party is comparable to the strength of the Jesuits, who, similarly, put themselves and their opinions at the disposal of the body politic of their fellow members. Until a decision had been made, a Communist is perfectly free to do his best to prevent it being made, to urge alterations in it, or to supply a rival decision, but once it has been made he will support it without ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... bitterness, for she, too, had learned the lessons He taught, who, "when He was reviled, reviled not again, but committed himself to Him who judgeth righteously." A very few of her friends still visited her, but nearly all felt it would not be politic to be found in sympathy with one on whom the wealthy and influential Griffin Taylor frowned with displeasure. She always believed her father would relent, and sometimes, when she saw him approaching her ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... dictator, certainly the strongest citizen. And Pompey had also his ambitious schemes. One was the conqueror of the East; the other of the West. One leaned to the aristocratic party, the other to the popular. Pompey was proud, pompous, and self-sufficient. Caesar was politic, patient, and intriguing. Both had an inordinate ambition, and both were unscrupulous. Pompey had more prestige, Caesar more genius. Pompey was a greater tactician, Caesar a greater strategist. The Senate rallied around the former, the people around the latter. Cicero distrusted both, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... died ten months after his election, and the cardinals chose as his successor Cardinal Cossa, who took the name of John XXIII. The Church remained as much divided as before. In 1412 Pope John, who was a shrewd and politic man, opened at Rome a council for the reformation of the Church, but there seems to have been little serious purpose either on the part of John himself or of the ecclesiastics who assembled; and practically nothing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... go," said the leader, who had been made uneasy by Frank's threat, and saw that it was politic to postpone his further designs upon his intended victim. "If he chooses to obey a small ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... at once conservative and philanthropic. He holds to the distinction of classes, and thus admits a difference in the fulness and value of human lots. But he will not consent to any social arrangement which implies a necessary moral inferiority in any section of the body politic; and he esteems it the statesman's first duty to provide that all citizens shall be placed under conditions of life which, however humble, shall not be unfavourable ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... Herndon, and having locked the door proceeded to read his speech. Slowly and distinctly he read the first paragraph, and then turned to Herndon with, "What do you think of that?" Mr. Herndon was startled at its boldness. "I think," said he, "it is all true. But is it entirely politic to read or speak it as it is written?" "That makes no difference," said Lincoln. "That expression is a truth of all human experience,—'a house divided against itself cannot stand.' The proposition is indisputably ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... result of this change would be the grant of a certain modified autonomy, or at least of special linguistic and religious privileges, to the Ukraine population, thus united after centuries of partition in a single body politic. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... him to impose his system on nearly the whole of the Continent. While encamped in the Prussian capital he decreed the deposition of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, and French and Dutch troops forthwith occupied that Electorate. Towards Saxony he acted with politic clemency; and on December 11th, 1806, the Elector accepted the French alliance, entered the Confederation of the Rhine, and received the title ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... occupied; in addition, thirty guards always slept outside the door of his bedroom, and these accompanied him as an escort when he went out; not that he was afraid, for he was not of a mistrustful character, but that he thought it politic to give people an exalted idea of his importance. As to his soldiers, they were billeted on the inhabitants, and received each as daily rations a pound of meat, a quart of wine, and two and a ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... experience of faithful and true endeavours is to be opposed by politic and malicious adversaries whose slanderous informations have lately been used against him which he has truely answered and has been examined by Sir Geo: Carewe with the copies of the monthe's books and therefore he trusts his Hon: will be satisfied. He hopes his slanderers will be punished, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... ear to the propositions of Conde's friends, and had procured his release from prison, reconciling to him the Duke d'Orleans and the parliament, which at first she had stirred up against him. She brought, moreover, to the house of Conde the most politic mind of the Fronde, an audacity towering to the height of his designs, a consummate experience, with the support of her three powerful families, the houses of de Rohan, de Luynes, and Lorraine. She ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... wanted any thing; but I forgave him. He could only hear my roaring at his distance; had I been nearer, the melody would no doubt have reached his ears, and he would have known I was singing a tune. Still I thought it politic to affect not having heard him, and quietly stepped down to bed. I shall avoid friend Ryan in the morning, as it would be embarrassing to be asked, especially before the young ladies, who or what I was howling at last night. Some people have no tact, and he might be one ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... Council of State was not only a body politic collectively, but each individual member might be invested with special power; as, for example, when the First Consul sent Councillors of State on missions to each of the military divisions where there was a Court of Appeal, the instructions given them by the First Consul were extensive, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the three divisions, and made six,— Dialectic and Rhetoric, comprised in Logic; Ethic and Politic; Physic and Theology. This division was merely for practical use, for all Philosophy is one. Even among the earliest Stoics Logic, or Dialectic, does not occupy the same place as in Plato: it is considered only as an instrument which is ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... Colonel Mason, who was giving his opinion as to what the Government would do with respect to the gold placer. The Colonel was very guarded in his statements. He, however, hinted that he thought it would be politic for Congress to send over proper officers and workmen, and at once to establish a mint at some convenient point on the coast. He fully admitted the difficulties of keeping men to their engagements under circumstances like the present; but said some steps ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... altogether in the majority in the Bad Lands and thieving was common up and down the river and in the heart of the settlement itself. Maunders himself was too much of a coward to steal, too politic not to realize the disadvantage in being caught red-handed. Bill Williams was not above picking a purse when a reasonably safe occasion offered, but as a rule, like Maunders, he and his partner Hogue contrived to make some of the floaters and fly-by-nights, fugitives from other ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... a circle of light as he whirled it about his head. A murmur ran around the circle, and swelled into a chorus of approval. These were the words that appealed to the hearts of the warlike tribes, but Simon Girty, crafty, politic and far-seeing, arose. ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... is truly alarming, and ought immediately, by every practical means, to be diminished. To give encouragement to real subjects to settle in this province, can alone remove the evil. The consideration of the fees should not stand in the way of such a politic arrangement; and should your excellency ultimately determine to promise some of the waste lands of the crown to such Scotch emigrants as enlist in the Glengary Fencibles, I have no hesitation in recommending, in the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... conscientious determination to speak to everybody whom duty called upon them to address, or more selfishly devoting themselves to finding out and chatting with the pretty girls. Fenton found time for the latter method while being far too politic to neglect the former. He was chatting in a corner with Ethel Mott, when Fred Rangely, whose successful novel had made him vastly the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... give more relish to passion, more curiosity, more mystery to love, more fascination to women; if a woman is rather an ornament to the drawing-room, a fashion-plate, a portmanteau, than a being whose functions in the order politic are an essential part of the country's prosperity and the nation's glory, a creature whose endeavors in life vie in utility with those of men—I admit that all the above theory, all these long considerations ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... man who had many chances, and lost them all; who loved foolishly and too well, and let himself be ruled by a wife who could not rule herself. Blind impulse, passionate folly were sailing the State ship through that sea of troubles which could be crossed but by a navigator as politic, profound, and crafty as Richelieu or Mazarin. Who can wonder that the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... If by teaching school he could not make a greater contribution to the productiveness of the Woodruff District than by working in the fields, he would go back to the fields. Whether he could make his teaching thus productive or not was the very fact in issue between him and the local body politic. ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... to the style, it was worthy of the matter;—it had not even those politic contrivances of structure which make up for the commonness of the thoughts by the peculiarity of the manner nor that stately poetical phraseology by which sentiments mean in themselves, like the blacksmith's [138] apron converted into a banner, are so easily gilt and embroidered into consequence. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... inclined to adopt the opinion expressed by the committee of the House of Commons, to the extent of admitting that it would be either politic or just to disturb the whole banking system of a country on account of private frauds, whether forgeries or the fabrication of counterfeit coin. If their opinion was a sound one, the weight of evidence is now upon our side of the argument; but we hold that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... of the original contract would practically amount to a confiscation of their property, the value of the labor of this class of persons being scarcely more than nominal; and I adhere to the opinion that the just and politic course is, as has been done, to prohibit any extension or renewal of the practice either of slave indebtedness or slavery; to secure good treatment for the servile classes under penalty of enforced manumission; to reduce claims when they come before the magistrates to the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... men, he seemed to us to deserve a wreath and a marble seat with strange inscriptions and the graceful half-draperies of another time and a group of old Greeks like himself with whom to exchange slow sentences on the body politic. Indeed, the fact that his seat was of fallen pine, and his draperies of butternut brown, and his audience two half-breed children, an artist, and a writer, and his body politic two hundred acres in the wilderness, did not filch from him the impressiveness ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... certain. It was only as the inevitable climax to this evolution that they believed the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would be achieved. In other words, the proletariat would be composed of the overwhelming majority of the body politic and social. That is very different from the Bolshevist attempt to set up the dictatorship of the proletariat in a land where more than 85 per cent, of the people are peasants; where industrial development is behind the rest of the world, and where dictatorship of the proletariat means the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... sinking from men's minds that which tells them they are inferior, we gain greatness to our nation. Simon Bendigo is made to feel that he is just as good as Blackwood Broadway; and Blackwood is made sensible of the fact that he is no better in the body politic than any ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... it should be so, Edgar. The matter began in a quarrel between two men, John Lyon and Gilbert Mahew. Lyon was a crafty and politic man, and was held in great favour by the earl. There was a citizen who had seriously displeased Louis, and at his request John Lyon made a quarrel with him and killed him. The matter caused great anger among the burgesses, and Lyon had ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... was captured by the French army under Napoleon; a disgrace which the brave and spirited Ida felt most keenly. Some of the victorious troops were quartered in the house of her mother, who thought it politic to treat them with courtesy; but her daughter neither could nor would repress her dislike. When compelled to be present at a grand review which Napoleon held in Schonbrunn, she turned her back as the emperor rode past. For this ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... it was the politic and therefore the proper course to abstain from all allusion to this controversy, and to keep it as far as possible in the background. The tranquillity of society depends so much on the stability of its ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... vague and hesitating amidst all its self-conceit, crowded with theories and fancies, and with a natural bent to the unpractical and unreal. To such a mind the shallow, brilliant adventurer came as a relief. James found all his wise follies and politic moonshine translated for him into positive fact. He leant more and more heavily on an adviser who never doubted and was always ready to act. He drew strength from his favourite's self-confidence. Rochester had bent before ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... of discontent in Great Britain may be ascribed to definite evils in the body politic, and it seems to have arisen only secondarily from French propaganda. The first question which kindled the fire of resentment was that of the civic and political disabilities still imposed on Nonconformists ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... engagement either by the "young haberdasher" himself—for that was the epithet applied to him (behind his back, of course) by the older lady—or by the object of his ambitious aspirations, it might have been more politic, as well as more graceful, on her part, to leave the affair to die down, as love-affairs unopposed are so very apt to do. Instead of which she needs must begin endeavouring to frustrate what at the time of her first ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... they were sure to attempt doing. Charlie proposed carrying a few articles to present to the chief, with the promise of others, in exchange for provisions and such things as we should require, if he would come to receive them. This was considered more politic than carrying on the trading first, and promising the presents afterwards, as the chief might doubt whether they would be delivered. From what we gleaned from Sam, they had more than once before been tricked by white men, who had come into their harbour, ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... have equal rights. It matters not that the spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of luxury. That is a violation of civil society; and members are justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal. If the existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used: "Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free." Equally plausible and dangerous ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... handsome divisions of your own corps at Cairo, ready to embark up the Tennessee River by the 20th or 30th of April at the very furthest. I wish it could be done quicker; but the promise of those thirty-days furloughs in the States of enlistment, though politic, is very unmilitary. It deprives us of our ability to calculate as to time; but do the best you can. Hurlbut can do nothing till A. J. Smith returns from Red River. I will then order him to occupy Grenada temporarily, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... such power. At heart we worship the man who will not lie; who will not use conventions or formulas in which he does not believe; who does not give us a second-hand view of either life or God; who does not play with our conscience because it is not politic to be too direct; who does not juggle with our doubts, nor ignore our hopes and powers; who also frankly acknowledges that he, too, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... hadn't ort to disfranchise the hull race of men and wimmen. And as to soft brains, Maria Mitchell discovered planets hid from masculine eyes from the beginnin' of time, and do you think that wimmen can't see the black spots on the body politic, that darkens the life of ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley

... partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might be. They gave a sort of inspiration or intelligence to races, nations, and classes of men. Hence the action of bodies politic and associations, which is so different often from that of the individuals who compose them. Hence the character and the instinct of states and governments, of religious communities and communions. I thought they were inhabited by unseen intelligences. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... principle of law, of a less politic nature, but equally general in its reception and direct in its application, forbids this sort of communication as fundamentally inconsistent with the relation at the time existing between the two countries, and ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... magistrate has not only dispensed with those things which are more particularly within his province, with those things which faction might be supposed to take up for the sake of making visible and external divisions and raising a standard of revolt, but has also from sound politic considerations relaxed on those points which are ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to make more fauourable ordinances than his father had left behind him; and furthermore to restore the former lawes and liberties of the realme, which his said father had abolished. Thus by faire words and politic he obtained his purpose. [Sidenote: Sim. Dunel. Marchar and Wilnot.] Howbeit soone after he forgat himselfe, and imprisoned Marchar and Wilnot, whom he had brought ouer with him from Normandie, being set at ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... portraits on the walls, besides those of the late and present King,—which hung on each side of the throne,—might be seen the features of Richelieu, who first organized the rude settlements on the St. Lawrence into a body politic—a reflex of feudal France; and of Colbert, who made available its natural wealth and resources by peopling it with the best scions of the motherland, the noblesse and peasantry of Normandy, Brittany, and Aquitaine. There too might be seen the keen, bold features of Cartier, the first ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... naturalized, ennobled, and flattered Maitre Cornelius; all of which was rarely done by Louis XI. The monarch pleased the Fleming as much as the Fleming pleased the monarch. Wily, distrustful, and miserly; equally politic, equally learned; superior, both of them, to their epoch; understanding each other marvellously; they discarded and resumed with equal facility, the one his conscience, the other his religion; they loved the same Virgin, one by conviction, the other by policy; in short, if we may believe ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac

... in the programme." She might have thought this; she did not and of course would not on any account have uttered such a sentiment aloud. But it would be unjust to her taste and sensibility to suppose that, apart from worldly and politic considerations, she should have really preferred a sharp-featured, thin-haired, close-fisted gentleman of forty to a conceivable hero of half that age, dowered with every grace and beauty, not to mention ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... victories were tangible and brilliant, while Washington's surer processes were little appreciated. Therefore to get troops from him would be little less difficult than to get them from Lord Howe, short of a positive command, and this prerogative Washington did not think it politic to use. He called a council of war, and when it was over he went to his private office and sent ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... to poverty and social revolution. In a time of perfect calm, amid willing neighbors and streaming wealth, the social uplifting of four million slaves to an assured and self-sustaining place in the body politic and economic would have been a herculean task; but when to the inherent difficulties of so delicate and nice a social operation were added the spite and hate of conflict, the hell of war; when suspicion and cruelty were rife, and gaunt Hunger wept beside Bereavement,—in such a case, the work of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... for unadulterated despatch, commend me to the county burying. The body politic is busy and has no time to waste on an inert human body. It does its duty to its own interest and to the pauper dead when the body is dropped with all celerity into the ground. The county is philosophical: it says, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... devoted so many words, because, though signally defeated, much of its power and influence survives. The fact that it proved to be as large as it was is by no means discouraging: that there should have been so much flabby and diseased flesh on the body-politic was to have been expected; and that it would show itself chiefly in the large cities, where foul humors and leprosy are sure to break out, if anywhere, upon slight irritation, (contrast the corrupt vote of New York City ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... consisting in feeling safe behind a forest of bayonets, and in accepting the services of the Army, which found itself deserted in its camp. Instead of this, the Messieurs Burgraves betook themselves to the Elysee on the evening of January 6, with the view of inducing Bonaparte, by means of politic words and considerations, to drop the removal of Changarnier. Him whom we must convince we recognize as the master of the situation. Bonaparte, made to feel secure by this step, appoints on January 12 a new Ministry, in which the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... the sun afforded a genial warmth, it also occasioned an intemperate heat, that tainted and infected everything it reflected on. That this excessive heat tended to corrupt as well as to cherish; to putrefy as well as to animate; to dry and soak up the wholesome juices of the body politic, and turn the whole of it into one mass of corruption. If those, therefore, who sat near him did not enjoy so genial a warmth as the honorable gentleman, and those who like him kept close to the noble Lord in the blue ribbon, he was certain ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... most sapient masters, seems to me that which our most prudent and politic brother has now advanced, were it not for one single circumstance which unhappily spoils all. I, indeed, do not make a boast of possessing the deep visual penetration of the alderman,—a penetration, my brethren, which can spy out a storm before it arises; nevertheless, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... from condemning, in cases of extreme exigency, the assumption of absolute power in the form of a temporary dictatorship. Free nations have, in times of old, conferred such power by their own choice, as a necessary medicine for diseases of the body politic which could not be got rid of by less violent means. But its acceptance, even for a time strictly limited, can only be excused, if, like Solon or Pittacus, the dictator employs the whole power he assumes in ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... anointed on the field of Rullion Green, and breathed his last (tradition said) in the arms of the detestable Dalyell. Nor could she blind herself to this, that had they lived in those old days, Hermiston himself would have been numbered alongside of Bloody MacKenzie and the politic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of God's immediate enemies. The sense of this moved her to the more fervour; she had a voice for that name of PERSECUTOR that thrilled in the child's marrow; and when one day the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord's travelling carriage, and cried, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of chivalry, nor, in his own language, was the worship of the Lady of the Broken Lances so congenial a subject of adoration. This notwithstanding, Count Robert observed, that Alexius Comnenus was a wise and politic prince; his wisdom perhaps too much allied to cunning, but yet aiding him to maintain with great address that empire over the minds of his subjects, which was necessary for their good, and for maintaining ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... and of Chastity. Those published in 1596, contain the legends of Friendship, of Justice, and of Courtesy. The posthumous cantos are entitled, Of Mutability, and are said to be apparently parcel of a legend of Constancy. The poem which was to treat of the "politic" virtues was never approached. Thus we have but a fourth part of the whole of the projected work. It is very doubtful whether the remaining six books were completed. But it is probable that a portion of them was written, which, except the cantos On Mutability, has perished. And the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... serious-minded person took part in the assault upon the coffee-house. He was one of those amateur statesmen, who usually, as in this case, abrogate to themselves the title of "Lover of his Country," who have a remedy for every disease of the body politic. In a series of proposals offered for the consideration of Parliament, this patriot pleaded for the suppression of coffee-houses on the ground that if less coffee were drunk there would be a larger demand for beer, and a larger ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... public life who would not admit that reforms are desirable or even urgent, though few might be prepared with precise statements about particulars.... But their (the Liberals') confidence in reform, in their ability to improve the body politic by certain definite measures, is gone. The old Liberal spirit animating a whole party is dead. It may seem an odd remark to make just after the late election, but the evidence is abundant, and the explanation simple. Domestic ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... suspicions they had one of the other grew worse. Alexander and Aristobulus were much grieved that the privilege of the first-born was confirmed to Antipater; as was Antipater very angry at his brethren that they were to succeed him. But then this last being of a disposition that was mutable and politic, he knew how to hold his tongue, and used a great deal of cunning, and thereby concealed the hatred he bore to them; while the former, depending on the nobility of their births, had every thing upon their tongues which was in their minds. Many also there were who provoked them further, and many ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... be august as mine. A woman loses In love what she may gain in rank, who tops Her husband's place; though throned, I would exchange An equal glance. His name should be a spell . To rally soldiers. Politic he should be; And skilled in climes and tongues; that stranger knights Should bruit on, high Castillian courtesies. Such chief might ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... presume, to have pupils from the South as heretofore; will such a sectional display be likely to attract them or to repel them? If they can go elsewhere they will not come to you. They will not be attracted by a perpetual memento before their eyes of your triumph over them. It was not politic. It is no improvement for Christian America to show less humanity than heathen Rome. The Romans never made demonstrations of triumph over the defeat of their countrymen in a civil war. It is no proof ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... discouragement, till, reluctantly, the Station left him alone. Injured feelings were nourished, and opinions concerning his conduct and manners grew harsh and unrelenting the instant his back was turned. To his face there was no failure of cordiality, for it is not politic in a small station ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... to Sally. You must see that it won't be possible to pick and choose, to tell this and reserve that. I shall speak of the recurrences of memory that come to me, as too confused for repetition. I shall tell lies about them if I think it politic. Because I can't have Rosey made miserable on any terms. As for the chick, you'll have to manage the best ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... without any benefit or advantage; that, contrary to the law of nations, the Spanish fleet had been attacked without any declaration of war; even while a British minister and a secretary of state were treating amicably at Madrid; that the war was neither just nor politic, since it interrupted one of the most valuable branches of the English commerce, at a time when the nation groaned under the pressure of heavy debts, incurred by the former long expensive war. He therefore moved for an address to his majesty, desiring that the instructions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... affecting the interests of the entire body politic, and the question of the success and stability of our national institutions, there is another consideration coming home closely and individually to each man's personal interests. Where the law of trial by jury ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... the politic arts To take and keep men's hearts; The letters, embassies, and spies, The frowns, and smiles, and flatteries, The quarrels, tears, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... penetration which he possessed. Towards Amelia herself he scarcely ever looked; for, without any refinement of delicacy, he had sufficient feeling and sense to avoid what he thought would embarrass a young lady. Amelia's silence and reserve appeared to him, therefore, as her politic mother had foreseen, just what was natural and proper. He had been told that she was attached to Sir John Hunter; and the idea of doubting the truth of what Mrs. Beaumont had asserted could ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... it would be neither of interest nor politic to detail poured in during the following weeks. Among them was the counterfeit case unearthed by some Shylock Holmes on the Panamanian force, that called for a long perspiring hunt for the "plant" in odd corners of the Zone. Then there was—, an ex-Z. P. who lost his three ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... domestic life, the details of which, at least when they stop short of wife-beating, come not within the cognisance of the civil power. It remains, as we have said, that the scope and aim of the State, within its own sphere and the compass of its own powers, is the temporal prosperity of the body politic, and the prosperity of its members as they are its members and citizens, but not absolutely as they are men. We cannot repeat too often the saying of St. Thomas: "Man is not ordained to the political commonwealth to the full extent ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... doute, tu as raison, mon camarade," said the politic Calabressa, endeavoring to get out of the difficulty with a shrug of his shoulders. "But—but—the more one knows of the Council the more one fears prying into its secrets. No, no; I do what I am told; for the ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... the lowest motives may say, if they will, that Daniel and the later Isaiah found it politic to worship the rising sun, and flatter the Persian conquerors: and that Cyrus and Darius in turn were glad to see Jerusalem rebuilt, as an impregnable frontier fortress between them and Egypt. Be it so; I, who ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... male Englishman (who had not lost his civil right" by crime or otherwise) was entitled to land of right; that is, by virtue of his civil freedom, or membership of the body politic. Every member of the state was therefore a freeholder; and every freeholder was a member of the state. And the members of the state were therefore called freeholders. But what is material to be observed, is, that a man's right to land was an incident to his civil freedom; not ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... the fore by which the duke was glad to profit. With his own manifold interests, it was impossible for him to be present in his various capitals as often as was demanded by the usage of the diverse individual seigniories. It was politic, therefore, to magnify the representative capacity of his son and of his consort in order to obtain the grants and aides which certain of his subjects declared could be given only when requested orally ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... greatly confused, and Lord Clandonald replied, for him, that certainly there was no denying your talents—that they were very great—that you had, unquestionably, been of much service to their party, and that, consequently, it must be politic to attach you to their interests; but that there was a certain fierte, and assumption, and he might say (mark the climax) independence about you, which could not but be highly displeasing in one so young; moreover, that it was impossible to trust to you—that you pledged yourself to no party—that ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... confidential tone, addressed to a clique of his friends, the jobbers, whom he joined at the lower end of the room, "you are all aware that my fellows are staunch Orangemen, every one of them, and the government itself feels, for I have reason to know it, that it is neither politic or prudent to check the spirit which is now abroad among them; so far from that, I can tell you it is expected that we should stimulate and increase it, until the times change. The bills against these men must, therefore, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... a queer skillion front, was surrounded by a tumbled mass of tangled vegetation miscalled a garden, and Dick loitered in the shadow of the back fence to consider what manner of entrance would be most politic. He was shrewdly aware that his mother might be tempted to make an attack on the impulse of the moment, her most pathetic letter notwithstanding, and it was a point of honour with him to offer no resistance and make no evasion when Mrs. Haddon felt ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... Balak's gold by cursing Israel, he can do it by giving him cunning and politic advice. He advises Balak to make friends with the Israelites and mix them up with his people by enticing them to the feasts of his idols, at which the women threw themselves away in shameful profligacy, after the custom of ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... to her son's last remark, which forced him to begin anew. He thought it politic, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... companions of his own calibre—reckless good-for-naughts, or dull debauchees—but could command gray beard experience, wit, the art of pleasing, in one man; and in another (what he was not less destitute of, and needed more), politic management and common-sense. We do not say, as the Squire himself sometimes did, when in a good-humor with his two satellites, that Parson Whymper and Byam Ryll had more brains in their little fingers than all his other friends had in their whole bodies, but it was ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... a reconciliation between the parties that were tearing Christendom asunder. But his failure was even more conspicuous than his momentary semblance of success. It was not in the temper of the times to accept a Concordat founded on however philosophical, however politic, considerations. Contarini will be remembered as a 'beautiful soul,' born out of the due moment, and by no means adequate to cope with the fierce passions that raged round him. Among Protestants he was a Catholic, and they regarded his half measures with contempt. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... selfish and politic standpoint, it is to our interest to make the best of everybody. We cannot always pick and choose our associates in the school of life, and must frequently be thrown with people whom we do not "take to," and, worse still, who may ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... stayed. I wouldn't mind taking a bite myself"; and the good woman and her assistants laughed heartily over this standing joke of the evening, while Auntie Lammer, seeing that Mrs. Gubling was the leading spirit of the supper-room, quivered in all her vast proportions with politic and ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... by the way was Bromfield, had a fine high temper of her own, or thought it politic to affect one. One night when the boys were particularly noisy she burst like a hurricane into the hall, collared a youngster, and told him he was "the ramp-ingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... essentially the outcome of the reaction of its broad suggestions of economic reconstruction upon the circle of thought of one or two young officials of genius, and of one or two persons upon the fringe of that politic-social stratum of Society, the English "governing class." I make this statement, I may say, in the loosest possible spirit. The reaction is one that was not confined to England, it was to some extent inevitable wherever the new movement in thought became accessible to intelligent ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... Anjou, naturally offended, and never politic, had sent her a message, that her attendance was no longer required. So here she was going out of her way to make a casual inquiry, from the Court at Winchester, whether that very unimportant article, her only daughter, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... thus meditated, from out the dazzle as of mirage, a single figure grew into force and distinctness of outline, a figure which from his childhood had appealed to him with an attraction at once sinister and heroic—that, namely, of a certain soldier and ex-Indian official, his kinsman, to pay a politic tribute of respect to whom was the object ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... movement were two dissatisfied men who have given me great trouble. There was much reason for some of their feeling, but very little for their complaints. As a result of the whole affair, however, I believe we all think it would be politic to increase our wages still more. At present we pay rather less than some, but our cheap stores far more than make up the difference. This, however, the people, instead of appreciating, only make the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... easy on this score. Those who took me from my father, and who always intended, sooner or later, to sell me again to my original proprietor, as they have now done, calculated that, in order to make the most of their bargain, it would be politic to leave me in possession of all my personal and hereditary worth, and even to increase the value, if possible. I have, therefore, received a very good education, and have been treated by these kidnappers very much as the slaves were treated in Asia Minor, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... A more independent House of Representatives has never been elected by the people. The cries of the Indians have reached their ears, and we trust affected their hearts. They will abolish a needless and unjust protectorate. The limb, which is now disjointed and bleeding, will be united to the body politic. What belongs to the red man shall hereafter in truth be his; and, thirsting for knowledge and aspiring to be free, every fetter shall be broken and ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... paternalism of the Bourbons. The Company of One Hundred Associates, which Richelieu founded in 1624, was no improvement on the previous administrations of New France, in spite of its elaborate charter and the fact that Richelieu himself was at the head of it. The fur companies were doubly politic in discouraging agriculture, for the purchase of peltries thus became practically the sole industry of the colony, while at the same time the people were left dependent upon the stores of the company for food. The colonisation of New England was intensive, the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... reflection on anyone, Dillon. You all say what I am sure you feel, but you have grown accustomed to waiting, and all think of what is politic, and complain that I speak too frankly. Monsieur Kennedy comes straight from Ireland, and he is not old enough, yet, to have learned to measure his words, and will not be always afraid that anything he may say will be carried ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... king suppressed his passion for some time; and it would have been longer concealed, even from its object, had not his jealousy been excited by her attachment to Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland. The king at last made known his passion; but the daughter of the Howards was too proud, or too politic, or too high principled, to listen to his overtures. It was only as queen of England, that she would return the passion of her royal lover. Moreover, she resolved to be revenged on the all-powerful ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... deeds for which they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage, sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do wrong ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... friends were; the clinging touch of stephanotis had come with him. The discrepancy in Crane's sentiments jarred on Allis. That other day this woman had been his trainer's sister, recognized for politic purposes; to-day he ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... to the heroical or love-melancholy, has strangely omitted it. Shakspeare himself has overlooked it. "I have neither the scholar's melancholy (saith Jaques), which is emulation; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is politic; nor the lover's, which is all these:" and then, when you might expect him to have brought in, "nor the tailor's, which is," so and so, he comes to an end of his enumeration, and falls to a defining ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... hardly politic to urge him farther. With a renewed caution as to dealing with Sam Nichols, ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... better class of foreign immigrants and our own population was able to swallow up the less desirable class, but it takes no great discernment now to see the congested spots here and there on our body politic. In this lies the danger. Such a change in the character of immigration as herein shown cannot have taken place without materially affecting the entire immigration problem, and the sooner our statesmen get to the bottom of the present condition of ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... said after a few minutes' reflection. "No captain has yet been appointed to command the Carolina. You might appoint Morales to it. He belongs to a powerful family here, and they would be pleased at his promotion. So it might be a politic step, as well as serving our purpose by ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... whether she should enter on such confidences at so short a notice. Thereon, Nehushta, who was untroubled by doubts, and thought it politic to be quite open with this Roman, a man ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... Seeing only individuals of this small class, a traveller might honestly conclude that the States were ready for self-government. Let not the nation commit the terrible mistake of acting on this conclusion. These men are the little leaven in the gross body politic of Southern communities. It is no time for passion or bitterness, and it does not become our manhood to do anything for revenge. Let us have peace and kindly feeling; yet, that our peace may be no sham or shallow affair, it is painfully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... ideas of the ancient religion of Greece. Doubtless his study of the classical writers led him into this, perhaps unconsciously. At any rate it seems not to have been with him a matter in which even consistency was demanded. It was politic to espouse the religion of the state, but still he often allows himself to speak as if he were a contemporary ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius

... was talking for irritation, but he was too politic to favor the mood. He stood on the hearth with his hands folded behind him, and with a delightful suavity turned the conversation upon the country rather than the people. It was a glorious day in the dawn of spring. The tenderest greens, ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... other nicknames. Young lords prided themselves on saying that labour should have its ease, and were almost prepared to take freedom, plebeian freedom (of course duly decorated, at least with wild-flowers) for a bride. For in truth Denys at his stall was turning the grave, slow movement of politic heads into a wild social license, which for a while made life like a stage-play. He first led those long processions, through which by and by "the little people," the discontented, the despairing, would utter their minds. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... whole machinery disarranged, the subsidence of the tumult left the state, in every case, as an organic whole, the same. The consequences of unsuccessful rebellion fell only upon the persons engaged in it. So, in the successive changes that befell France after the Revolution, the state, as the body politic, remained unchanged. In dealing with the question of rebellion in our country the same principle applies, only another element enters into the calculation. That element results from the peculiar character of our Government in its twofold ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... vote is my individuality in the body politic. I could not do without my vote," said the judge, ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock

... politic it is, to propitiate your hostess. So seating himself by the Begum, Taji led off with earnest inquiries after her welfare. But the Begum was one of those, who relieve the diffident from the embarrassment of ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... memoirs were to find an English or American publisher, it would be politic to announce here that the Englishman with his practised boxing fists with ease doubled up the Italian and knocked him into a corner, unconscious. Anything short of that the public of Rudyard Kipling would not stand ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is of some occult importance to the body politic, that this artful couple should pretend to ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... among our scores of millions of people. The objections that they are addicted to gambling and immorality, that they come only for temporary mercenary purposes and that they do not become members of the body politic but segregate themselves in special communities, might be urged with equal justice by the Chinese against the foreign communities in the port cities of China. Segregating themselves, indeed! How can ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... to no converts gained by honourable exercise was at least equalled by the injury he did himself. More than once, as I have hinted, I held my tongue at his request, but my frequent plea that such favours weren't politic never found him, when in other connections there was an opportunity to give me a lift, anything but indifferent to the danger of the association. He let them have me in a word whenever he could; sometimes in periodicals in which he ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... the Free-soil Barnburners disappeared as a political factor. Some of them continued to avow their anti-slavery principles, but no one had the temerity to mention them in convention. Men deemed it politic and prudent to affect to believe that the slavery question, which had threatened to disturb the national peace, was finally laid at rest. The country so accepted it, trade and commerce demanded it, and old political leaders conceded it. In this frame of mind, delegates found it easy ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... politic mind seeing the probable importance to the mission of making friends in high places, she procured an introduction to the wife of the viceroy, and, while visiting her, met the viceroy also. After giving an ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... need than the Jews to steep itself again in the sources of its existence, and no period more than the present imposes upon it the duty of bringing its past back to life. Scattered over the face of the globe, no longer constituting a body politic, the Jewish people by cultivating its intellectual patrimony creates for itself an ideal fatherland; and mingled, as it is, with its neighbors, threatened by absorption into surrounding nations, it recovers a sort of individuality by the reverence it pays to men ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... intolerable to any people less busy than the people of that time. For political corruption in a vigorous body politic is not, as pessimists would have us believer an indication of incipient decay, but only an indication that a busy people are willing to pay that price to be left alone, to be relieved of the administration of their public affairs, When they get less busy, or the price in corruption ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... regretted, that we know little more of this government than the general out-line; for, of its subdivisions, classes, or orders of the constituent parts, how disposed, or in what manner connected, so as to form one body politic, we know but little. We are sure, however, that it is of the feudal kind; and if we may judge from what we have seen, it has sufficient stability, and is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... worthy to be heard in your congregation, and also of such as best shall become mine office in this place. That I may do this the more commodiously, I have taken that notable sentence in which our Lord was not afraid to pronounce "the children of this world to be much more prudent and politic than the children of light in their generation." Neither will I be afraid, trusting that he will aid and guide me to use this sentence, as a good ground and foundation of all such things, as hereafter ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... is the not uncommon dictum that bodies politic have youth, maturity, old age, and death, like bodies natural; that after a certain duration of prosperity, they tend spontaneously to decay. This also is a false analogy, because the decay of the vital powers in an animated body can be distinctly traced ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... woman" as it did her best ancestors. Woman is acquiring a new relationship to the state—that of citizen with full responsibility instead of her old perpetual minority under man's control. Social welfare demands that she take into the body politic the same devotion to the weak and undeveloped, the same patient, wise dependence upon the spiritual elements of justice and wisdom which have made her private motherhood so successful. She must not now, on peril of a social setback, take up man's ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... mean,' he said, falteringly, for at that moment Selah's face was terrible to look at. 'I'm very sorry, I can assure you, that this interview—and our pleasant acquaintance—should unfortunately have had such a disagreeable termination. For my own part'—Herbert was always politic—'I should have wished to part with you in no unfriendly spirit. I should have wished to learn your plans for the future, and to aid you in forming a suitable settlement in life hereafter. May I venture to ask, before I go, whether you mean to remain ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... American political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man could inherit the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended from father to son; but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... if he has incurred the hostility of any, it has been through his opposition to the schemes of corrupt rings and the purposes of selfish individuals, which he regarded detrimental to the public good; or through his support of wholesome measures, calculated to protect the body politic, and thwart their illegitimate designs in ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various

... inhabitants of Transylvania by the excesses of his troops, Michael's first step of any consequence on entering the country was to appear before Kronstadt with his army and demand its surrender. This was granted, and Michael deemed it politic not to enter the city, but to march forward and get possession of other towns, which yielded to him one after ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson



Words linked to "Politic" :   body politic, sagacious, smooth, diplomatic, suave, diplomatical, bland, impolitic, expedient



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