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Usurpation   Listen
noun
Usurpation  n.  
1.
The act of usurping, or of seizing and enjoying; an authorized, arbitrary assumption and exercise of power, especially an infringing on the rights of others; specifically, the illegal seizure of sovereign power; commonly used with of, also used with on or upon; as, the usurpation of a throne; the usurpation of the supreme power. "He contrived their destruction, with the usurpation of the regal dignity upon him." "A law (of a State) which is a usurpation upon the general government." "Manifest usurpation on the rights of other States." Note: Usurpation, in a peculiar sense, formerly denoted the absolute ouster and dispossession of the patron of a church, by a stranger presenting a clerk to a vacant benefice, who us thereupon admitted and instituted.
2.
Use; usage; custom. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Usurpation" Quotes from Famous Books



... period of the usurpation in England, popular anarchy prevailed, and levelled all ranks and distinctions throughout the nation. The lineal heir of the crown being expelled, Oliver Cromwell, that ambitious and crafty leader of the people, seized the reins of government, and ruled England with a rod of iron for ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... History of the usurpation of Gonzalo Pizarro, from the expulsion of the Viceroy to his defeat ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... United States, indirectly counteracted the torrent of partiality in favor of France, and was immediately assailed with intemperate violence in many of the public journals. The right of the executive to issue any proclamation of neutrality was fiercely and pertinaciously denied as a usurpation of legislative authority, and in that particular case it was charged with forestalling and prematurely deciding the question whether the United States were bound, by the guarantee to France of her West India possessions in the treaty of alliance, to take side in the war with her against ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... juices towards the growth of different species of vines, the seeds of which also the birds deposited on its branches. These soon vegetate, and bear fruit in great quantities; so what with their usurpation of the resources of the fig-tree, and the fig- tree of the mora, the mora, unable to support a charge which nature never intended it should, languishes and dies under its burden; and then the fig- tree, and its usurping progeny of vines, receiving no more succour from their ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... single government now existing in Europe, which is not based in usurpation, and established, if established at all, by the sacrifice of thousands. But in the adoption of our present system of jurisprudence, we see the powers necessary for government, voluntarily springing from the people, their only proper origin, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... irresistible charm, of her audacity, her cunning, her genius for diplomacy and statecraft, far exceeding Elizabeth's—when we read of all this and think of the blood of the Guises in her veins, and the precepts of Catharine de Medici in her heart, we realize what her usurpation would have meant for England, and feel that she was a menace to the State, and justly incurred her fate. Then again, when we hear of her gentle patience in her long captivity, her prayers and piety, ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... seas. Either Great Britain must be prepared to abate her pretensions, or she must strengthen her power to enforce them. Dilke and Chamberlain were strongly against giving way to anything which could be regarded as usurpation. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, pointed out that to maintain a control, or veto, over the allocation of unappropriated portions of the globe meant large increase of naval expenditure, and he set his face against both. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... buying liquor, denotes selfish usurpation of property upon which you have no legal claim If you sell it, you will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... necessary for them to know. Even the idea of the respect that they should have for the property of the rich, is only difficult to be insinuated among them—first, because they look on riches as a sort of usurpation, of theft perpetrated upon them, and unhappily this opinion is in great part true—secondly, because their excessive poverty makes them always consider themselves in the case of absolute necessity—a ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... against the modern Jezebel: we proclaim her deprived of her royal authority, of the rights, titles, or pretensions to which she may lay claim over the kingdoms of Ireland and England, affirming that she possesses them unlawfully and by usurpation. We relieve all her subjects from the oaths they may have taken to her, and we prohibit them from rendering any kind of service to this execrable woman; it is our will, that she be driven from door to door like ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... many Irishmen who, like me, consider Repeal to be right, and best, and necessary for the public good. But, gentlemen, ever since the Union, by fraud and force and against the will of the Irish people, was enacted—ever since that act of usurpation by the English parliament of the sovereign rights of the queen, lords, and commons of Ireland—ever since this country was thereby rendered the subject instead of the sister of England—ever since the Union, but especially for about twenty ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... moreover, which it is forced to set to its speculative exercise, form likewise a check upon the fallacious pretensions of opponents; and thus what remains of its possessions, after these exaggerated claims have been disallowed, is secure from attack or usurpation. The greatest, and perhaps the only, use of all philosophy of pure reason is, accordingly, of a purely negative character. It is not an organon for the extension, but a discipline for the determination, of the limits of its exercise; and without laying claim to the discovery of new truth, it ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... of Bijanagur had been governed for thirty years by the usurpation of three brothers, keeping the lawful king a state prisoner, and ruling according to their own pleasure, shewing the king only once a year to his subjects. They had been principal officers under the father of the king ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... now at peace with all the world. It was universally admitted that Napoleon was the great pacificator. He was the idol of France. The masses of the people in Europe, every where regarded him as their advocate and friend, the enemy of aristocratic usurpation, and the great champion of equality. The people of France no longer demanded liberty . Weary years of woe had taught them gladly to relinquish the boon. They only desired a ruler who would take care of them, govern them, protect them ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... their race, it was rare to find one among their wives who possessed an equal right to the crown with themselves: such a case could be found only in troublous times, when an aspirant to the throne, of base extraction, legitimated his usurpation by marrying a sister or ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... against those invasions of necessity and baseness, which come to nations as well as to men. He should meet them, too, foot to foot, even in the darkness, and protest against the national wrongs and follies; against usurpation and the first inroads of that hydra, Tyranny. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation. It is more difficult for a people to keep than to gain their freedom. The Protests of Truth are always needed. Continually, the right must protest against the fact. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... young queen of Britain has not a more loyal subject in her realm—perhaps not one who would kneel before her throne with such reverential love—as this old grandsire whose head has whitened beneath the mild sway of the republic which still in his mellower moments he terms a usurpation. Yet prejudices so obstinate have not made him an ungentle or impracticable companion. If the truth must be told, the life of the aged loyalist has been of such a scrambling and unsettled character—he has had so little choice of friends and been so often destitute of any—that ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Feuerbach[67] were a step beyond even this skeptical usurpation. Religion is man's conduct to himself. Man, from time immemorial, has been buried in self-love, and become so far carried away by it that his religion is now one monstrous hallucination. Religion springs not from his intellect ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... methods and appliances, and not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes of taking the sense of the community, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... actions, or their persons, a much less proportion will be yet found betwixt them; and if we bate the popularity, perhaps none at all. If we consider them in reference to their parties, the one was manifestly the leader; the other, at the worst, is but misled. The designs of the one tended openly to usurpation; those of the other may yet be interpreted more fairly; and I hope, from the natural candour and probity of his temper, that it will come to a perfect submission and reconcilement at last. But that which perfectly destroys this pretended Parallel ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... punish another from revenge or hate, or in mere indifference. He licensed no man to do it, nor any community or nation. And whoever does it, serves not God but the devil; and if any crime be unpardonable, it is that, because it is not essential or natural, but an usurpation against nature, and breeds ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... highest freshets. Thus stopped in its course the water seeks a passage elsewhere, and as the soil on each side is light and yielding, what was only a peninsula, becomes gradually an island, and the river indemnifies itself for the usurpation by encroaching on the adjacent shore. In this way the Missouri like the Mississippi is constantly cutting off the projections of the shore, and leaving its ancient channel, which is then marked by the mud it has deposited and a few ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... to the womanly conscience—Is it not a hundred times more honourable to exercise, so to speak, rights that are legitimately recognised, though wisely limited, than to suffer in consideration, and often in reputation, from an usurpation always certain ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... outrage not to be tolerated. So the constitution and laws of a State and nation may be just as considerate of woman's needs and wants as if framed by herself, yet for man to deny her the right to a voice in making and administering them, is paralleled only by the Lecompton usurpation. For any human being or class of human beings, whether black, white, male or female, tamely to submit to the denial of their right to self-government shows that the instinct of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... had several mysterious sessions with certain of the girls who felt quite as she did regarding the usurpation of Dr. McCurdy's sister-in-law of the spare room. Had Ruth not been so busy in other directions she would have realized that a plot of some kind was in process of formation, for Helen was in ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson

... home with me Victory, And with her, hand in hand, firm-footed Peace, 160 Her countenance twice lighted up with glory, As if I had charmed a goddess down from Heaven? But these will flee abhorrent from the throne Of usurpation! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... thought indeed, that Sargon, instead of cloaking his usurpation under some decent plea of right, took a pride in boldly avowing it. The name Sargon has been supposed to be one which he adopted as his royal title at the time of his establishment upon the throne, intending by the adoption to make it generally known that he had acquired the crown, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... Tories like Walter Scott did not refrain from contributing to its pages. Scott's Marmion was somewhat sharply reviewed by Jeffrey in April, 1808, and in the following October appeared the article by Jeffrey and Brougham upon Don Pedro Cevallos' French Usurpation of Spain. The pronounced Whiggism of that critique led to an open rupture with the Tory contributors. Scott, who was no longer on the best terms with Constable, the publisher of the Edinburgh, declared that henceforth he could neither receive nor read ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... writes:—"Their soldiers have plundered and murdered the peasantry at their pleasure; and I have seen many persons hanging in the trees by the sides of the road, executed for no other reason, that I could learn, excepting that they have not been friendly to the French invasion and usurpation of the government of their country; and the route of their column on their retreat could be traced by the smoke of the villages to which they set fire." These horrible scenes occurred in all the subsequent retrograde movements of the French: before them, the countries through which they passed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... been used in honour of the sacred doctrine which heresy assailed. Ignatius, the disciple of St. Peter, was reported to have introduced the practice into the Church of Antioch, in the doxology to the Trinity. Flavian, afterwards bishop of that see, revived it during the Arian usurpation, to the great edification and encouragement of the oppressed Catholics. Chrysostom used it in the vigils at Constantinople, in opposition to the same heretical party; and similar vigils had been established by Basil in the monasteries of Cappadocia. The assembled multitude, confined day and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... limit of human perfectibility, by the free action of mind upon mind, not by the obtrusive intervention of misapplied force; to uphold the integrity and guard the limitations of our organic law; to preserve sacred from all touch of usurpation, as the very palladium of our political salvation, the reserved rights and powers of the several States and of the people; to cherish with loyal fealty and devoted affection this Union, as the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... so with great pleasure," said Ibarra, "but it would be a usurpation of the honor; that belongs to the notary, who must draw up ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... INDEPENDENCE.—The French usurpation in Spain cost that country its American colonies. They would not submit to the French sovereignty, and after its fall maintained their independence. Buenos Ayres broke loose from Spain in 1810, and in 1816 joined the Plate states in a confederation. Paraguay declined a union with Buenos ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons,[466] not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the beneficiary, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... and the whole world belong to the Church to whom they have been given by God. And if real and effective possession is not hers to-day, this is only because she yields to force, compelled to face accomplished facts, but with the formal reserve that she is in presence of guilty usurpation, that her possessions are unjustly withheld from her, and that she awaits the realisation of the promises of the Christ, who, when the time shall be accomplished, will for ever restore to her both the earth and mankind. Such is the real future city which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... ideal of Christ conquered the ancient world when the Roman, mighty in character as well as in arms, was its master. It has lived through all these centuries, all their revolutions and convulsions, the usurpation, tyranny, and scandals of the Papacy. The most doubtful point of it, considered as a permanent exemplar, is its tendency, not to asceticism, for Christ came "eating and drinking," but to an excessive preference for poverty and antipathy to wealth which would arrest ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... honor is, however, more properly attributable to Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. And, indeed, the character of the Syrian monarch does by no means stand in need of any adventitious embellishment. His accession to the throne, or rather his usurpation of the sovereignty, a hundred and seventy-one years before the coming of Christ; his attempt to plunder the temple of Diana at Ephesus; his implacable hostility to the Jews; his pollution of the Holy of Holies; and his miserable death ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of their usurpation is established upon this method of arguing. We do not make laws. No; we do not contend for this power. We only declare law; and, as we are a tribunal both competent and supreme, what we declare to be law becomes law, although it should not have been so before. ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... conscience are choked and stifled? Doth not all this teach us plainly that we should not "live after the flesh,"—that we owe not so much to this brutish part as to enthrone it and empower it over us,—that it were vilest anarchy, and most intolerable confusion and usurpation, to give it the power over us, as most men do,—that there can be no order or beauty in man till the spirit be unfettered from the chains of fleshly lusts, and restored to the native dignity, and so keep the body ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... insurgents were disclosed in a proclamation which referred to the administration in Ireland as a "long usurpation by a foreign people and government." It declared that the Irish Republican Brotherhood—the same organisation that planned and carried out the Phoenix Park murders in 1882—had now seized the right moment for "reviving the old ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... act of prudence and duty to negative a measure which was lately believed by ourselves, and may hereafter be misconceived by others, to encroach upon the powers of the House. Principles that bear a remote affinity with usurpation on those powers will be rejected, not merely as errors, but as wrongs. Our sensibilities will shrink from a post where it is possible they may be wounded, and be inflamed by the slightest suspicion of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... inherent in & beyond the control of all earthly govern^ts. Yes I coincide with the great Lord Chatham when he says that "Rebellion against oppression is obedience to God." Our Ancestors rebelled against the tyranny of British usurpation, & the Texans revolted against a like despotism exercised by a Mexican Autocrat. Why then are the Sovereign States of America not justifiable in throwing off the yoke or rather resisting to have put upon them, the yoke, of Northern Tyranny? To make the argument still clearer, however, ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant

... restoring the ancient gentry to their possessions, we have already canvassed. It were monstrous to suppose the parliament ought to have respected the thirty-eight years' usurpation of savage invaders, and to have overlooked the rights of the national chieftains, the plundered proprietors who lived, and whose families lived, to claim their rights. The care with which purchasers and incumbrancers were to be reprized ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... Union, in the bosom of the non-slaveholding States. If, however, no consideration of prudence or patriotism can restrain the majority from the non-slaveholding States in their headlong career of usurpation and wrong, and should they repeal or essentially modify the fugitive slave law, the most prompt and decisive action 'will be required at your hands'. In either event, I would earnestly recommend that a Convention ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... troubles of life is that Reason has taken charge of the administration of Justice, and by mere identification it has achieved the crown and sceptre of its master. But the imperceptible usurpation was recorded, and discriminating minds understand the chasm which still divides the pretender Law from the exiled King. In a like manner, and with feigned humility, the Cold Demon advanced to serve Religion, and by guile and violence usurped her throne; but ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... been thought possible,' I said, 'that in the event of the Jerome dynasty being overset by a military revolution, it might be followed by a military usurpation; that Nero ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... usurpation the First Consul let slip no opportunity of endeavouring to obtain at the same time the admiration of the multitude and the approbation of judicious men. He was very fond of the arts, and was sensible that the promotion of industry ought to be the peculiar care of the head of the Government. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... Accordingly the democratic monarchy of 1791 had failed because, its framework having been built of empty visions, its constitution was entirely in the air. The same fate had now overtaken the Girondist experiment of 1792 and the Jacobin usurpation of the following year, which was ostensibly sanctioned by the popular adoption of a new constitution. With perfect confidence in Rousseau's idea that government is based on a social contract between individuals, the nation had sworn its adhesion to two constitutions ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... disturbances of the previous six months had been prejudicial both to his invested capital and to his income accruing from work. It was difficult to sell fiction advantageously when people were more interested in facts; nor did he care much to continue his efforts under a regime that he looked upon as a usurpation. Until the speedy overthrow which he confidently reckoned upon, he said to himself that he would do better to occupy himself with the question of his marriage. The hope was at present a forlorn one, but it was worth risking. He started with ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... it first began to act. In the manner he introduces the matter, it is either government stealing wisdom, or wisdom stealing government. It is without an origin, and its powers without authority. In short, it is usurpation. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... of strict hereditary succession has taken so strong a hold of us English in later times that it is necessary constantly to insist that our old English kingship was elective. Alfred's title was based on election; and so little was the idea of usurpation, or of any wrong done to the two infant sons of Ethelred, connected with his accession, that even the lineal descendant of one of those sons, in his chronicle of that eventful year, does not pause to notice the fact that Ethelred left ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... ordinance of banishment to Bermuda offered him against his enemy. It is nearly always in the power of a party politician to distort and misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other lawyers on his side to attack ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... Devil? It was here determined that Alphonso of Arragon, the husband of Lucretia, should be assassinated, in order that they might give the King of France a proof that they were willing to break entirely with the King of Naples, and to assist the former in his usurpation of the crown of Sicily. Louis the Twelfth had already, with the approbation of Alexander, invaded Italy, and the Borgias thereby saw all their projects ripening. Lucretia intrusted this bloody deed to the management ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... from the foreign soldier, the restoration and safeguarding of the integrity of her boundaries, the extirpation of all oppression and usurpation, whether foreign or domestic, the firm foundation of national freedom and of the independence of the Republic:—such is the holy aim of ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... to imagine, from the language of the bailiff, that Vaud stood on the eve of any great political commotion, but, as the Government was in itself an usurpation, and founded on the false principle of exclusion, it was quite as usual then, as now, to cry out against the moral throes of violated right, since the same eagerness to possess, the same selfishness in grasping, however unjustly obtained, and the same audacity of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... have passed since King Henry the 8th; wherein I find the strangest variety that in like number of successions of any hereditary monarchy hath ever been known. The reign of a child; the offer of an usurpation (though it were but as a Diary Ague); the reign of a lady married to a foreign Prince; and the reign of a lady solitary and unmarried. So that as it cometh to pass in massive bodies, that they have certain trepidations ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... question what course he himself should pursue. At length he formed a small party of his friends to go away on a hunting excursion. When he reached a safe distance from the court of Polysperchon, he called his friends around him, and informed them that he had resolved not to submit to the usurpation of Polysperchon, who, in assuming the throne of Macedon, had seized what rightfully belonged, he said, to him, Cassander, as his father's son and heir. He invited his friends to join him in the enterprise of deposing Polysperchon, and assuming ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... magistracies; from twelve they were reduced to four; at last they were centred in a single hand: so that when Galatia was united as a province to the Roman empire, it was governed by a hereditary king. Yet, amidst this usurpation of the sovereign power, the national council of the Three Hundred still continued to exist, and assist in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... share in them. In particular, that discipline, which is one of the greatest of those blessings, never can, and, indeed, never ought to be restored, till the Church resumes its lawful authority, and puts an end to the usurpation of its powers by the clergy. There is a feeling now awakened amongst the lay members of our Church, which, if it can but be rightly directed, may, by God's blessing, really arrive at something truer and deeper than satisfied the last century, or than satisfied ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... government specific powers, commensurate with its objects, it is liable on occasions of public necessity to exercise powers which have not been granted. Avoid the dreadful dilemma between dissolution and usurpation, urged Madison, by clothing the government with powers that are ample but clearly defined. In a certain sense, the action of Congress in 1787 was a usurpation of authority to meet an emergency which no one had foreseen, as in the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... importance is necessarily a sharp thorn to the reaction. She is looked upon as a danger to the continued existence of authoritarian usurpation. No wonder, then, that the enemy resorts to any and all means to make her impossible. A systematic attempt to suppress her activities was organized a year ago by the united police force of the country. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws,—but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea-tax and stamp-act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the king's prerogative, but the king's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional, beyond its power. It was not till this was made out ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... they would forfeit the favour of the people, they answered, We cannot tell, meaning, It is inconvenient to express an opinion. As they could not venture to pronounce whether a ministry which had left its impress deep on the whole land, was a human usurpation or a divine mission, they had obviously no right to sit in judgment on the credentials of Jesus. When on this point they were condemned out of their own lips the Lord, rising now more into the stern dignity of judge when ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... down, and hold in contempt the voice of the public,[84] but, forgetting the subject which they have undertaken to criticise, they push the author out of his seat, quietly sit in it themselves, and fancy they entertain you by the gravity of their deportment, and their rash usurpation of the royal monosyllable 'Nos.'[85] This solemn pronoun, or rather 'plural style,'[86] my dear Philemon, is oftentimes usurped by a half-starved little I, who sits immured in the dusty recess of a garret, and who has never known the society nor the language ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... tribune, the first honour he received from the suffrages of the people after his return to Rome, he zealously assisted those who took measures for restoring the tribunitian authority, which had been greatly diminished during the usurpation of Sylla. He likewise, by an act, which Plotius at his suggestion propounded to the people, obtained the recall of Lucius Cinna, his wife's brother, and others with him, who having been the adherents of Lepidus in the civil disturbances, had after ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... free government in that kingdom. You deposed kings; [Footnote: 47] you restored them; you altered the succession to theirs, as well as to your own Crown; but you never altered their Constitution, the principle of which was respected by usurpation, restored with the restoration of monarchy, and established, I trust, forever, by the glorious Revolution. This has made Ireland the great and flourishing kingdom that it is, and, from a disgrace and a burthen intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a principal part of our strength and ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... and in virtue, we suppose, of that undefined tenth point of the law which is not involved in the word possession, appointed a Vicar Apostolic of Mongolia. The pope might, with equal impunity, have divided it into bishoprics—no meetings would have been hold to protest against the usurpation; and the mandarins of Pekin would certainly have proposed no law to prevent the Lamas of the western world from assuming what titles they pleased. But even in that case, the interests of the church would not have been much forwarded. The very extent and limits of the vicariate ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... absorbed he had become in these greater things. How, in the swing of congenial interests, he had been borne insensibly forward—his capacities expanding, his intelligence asserting itself. He had so undeniably found his sphere that the idea of usurpation had receded gently as by natural laws, until his own personality had begun to color the ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... Basle; Carnot, who continued in office, took part with the Opposition, justly fearing that the rule of the Directory would soon amount to nothing more than the rule of Bonaparte himself. The first debates in the new Chamber arose upon the laws relating to emigrants; the next, upon Bonaparte's usurpation of sovereign power in Italy. On the 23rd of June a motion for information on the affairs of Venice and Genoa was brought forward in the Council of Five Hundred. Dumolard, the mover, complained of the secrecy of Bonaparte's action, of the contempt ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... but appeared as one of the grounds of a public inquiry, is turned into a culprit before a court of justice, against whom everything is to be juridically made out or not admitted; and the members of an executive board, by usurpation and fraud, erect themselves into judges bound to proceed by strict ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... for a Condottiere to obtain the lordship of a district even without usurpation, in the case when his employer, through want of money or troops, provided for him in this way; under any circumstances the Condottiere, even when he dismissed for the time the greater part of his forces, needed a safe place where he could establish his winter quarters, and lay ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... apply to the greater number of the Executive Committee—to only about a half dozen of its members. The Committee was composed mainly of honorable men, deservedly high in the community, in every walk and relation of life. They doubtless acted from a conscientious sense of duty, and neither intended usurpation of the law, violence to justice, nor any wrong whatever. They believed it incumbent upon them to reform what they regarded as the maladministration of public affairs, and to cleanse the city of the corruption which ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara

... sagacious, and energetic, was rallying around him all the Protestant influences of Europe, to sustain, in that event, his undeniable claim to the throne. The Duke of Guise, impetuous and fearless, hoped, in successful usurpation, to grasp the rich prize by rallying around his banner all the fanatic energies ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... of an overfull bank, coaxing the water beyond its appointed bounds. Given a new waterway in a barren land, and in three years the willows have fringed all its miles of banks; three years more and they will touch tops across it. It is perhaps due to the early usurpation of the willows that so little else finds growing-room along the large canals. The birch beginning far back in the canon tangles is more conservative; it is shy of man haunts and needs to have the permanence of its ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our state archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional,—beyond its power. It was not ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... no pretext for interfering openly. But if the Corsicans would but take heart and choose themselves a king, that king could at a ripe moment be diplomatically acknowledged; and any interference by France would at once become an act of violent usurpation. (For let me tell you, my friends—the sufferings of a people count as nothing in diplomacy against the least trivial act against a crown.) The nuisance was, the two Paolis, Giafferi and Hyacinth, had no notion whatever of making themselves kings; nor would their devoted followers ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... in his learned and able speech in Congress, 1852, said:—"The true principles of our political system, the history of the National Convention, the natural interpretation of the Constitution, all teach that this Act is a usurpation by Congress of powers that do not belong to it, and an infraction of rights secured to the States. It is a sword, whose handle is at the National Capital, and whose point is every where in the States. A weapon so terrible to personal liberty the nation has no power ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child

... coming directly under this head yet appertaining to it. In these latter she claims unquestioning outward obedience at least. Thus she has the right to determine when any scientific theory or other controversy bears upon matters of faith, or has a dangerous tendency to do so; also to check the usurpation of State, when they begin to reach in this direction; and in the exercise of this prerogative she is not guarded from error. I have already shown how slow, cautious and gentle, has been her dealing on the whole with controversies ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... that shame to his birth and caste, who holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work—work, pah!"—and the old patrician ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... convents. But the hypocrites—for such they are—joined with the other fraternities in accusing their preacher Clement, when, passing from censuring the crimes of the state, he began to display the pride, ignorance, and luxury of the churchmen themselves—their thirst of power, their usurpation over men's consciences, and their desire ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... well as a political reformer. He was a reformer three hundred years before the Reformation, advocating the separation of the spiritual from the civil power, and declaring the temporal government of the Pope to be a usurpation. The following memorable words were written over five hundred and sixty years ago, while Dante was still a member of the Roman Catholic Church:—"Every Divine law is found in one or other of the two Testaments; ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... resist the usurpation of the French, the queen was rallying about her person all the foreigners she could. Her partiality for the English and Americans was well known; and this was an additional ground for our anticipating a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... nationall Assemblies, the generall Assembly considering the great defection of this Kirk, and decay of Religion, by the usurpation of the Prelates, and their suppressing of ordinaire judicatories of the Kirk, and clearly preceiving the benefit which will redound to the Religion by the restitution of the said judicatories, remembring also that they stand obliged by their solemne oath, and covenant with God, to return to the ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... de St Barbara (1143 to 1152), does not appear to have added anything to the cathedral. During his time of office the see was usurped by William Cummin, and building operations were no doubt neglected through the troubles arising from the usurpation. His successor, Hugh Pudsey (1153 to 1195) was, however, a great builder; appointed to the see at a comparatively early age, and, living as he did, at a time when very great changes were taking place in architectural style, he was ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate

... was around him, he saw the widow seated beside him, within four bare walls. Everything, except the bed he slept on, had been sold to support him in his illness. As soon as he could totter forth, Beck hastened to his crossing. Alas! it was preoccupied. His absence had led to ambitious usurpation. A one-legged, sturdy sailor had mounted his throne, and wielded his sceptre. The decorum of the street forbade altercation to the contending parties; but the sailor referred discussion to a meeting at a flash house in the Rookery that evening. There a jury was ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... natural right to prevent people from crossing that strip of wood where his pheasants were sitting. His ancestors had assumed it from time immemorial, and by dint of never being questioned had come to regard the absurd usurpation as quite fair and proper. He placed himself straight across the narrow path, blocking it up with his short and stumpy figure. "Now look here, young man," he said, with all the insolence of his caste: "if you try to go on, I'll stand here in your way; and if you dare to touch me, it's ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... she was, I think she was not conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted usurpation. She had never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard it defended and sanctified in a thousand. As far as her experience went, the wise, the good, and the holy were unanimous in the belief that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar pet of the Deity, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... thus set itself up in isolated usurpation against such other activities as imagination, intuition, will or taste; it can also divide itself against itself and emerge in completely contradictory functions. In the form of mathematical logic, for instance, it can dispose most drastically of that living organic ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... eighteenth dynasty. In the row to the left of the entrance are thirty-one names, and in that to the right are thirty, all of them predecessors of Thothmes. The Theban Kings who ruled in Upper Egypt during the usurpation of the Hyksos invaders are also exhibited among the lists. Over the head of each King is his oval, containing ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... disobedience of his lieutenants. Already he had been disturbed now and again by their growing power, and coveted their towns, now he thought the hour had perhaps came for suppressing them also, and in the usurpation of their private possessions striking a blow at Florence, who always escaped him at the very moment when he thought to take her. It was indeed an annoying thing to have these fortresses and towns displaying another banner than his own in the midst of the beautiful Romagna ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... gentlemen; for so in all other respects were those plebeian magistrates elected by the people of Rome, being of known descents and of equal virtues, except only that they were excluded from the name by the usurpation of the patricians. Holland, through this defect at home, has borrowed princes for generals, and gentlemen of divers nations for commanders: and the Switzers, if they have any defect in this kind, rather lend their people ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... who overheard this part of the conversation, "we invited the usurpation of a tyrant by the docility with which we submitted to his minion. Had we rejected Baliol, we had never been ridden by Edward. But the rowel has gored the flanks of us all! and who amongst us will not lay himself and fortune at the foot of him who ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... the nation, may not be protected by primary legislation upon the part of Congress. Justice Harlan pointed out that it is for Congress not the judiciary, to say that legislation is appropriate, for that would be sheer usurpation of the functions of a coordinate department. Why should these rules of interpretation be abandoned in the case of maintaining the rights of the Negro guaranteed by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... tyranny that has been exercised over him? Consider, too, my Lords, for what object all this was done. Was Mr. Hastings endeavoring, by his arbitrary interference and the use of his superior power, to screen a people from the usurpation and power of a tyrant,—from any strong and violent acts against property, against dignity, against nobility, against the freedom of his people? No: you see here a monarch deposed, in effect, by persons pretending to be his allies, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... advances in this kingdom [**kingfrom in original], superstition loses ground; ancient prejudices give way; a spirit of freedom takes the ascendant. All the learned laity of France, detest the hierarchy as a plan of despotism, founded on imposture and usurpation. The protestants, who are very numerous in the southern parts, abhor it with all the rancour of religious fanaticism. Many of the Commons, enriched by commerce and manufacture, grow impatient of those odious distinctions, which exclude them from the honours and privileges due to their importance ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... teacheth "occidentes esse:" but, no doubt, by skill in history; for that, indeed, can afford you Cypselus, Periander, Phalaris, Dionysius, and I know not how many more of the same kennel, that speed well enough in their abominable injustice of usurpation. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... repetition of such phrases as "cruel tyranny" and "usurping tyrant"; and the numerous interpolations of the Viceroy himself are so obvious that I have put them in italics within brackets. He goes back as far as the first Inca to make out the usurpation, and he is always harping on illegitimacy. If we go back as far as Sancho IV the title of Philip II to Spain was voided by the grossest usurpation, while we need only go back to Henry II to see how Philip's title was vitiated by illegitimacy. As for cruelty, it would be a strange plea from ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... should be treated as neutral territory. That agreement put that state into the position of a foreign country, like England or China, when the very purpose of the war was to insist that the United States was one nation. This act was a usurpation of authority, and further, it was diametrically wrong even had he ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... Renwick witnessed the martyrdom of the venerable servant of Christ, Donald Cargill. He stood near the scaffold, beheld his courageous and triumphant departure to glory, and heard the clear and powerful last words, in which he nobly testified for the crown-rights of the Redeemer, and against Erastian usurpation. "As to the causes of my suffering," said the dying martyr, "the chief is—not acknowledging the present Authority, as it is established in the Supremacy and Explanatory Act. This is the magistracy I have resisted, that ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston

... plays downstairs, begins a quarter of an hour before the explosion. Here we have a real denial of a fundamental condition of the theater. Or if we stick to recent products of the American stage, we may think of "On Trial," a play which perhaps comes nearest to a dramatic usurpation of the rights of the photoplay. We see the court scene and as one witness after another begins to give his testimony the courtroom is replaced by the scenes of the actions about which the witness is to report. Another clever play, "Between the Lines," ends the first act ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... desires at the expense of the slightest article of virtue pass once its limits and you fall headlong into vice." "Death wounds to cure we fall we rise we reign." "Beware of usurpation God ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Chalcedon. For such a denial destroys the authority of the Church herself both in doctrine and discipline for all subsequent time. If the Church, in declaring St. Leo to be entrusted by our Lord with the guardianship of the Vine, erred; if she asserted a falsehood, or if she favoured an usurpation, how can she be trusted for any maintenance of doctrine, for any administration of sacraments, for any exercise of authority? This consideration does not touch those who believe in no Church at all. They are in the position of that ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... engaged to vindicate will be dishonored and betrayed; the last and fairest experiment in favor of the rights of human nature will be turned against them, and their patrons and friends exposed to the insults, and silenced by the votaries of tyranny and usurpation. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... tendency of the poor colonists against becoming tenants, and the usurpation of the land, were clearly brought out by Bellomont in a letter written on Nov. 28, 1700, to the Lords of Trade. He complained that "people are so cramped here for want of land that several families within my own knowledge and observation are remov'd ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... executive, and judicial powers, which they already exercise, in the most arbitrary manner, over the persons and properties of their fellow subjects: and although many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty, and may be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them. The authors and promoters of this desperate ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... it is. A tacit agreement settled this point as it has so many others of the social economy. Nor would any discontent with the present arrangement have arisen; had the family life kept pace with the growth of society." This exclusive usurpation of the public life by man—or rather, as we should say, this natural development and division—so organized by immemorial usage as to have become a second nature in both parties, is at last beginning to reveal its injustice, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... hands familiar with the pruning-knife and the plough. But in practice these bounds were effectually narrowed, when the college of cardinals tacitly restricted the choice to the members of their own body,—and still more effectually, when, by the same silent usurpation, they resolved that Adrian of Utrecht should be the last of foreign pontiffs. For three hundred and forty years none but Italians have been called to the chair of St. Peter's, thus, by an inevitable result of the unnatural alliance of temporal with spiritual sovereignty, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... while the priests of his tribe were scattered among the other tribes, and were hereditary. The Hebrew priests simply interpreted the laws; the priests of Egypt made them. Their power was chiefly judicial. They had no means of usurpation, neither from property, nor military command. They were simply the expositors of laws which they did not make, which they could not change, and which they themselves were bound to obey. The income of a Levite was about five ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... to that of those of Central Africa. When we contemplate what Ireland was before the Norman and Saxon had set their feet there, the most prejudiced antagonist of the Celtic race cannot but be astonished at the picture presented to us after their usurpation. When Saxondom was in a state of barbarism, this branch of the Celts was civilized. Aldfred, king of the Northumbrian Saxons, has given us the experiences of a Saxon in Ireland over a thousand years ago. In a poem of his own composing, he tells us ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... hereditary right of a royal family, because the empire never presented itself as a right, but merely as a personal power. The idea of legitimacy, I apprehend never connected itself with these dynasts who were, in fact, a series of usurpers, veiling their usurpation under republican forms. When the spirit which leads man to sacrifice himself to the good of the community appeared again it appeared in associations and notably in one great association formed not by the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... 18 Cha. II. 6.3. and 80 Cha. II. ch. 2. against the border moss-troopers; to which we may add the following curious extracts from Mercurius Politicus, a newspaper, published during the usurpation. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... summit of his power, fresh from Austrian conquest, viewed with alarm by England, whose rulers feared his strength and were distrustful of his friendship. Our Crown, our government, our society, had condoned his usurpation; he had kissed the Queen's cheek, bent her ministers to his will, ridden through her capital a triumphant and applauded guest. And now men read not only a cynical dissection of his character and disclosure of his early foibles, but the hideous details of his deceit and treachery, the phases of ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... bring the whole world under a liberal form of government—one that will bear the scrutiny of reason—one that in time may extinguish crime, and render poverty a thing of the past—one that is not a patent usurpation and a robbery—a robbery perhaps more criminal in the eyes of God than waylaying on the highroad, or piracy on the high seas—more criminal, because more extensive in its fatal effects. Anglo-Saxons wish to destroy despotism, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... nothing; his sympathies were heartfelt with the Arabs, his allegiance and his esprit de corps were with the service in which he was enrolled. He could not defend French usurpation; but neither could he condemn the Flag that had now become his Flag, and in which he had grown to feel much of national honor, to take ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... highest pitch the renown of their arms; sullied, however, by superstition and cruelty. An allusion to the inhumanities of the Inquisition terminates this picture. The LAST PART of the Poem opens with the state of Spain previous to the unparalleled treachery of BUONAPARTE, gives a sketch of the usurpation attempted upon that unsuspicious and friendly kingdom, and terminates with the arrival of the British succours. It may be further proper to mention, that the object of the Poem is less to commemorate or detail particular incidents, than to exhibit a general and impressive picture of the several ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... powers must be placed as a guard, a controul, a balance, to the powers of the monarch and the priest in every government; or else it would soon become the man of sin, the whore of Babylon, the mystery of iniquity, a great and detestable system of fraud, violence and usurpation. Their greatest concern seems to have been to establish a government of the church more consistent with the Scriptures, and a government of the state more agreeable to the dignity of human nature, than any they had seen in Europe: and to transmit such a government down to their posterity, with ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... August 25 of Sultan Hamid bin Thwain, the ruler of Zanzibar, the attempted usurpation by Seyyid Khalid, and the bombardment of the palace by the British warships, have directed public attention to this comparatively little known but important city on the east ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... been better far for the country had Brian been defeated, so that he, his son Morrogh, or any capable heir had survived, better for it indeed had he never ruled at all if this was to be end. By his successful usurpation the hereditary principle—always a weak one in Ireland—was broken down. The one chance of a settled central government was thus at an end. Every petty chief and princeling all over the island felt himself capable of emulating the achievements ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... That it is the natural right and most sacred duty of the women of these United States to rebel against the injustice, usurpation and tyranny of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... New Orleans for home this evening. Want of respect for Governor Wells personally, alone represses the expression of indignation felt by all honest and sensible men at the unwarranted usurpation of General Sheridan in removing the civil officers of Louisiana. It is believed here that you will reinstate Wells. He is a bad man, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... against all possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer at the hands of a government which in its need and haste must of course commit many errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly or indirectly help the enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the war. When the clamor against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes from those who have done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the attention it deserves. Doubtless there may prove to be wrongs ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and there winds slowly and solemnly under the overshadowing branches; there are no fences here, and the sharp lines of separation between road-bed and forest were long ago erased in that quiet usurpation of man's work, which Nature never fails to make the moment she is left to herself. The ancient spell of the woods is unbroken in this leafy solitude, and no traveller in whom imagination survives can hope to escape it. The deep breathings of primeval life are almost ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... Shellabarger. "I at once define and affirm it in a single sentence. It is, under our Constitution, possible to, and the late Rebellion did in fact, so overthrow and usurp, in the insurrectionary States, the loyal State Governments, as that during such usurpation such States and their people ceased to have any of the rights or powers of Government as States of the Union, and this loss of the rights and powers of Government was such that the United States may, and ought ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine



Words linked to "Usurpation" :   violation, wrongful conduct, seizure, usurp, capture, intrusion, misconduct, encroachment, gaining control, actus reus, inroad



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