"Despotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... public mind, just after freeing itself by an unexampled effort, from a bondage which it had endured for ages, would patiently submit to a tyranny which could plead no ancient title. Rome had at least prescription on its side. But Protestant intolerance, despotism in an upstart sect, infallibility claimed by guides who acknowledged that they had passed the greater part of their lives in error, restraints imposed on the liberty of private judgment at the pleasure of rulers who could vindicate their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a "wandering fire," leading us into dangerous morasses. And we perceived that at all times legislation at the bidding of the Executive, against the wishes of Irish members, was not self-government or free government. It was despotism. The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really "the rule of a dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a sixth part."[8] As this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... the same time, was entered by Mackenzie and traders of the N.W. Company, which in 1821 became amalgamated with the Hudson's Bay Company. For the next twenty-eight years the Hudson's Bay Company ruled this immense territory with beneficent despotism. In 1849 Vancouver Island was proclaimed a British colony. In 1858, consequent on the discovery of gold and the large influx of miners, the mainland territory was erected into a colony under the name of British Columbia, and in 1866 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... judgment. Unfortunately, however, for himself and for science, he acted otherwise. By admitting their authority, he revived in fresh force these obsolete and obnoxious enactments; and, by yielding to their power, he riveted for another century the almost broken chains of spiritual despotism. ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... and warmth. Here we march through a horrid desert—not a leaf, not a blade of grass—over the deep drifts of snow; and we find our admiration turns to horror. And this is the road that Hannibal trod, and Charlemagne, and Napoleon! They were fit conquerors of Rome, who could vanquish the sterner despotism ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Cotton and Ward framed their first code, Ward's portion was rejected by the colony as heathen,—that is, based on Greek and Roman models, not Mosaic,—and Cotton's was afterwards rebuked in England as "fanatical and absurd." But the government finally established was an ecclesiastical despotism, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had suffered. That a high member of the Government could have been assaulted with impunity in open day indicated a condition of affairs in the United States not unlike that of France at the time when Count Toliendal was judicially murdered by Louis XV. Washington City was an oligarchical despotism. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... to Bradley, was practically all the savage critic had to offer. Either go back to despotism or go ahead to no ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's historic doubts. The fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor excuse for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... group interests, and have used the authority they possessed to force the societal organization to work and fight for their interests. The force is that of the society itself. It is directed by the ruling class or persons. The force enters into the mores and becomes a component in them. Despotism is in the mores of negro tribes, and of all Mohammedan peoples. There is an element of force in all forms of property, marriage, and religion. Slavery, however, is the grandest case of force in the mores, employed ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... There appears to be no suspicion that the question is not properly stated. Doubtless the assertion will excite surprise, if heeded at all, that in fact the great struggle here and now is not between aristocracy or despotism on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Most people in the United States have come to entertain the fixed idea that the only natural political antagonisms are democratic as opposed to despotic in any and all shapes. And this idea has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... been punished, that is, she had submitted to control, and her sense of freedom, of privilege, of very being, was outraged. The mind flinches even from the control of natural law, and how much more from the despotism of its own separated likenesses, for if another can control me that other has usurped me, has become me, and how terribly I seem diminished by the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... say I felt a little relieved when it was ascertained for certain that the city was safe. I am no friend to despotism nor to political thraldom of any kind; but really it is impossible not to feel for the solemn aristocracies of German Grand-Duchies (who, if they be despots, are extremely amiable) when, poor people, they are in the least put out ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... succeeded in large measure in destroying the value of the measure. One can understand the attitude of Lord Clanricarde, who roundly denounced the whole proposal as "tainted with the callous levity of despotism," but it is difficult to speak charitably of the members of the Opposition, who, while repeatedly protesting their anxiety to see the evicted tenants restored, took care, through the agency of the House of Lords, to place ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... attorney-general, reported that 'It is astonishing to find the same savagery exhibited here as in France.' The habitants and lower class of townsfolk had beers well worked up 'to follow France and the United States by destroying a throne which was the seat of hypocrisy, imposture, despotism, greed, cruelty' and all the other deadly sins. The first step was to be the assassination of all obnoxious officials and leading British patriots the minute the promised invasion began to ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... learn that evil is not power. Its so- called despotism is but a phase of nothingness. Christian Science despoils the kingdom of evil, and pre-eminently 103:1 promotes affection and virtue in families and therefore in the community. The Apostle Paul refers to the 103:3 personification ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... answered another. "I'm loyal to my company; but Lord Selkirk can't set up a military despotism here. Been altogether better if we'd left ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... and wholly unused in great measure, to a system of government radically differing from that under which they have been educated. Can these diverse elements be brought to work in harmony with the American Idea? The centuries of subjection to absolutism, or even despotism, to which the ancestors of many of the immigrant classes have been accustomed, has formed a type of political character which cannot, except after long training, be brought into an understanding of, and sympathy with, republican ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... arts of war, by which the Roman emperors defended their extensive conquests, and preserved a military spirit, at a time when every other virtue was oppressed by luxury and despotism. If, in the consideration of their armies, we pass from their discipline to their numbers, we shall not find it easy to define them with any tolerable accuracy. We may compute, however, that the legion, which was itself ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... leaves room to doubt whether he approved this dreadful determination or not. What part he took in the catastrophe is still a mystery to the Russians: either they are ignorant on the subject, or they make a secret of the matter: the effect of despotism, which enjoins ignorance ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... title really belonged—to President Lincoln's youngest son—who was a small whirlwind of impetuous despotism; and woe to the man, woman or child who ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Englishman, Thomas Hobbes, began to think. He was, above all else, a literary man and a sociologist; he translated Thucydides and Homer, he wrote Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, which is a manual of despotism, demonstrating that all men in a natural state were beasts of prey with regard to one another, but that they escaped this unpleasant fate by submission to a prince who has all rights because he is perpetually saving his subjects from death, and who can therefore impose on them whatever he pleases, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... fire, and made me crave for power to avenge our wrongs! But alas! we were only slaves, and had no legal rights; consequently we were compelled to smother our wounded feelings, and crouch beneath the iron heel of despotism. ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... doubted that had the bent of the people been toward trade, the action of government would have been drawn into the same current. The great field of the colonies, also, was remote from the centre of that despotism which blighted the growth of old Spain. As it was, thousands of Spaniards, of the working as well as the upper classes, left Spain; and the occupations in which they engaged abroad sent home little but specie, or merchandise of small bulk, requiring but small tonnage. The mother-country ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Henry gave the stage his personal direction, gave it keenly, and gave it whole. He was the sole superintendent of his rehearsals, with Mr. Loveday as his working assistant, and Mr. Allen as his prompter. This despotism meant much less wasted time than when actor-manager, "producer," literary adviser, stage manager, and any one who likes to offer a suggestion are all competing in giving orders and advice to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... nation has a world-wide Empire embracing a fifth of the globe, founded on principles of absolute liberty for all whom it contains, and when another, built up by the force of circumstances on a basis of military despotism, also aspires to a different sort of world-power, and challenges the first nation, whose principles it abhors as much as its own are abhorred—in these circumstances it is hopeless to talk of reconciliation till one or the other is down. Actually, Germany's monstrous conduct in violating ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... Aaron Burr (without violation of established laws and customs) to raise troops for sea and land service, to aid this government or any other now struggling in the same cause against the despotism of Spain; provided that, in thus contending against the common enemy, he conform to established ordinances, the laws of nations, and the acknowledged usages among countries that aspire to emancipation ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... I cried. "There are times when a higher law than that of military despotism should control our actions. I am going there, orders or no orders. Ebers can command your detachment and accomplish all the service you possibly could. Your rightful place is between these ruffians and the woman you love. How many ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... dear mamma,' said Lady Harriet, kissing the stern uplifted face very fondly, 'I like a despotism better than a republic, and I must be very despotic over my ponies, for it is already getting very late for my drive round by Ash-holt.' But when she arrived at the Gibsons', she was detained so long there by the state of the family, that she had to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... one of them. Down, therefore, this monster came upon Gavin Muir, not to shoot blackcocks or muirfowl, in which it abounded, but to track, and start and pistol, if necessary, poor, shivering, half-starved human beings, who had dared to think the laws of their God more binding than the empire and despotism of sinful men. The game was a merry one, and it was played by "merry men all:" forward went the hound through muirs and mosses; onward came the troop, hallooing and encouraging the animal in pursuit of its horrid instincts. As ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... which demand a fair and open trial for every accused person, this was most abhorrent despotism. Yet it had one very important safeguard: it was not like the arbitrary will of a single tyrant doing things on the impulse of the moment. Indians are eminently deliberative. They are much given to discussing things and endlessly powwowing about ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Every time that the Russian people of our day have attempted to revindicate their rights, the reactionaries have used the Kaiser as a threat, proclaiming that he would come to their aid. One-half of the Russian aristocracy is German; the functionaries who advise and support despotism are Germans; German, too, are the generals who have distinguished themselves by massacring the people; German are the officials who undertake to punish the laborers' strikes and the rebellion of their allies. The reactionary Slav is brutal, but he has the fine sensibility of a race in which ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... restoring the States to the condition which they held prior to the rebellion, we should be cautious, lest, having rescued our nation from perils of threatened disintegration, we resort to consolidation, and in the end absolute despotism, as a remedy for the recurrence of similar troubles. The war having terminated, and with it all occasion for the exercise of powers of doubtful constitutionality, we should hasten to bring legislation within the boundaries ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... 1852.—Every despotism has a specially keen and hostile instinct for whatever keeps up human dignity, and independence. And it is curious to see scientific and realist teaching used everywhere as a means of stifling all freedom of investigation as addressed to moral ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... prisoners was apparently of less weight than the desire to gratify the court by their condemnation. The first president of parliament, Christopher de Thou, again headed the commission. The same pliant tool of despotism who had signed the death-warrant of Prince Louis of Conde, just before the sudden close of the brief reign of Francis the Second, and had congratulated Charles the Ninth, twelve years later, in the name of the judiciary of the kingdom, on the "piety" he had displayed ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... procession through narrowed lids. In theory he condemned equally the blind obstinacy of the authorities, who went on tightening the screw, and the foolhardiness of the men. But—well, he could not get his eye to shirk one of the screaming banners and placards: "Down with Despotism!" "Who so base as be a Slave!" by means of which the diggers sought to inflame popular indignation. "If only honest rebels could get on without melodramatic exaggeration! As it is, those good fellows yonder are rendering a just ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... with respect to their future prospects, yielded only a troubled and unutterable anxiety. Repining and supineness, however, were not suited to my father's character; for, with mildness, he united decision and even boldness of spirit. He had, for several years previous to this explosion of lordly despotism in the patron of his chapel, corresponded with some of his college friends in the new Republic of America; and had been encouraged by them, and through them, by one of the most distinguished of the American patriots, to leave his meagre benefice and cross the Atlantic. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... Florentine citizens and bankers. Following the proud and insolent traditions of his maternal ancestors, he began to discard the mask of civil urbanity with which Cosimo and Lorenzo had concealed their despotism. He treated the republic as though it were his own property, and prepared for the coming disasters of his race by the overbearing arrogance of his behaviour. Physically, he was powerful, tall, and active; fond of field-sports, and one of the best ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... this faith, is become to a vast party an idol, and from his writings issue oracles. But the priests at his shrines, having waxed fat in honors, have at last so befogged his sentiments and wrested his arguments, that thousands of true men regard him sorrowfully as the promoter of that Slavery-Despotism which to-day blooms in treason. It is worth our while, therefore, to seek to know whether Jefferson the god of the Oligarchs is Jefferson the Democrat. Let us, by the simplest and fairest process possible, try to come at his real opinions on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... these poor girls, the Comte de Granville, a wise and upright magistrate (though sometimes led away by politics), refrain from protecting the helpless little creatures from such crushing despotism? Alas! by mutual understanding, about ten years after marriage, he and his wife were separated while living under one roof. The father had taken upon himself the education of his sons, leaving that of the daughters to his wife. He saw less danger for women than for men in the application ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... history. But there was a third measure that provoked a new attack on the Government. The gracious words of the Mercury on the tax in kind came as an interlude in the midst of a bitter controversy. An editorial of the 12th of March headed "A Despotism over the Confederate States Proposed in Congress" amounted to a declaration of war. From this time forward the opposition and the Government drew steadily further and further apart and their ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Schlegel. Old Roman Law. A Divine, Inalienable Right. Extent of Parental Authority. False View of it. Correlative Relation between Filial Obedience and Parental Authority. Character and Extent of Filial Obedience. Neglect and Abuse of Home-Government. Parental Indulgence and Despotism. The True Medium. Address ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... sketched a scheme for murdering Bonaparte, Either—as in my haste I understood— By shooting from a window as he passed, Or by some other wry and stealthy means That haunt sad brains which brood on despotism, But lack the tools to justly cope therewith!... On later thoughts I feel not fully sure If, in my ferment, I did right in this. No; hail at once the man in charge of him, And give the word that he is to ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... advance of the power of the people in 1848 had been enormous. The dullest tyrant could hardly believe longer in the permanence of personal despotism. Even England, the stronghold of conservatism as well as of personal independence, was shifting her aristocratic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... oligarchy. Since then the country had been split into two factions, which were called the Hats and Caps. Encouraged by this division, as well as by the venality of the aristocratical senate, Gustavus III. resolved to erect the old monarchical despotism. His plans were matured with extreme secrecy and precaution. The mass of the army was gained over to his cause; the affections of the brave people of Dalecarlia, who had established the dynasty of Gustavus Vasa, were secured; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sensitive enough themselves, are selfishly relentless towards the sensitiveness of others. Moreover, though he was neither like Crimsworth nor Lord Tynedale, yet he was acrid, and, I suspected, overbearing in his way: there was a tone of despotism in the urgency of the very reproaches by which, he aimed at goading the oppressed into rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still more fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a resolution to arrogate ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... bequeathed to Humanity by preceding ages, and a movement towards that ideal of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which has in all times been the ideal of the popular masses. Fettered in its free development by despotism and by the narrow selfishness of the privileged classes, this movement, being at the same time favoured by an explosion of popular indignation, engendered the Great Revolution which had to force its way through the midst of a thousand obstacles ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin
... am uneasy and apprehensive; more so than during the war." Jay was never given to exaggeration of thought or expression; he must have been deeply impressed to write those words to Washington. "What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves," replied the equally conservative farmer of Mt. Vernon, "and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious." To Jefferson ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... man far more happily employed than in the composition of political pamphlets, or in the nurture of political discontent. Nay, when his friend Mr. Carlyle is about going out with Lord Elgin to Constantinople, the very headquarters of despotism, we do not perceive, amongst the multitude of most characteristic hints and queries which Paley addresses to him, a single fling at the Turk, or a single hope expressed that the day was not very far distant when the Cossacks would be permitted to erect the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... regularly under his command. James II increased them to 15,000, and by their means tried to overthrow the religion and the liberties of the nation. He was defeated and driven out; but his effort to establish a military despotism made the name of "standing army" stink in the nostrils of the nation. "It is indeed impossible," said one of the leading statesmen of the early eighteenth century, "that the liberties of the people ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present ...
— The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America • Thomas Jefferson
... this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, "Benevolence—Benevolence is Man." Under the regime of feudalism, which could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called "oriental ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... were laid on the horse-couper's success, but the knowing ones were taken in. Determined to ride the fore-horse herself, Meg would admit no helpmate who might soon assert the rights of a master; and so, in single blessedness, and with the despotism of Queen Bess herself, she ruled all matters with a high hand, not only over her men-servants and maid-servants, but over the stranger within her gates, who, if he ventured to oppose Meg's sovereign will and pleasure, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and his wife brought him twelve acres more. This land he cultivated well, and with a passion for the soil, as such, which amounted to frenzy. It alone had his love, and his wife and children trembled before him under a rude despotism. At seventy years of age he was still healthy, but his limbs were failing, and he reluctantly decided to divide his land between his children. He retained his house and garden, which had come to him with his wife, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Light fogs rose reluctantly from the river's bosom and dispersed in delicate vapors of opal and violet. The tangled banks of dripping bush shone freshly green in the misty light. The wilderness, grim and trenchant, reigned in unchallenged despotism. Solitude, soul-oppressing, unbroken but for the calls of feathered life, brooded over the birth of Jose's last day on the Magdalena. About midday the steamer touched at the little village of Bodega Central; but the iron-covered ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Court of Appeal is deduced, in the Historical Introduction, as a natural and logical consequence, from Henry VIII.'s Supremacy. Undoubtedly it is scarcely possible to overstate the all-grasping despotism of Henry VIII., and if a precedent for anything reckless of all separate rights and independence should be wanted, it would never be sought in vain if looked for in the policy and legislation of that reign. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... attitudes may be adopted by one who sees political and social evils, and desires to abolish them. The natural conservative dreams of a benevolent despotism as the surest path to improvement. This attitude Galds never held, for he was born an optimist, and believed in the regenerative power of human nature. The natural liberal believes in a reform obtainable through radical propaganda ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... was a Jesuit!" said Joachim; "he strove after an unrestrained despotism, and laid violent hands on the Charter. The expedition against Algiers was only a glittering fire-work arranged to flatter the national pride—all glitter and falseness! Like Peirronnet, through an embrace he would annihilate ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Queen of Naples, was energetic to excess, courageous to the point of heroism; she believed that severity and sometimes even cruelty was demanded of a sovereign; her religion amounted to superstition, her love of authority to despotism; she alternated between passionate devotion to pleasure and earnest zeal for her duty; she was ardent in her affections and implacable in resentment, intense in her joys and in her sorrows; she was often an unwise ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Despotism? Yes. It is the despotisms of the world that have been the conservators of civilization. It is the despot who, most powerful for mischief, is alone powerful for good. It is conceded that government is necessary—even by the "fierce democracies" ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... But it's a benevolent despotism. Well, mother wants Adela to accept him. In fact, she asked me if I didn't think you'd help us. Of course I ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... and the flatterers of the Queen-mother consequently found little difficulty in persuading her that ere long half the nation would rise to avenge her wrongs; that all the great nobles would rally round the Duc d'Orleans; and that the principal cities, weary of the despotism of Richelieu, would declare in favour of the heir-presumptive, in the event of the King still seeking to support his ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... speculations of all those who think, without thinking very profoundly, must daily extend its influence. A predominant inclination towards it appears in all those who have no religion, when otherwise their disposition leads them to be advocates even for despotism. Hence Hume, though I cannot say that he does not throw out some expressions of disapprobation on the proceedings of the levellers in the reign of Richard the Second, yet affirms that the doctrines of John Ball were "conformable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "I will tell him 'You did right!'" he cries, when she continues to urge him; and he does so! He realizes that the sovereign who summons him to judge himself, cannot have acted thus toward him, in order to play the Brutus, or from heartless despotism. It becomes clear to him that war, yes the State itself, rests upon the principle of subordination, and that the commander must first perform in his own person what he would require from his subordinates. He determines,—and this too, be it noted, in the presence of the girl he loves,—to make ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... attitude is revealed, for instance, in the opening words of his first speech on the floor of the Virginia Convention, to which he had been chosen a member from Richmond: "Mr. Chairman, I conceive that the object of the discussion now before us is whether democracy or despotism be most eligible.... The supporters of the Constitution claim the title of being firm friends of liberty and the rights of man ....We prefer this system because we think it a well-regulated democracy.... What are the favorite maxims of democracy? A strict observance of ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... is wished to describe any portion of the human race as in the lowest state of debasement, and under the most cruel oppression, in which it is possible for human beings to live, they are compared to slaves. When words are sought by which to stigmatize the most odious despotism, exercised in the most odious manner, and all other comparisons are found inadequate, the despots are said to be like slave-masters, or slave-drivers. What, by a rhetorical license, the worst oppressors of the human race, by way of stamping on them the most hateful ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... faithful spies, these honest Bartholos, these Pyrenean hounds, without their being able to ferret out, detect, nor even surmise the lover, the love-affair, or the smoke of the fire? At any rate it was certainly not the result of a struggle between the jailers and the prisoner, between the despotism of a dungeon and the liberty of a victim,—it was simply the never-ending repetition of the first scene played by man when the curtain of the Creation rose; it ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... revolution in Russia, the participation of the United States, and the solidarity, more or less effective, of all the democracies. It is the people's struggle for right, for liberty, for civilization against the dark forces of despotism and barbarism. Portugal would betray her historic mission were she now to fold her arms, the arms which discovered worlds. When the earth was given to man, it was not that it should be peopled by slaves. The sails of Portuguese ships surrounded ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... treaties, duty: feeble considerations these, to a heart letting loose its flamy passions; determining to rob the generous Germans of their liberties; to degrade thy equals; to extinguish 'Schism' (so called), and set up despotism on the wrecks ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... evolved, we are in this hour reminded of the dominating disposition of King Ahasuerus and the habits of those times. A distinguished man and a scholar in this closing nineteenth century claims that "the family is necessarily a despotism," and that man is ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... of despotism which the continental powers adopted for Europe and which they later proposed to extend to America. It was an attempt to make the world safe for autocracy. Wellington's protest at Verona marked the final withdrawal of England from the alliance which had ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... progress as warnings of coming oppression and curtailment of liberty, and a departure from the simple and ideal way. The abuses from which they suffered are no more; the methods which were unjust have been abandoned; the ignorance of the ruler has been dispelled; in place of despotism there is autonomy; justice rules where ignorance and bias sat; liberty where there was interference; protection for oppression; progress and civilization have increased as in no other epoch; and the nation and Government from which they severed themselves ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... sovereignty of the king could hope to count for little beside the real sovereignty of the earl, and the house of Kildare naturally loomed far larger and more imposingly in Ireland than the house of Tudor. Despotism in some form was the only practical and possible government, and Earl Gerald was all but despotic within the Pale, and even outside it was at any rate stronger than any other single individual. The Desmond Geraldines lived remote, the Butlers, who came next to the Geraldines in ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet, with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy.... It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him." (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking place lay in the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... import. The Dutch Republic originated in the opposition of the rational elements of human nature to sacerdotal dogmatism and persecution—in the courageous resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism. Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-embraces of a false Divinity with, a Humanity of impossible beauty, nor was the infant career of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness of its worshippers. "To maintain," ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as a pattern of administration a despotism such as the West has never experienced. It is inquisitorial, severe—sometimes, perhaps, wantonly cruel. But from the fearful pitfalls that encompass weakness it is certain to be sleeplessly vigilant and in the highest degree virile, forceful, and efficient. Now it will be asked ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... up his mind that for the present he would yield to his despotism, but afterwards, in the future, what was ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... schooling for citizenship was rigid, almost puritanical, but it produced wonderful results, both in peace and in war. [21] Men thus trained guided the destinies of Athens during some two centuries, and the despotism of the East as represented by Persia could not defeat them ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... and is a record of the achievements of the Assyrian kings, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib, and others. It would not be profitable to go over them. The Babylonian monarchy was before Assyria was founded. The government was a despotism with nothing to soften it, and the religion was the worship of many gods. Its history dates back from 913 to 659 years before the birth of Christ, though there are tablets which carry it back to 2330 A.D. The ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... before me as the parent of the latter time. By her the old battles between Freedom and Despotism were fought long ago, and the forms and principles of Liberty came forth, to pass, amid many vicissitudes, down ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... as they can possibly be; for poor Lucilla was no manager. Isn't it strange, the influence those little cottony women get over their husbands? You and I might try forever to establish such absolute despotism, all in vain. It is your whimpering sort that rule with the waving of a pocket-handkerchief; but poor, dear little woman, she is powerless now; and I suppose the next will be like unto her. Raguet would never look at any thing feminine that hadn't white eyes and pink hair (yellow, I mean, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... beavers exhibit the highest miracle of the State influencing the citizen; but no perceptible trace of the citizen influencing the State. You may, if you like, call the ants a democracy as you may call the bees a despotism. But I fancy that the architectural ant who attempted to introduce an art nouveau style of ant-hill would have a career as curt and fruitless as the celebrated bee who wanted to swarm alone. The isolation of this idea in humanity is akin to its religious ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Elizabeth, whose despotism was as peremptory as that of the Plantagenets, and whose ideas of the English constitution were limited in the highest degree, was, notwithstanding, more beloved by her subjects than any sovereign before or since. It was because, substantially, she was the people's sovereign; ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... long as they are aware of their limitations. But the tyranny of an oligarchy is the worst kind of tyranny, because it means the triumph of an average over individuals, whereas the worst that can be said of a despotism is that it is the triumph of an individual over an average. The tyranny of the specialistic oligarchy is making itself felt to-day, and I should like to fortify the revolutionary spirit of liberty, whose boast it is to detest tyranny in all its forms, whether it is the tyranny of an ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... are no longer legal tenders, they compel their creditors to take those very notes—having had a large quantity in their possession at the time that the banks suspended specie payments—an act of despotism which the English ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... social life. Within the Empire itself the Code Napoleon, conferring upon the subjects of France the benefits which the French had already won for themselves, had superseded a society resting on class-privilege, on feudal service, and on the despotism of custom, by a society resting on equality before the law, on freedom of contract, and on the unshackled ownership and enjoyment of land, whether the holder possessed an acre or a league. The principles of the French Code, if not the Code itself, had been introduced into ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... facts, I was persuaded that it was a premeditated and systematized plan of the British council to destroy the youths of our land, with a view thereby to deter the country and make it submit to their despotism: but as I could not do them any material service, and by any public attempt for that purpose I might endanger myself by frequenting places the most nauseous and contagious that could be conceived of, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... it. But in all the northern slaveholding states, it is comparatively mild. Its condition would be much alleviated, and the planter might sleep securely if he would abolish his barbarous laws, more congenial with Asiatic despotism than American republicanism, and provide for his slaves the benefits of wholesome instruction. Philanthropy and interest unite in their demands upon every southern planter to provide Sunday ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... malformation of any kind is very seldom seen; and, as we have said before, lunacy appears to be almost unknown. Such suicides as take place are usually well-premeditated acts, and are committed either out of revenge, or in obedience to the "despotism of custom." Statistics are impossible, and we offer our conclusions, founded upon observation alone, subject to whatever correction more scientific investigators may hereafter be ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the human spring is not broken at Venice, it is seen insensibly losing its elasticity. The government, changed into a suspicious despotism, elects a Mocenigo doge, a shameless speculator profiting on the public distress, instead of that Charles Zeno who had saved the country; it holds Zeno prisoner two years and entrusts the armies on the mainland to condottieri; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Russian Bolsheviks and their sympathisers and would-be imitators elsewhere is the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Let us consider what that means. Dictatorship means despotism, and whether it is that of a Tsar or a Kaiser, an oligarchy or a Bolshevik administration, it is despotism—nothing more and nothing less. Impatience with the slowness of the mass of the people is only to be expected in all who see what human existence could be made ...
— Bolshevism: A Curse & Danger to the Workers • Henry William Lee
... come within sight of their spires. For ramparts they had octroi walls, and in place of the death-dealing defiance of 1792 they now showed only the spasmodic vehemence or ironical resignation of an over-cultivated stock. As M. Charles de Remusat finely remarks on their varying moods, "The despotism which makes a constant show of prosperity gives men little fortitude to meet adversity." Doubtless the royalists, with Talleyrand as their factotum, worked to paralyze the defence; but they formed a small minority, and the masses would ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... read political history, the facts go to show that the fundamental principles of our Government are more opposed to the exercise of suffrage by women than are those of monarchies. To me it seems that both despotism and anarchy are more friendly to woman's political aspirations than is any form of constitutional government, and that manhood suffrage, and not womanhood suffrage, is the final result ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... find subsistence. Probably that of the Colorado is, as a whole, the most sterile and forbidding of any valley of equal size on earth, unless it be that of one of the usually frozen rivers in or near the Arctic circle. Even Mormon energy, industry, frugality and subservience to sacerdotal despotism, barely suffice to wrench a rude, coarse living from those narrow belts and patches of less niggard soil which skirt those infrequent lakes and scanty streams of the Great Basin which are susceptible of irrigation; mines alone (and they must be rich ones) can ever render populous the extensive ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whole. Look at India, there you have existing what we should become if we all followed your philosophy, they live in their own spiritual world, and are indifferent to any other, they endure first the despotism of their own government, then a foreign conqueror, and finally lose not only freedom and independence, but civilization, and become not exactly ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... The man who strenuously insists to himself upon his will, and cherishes in silence his dislike of whatever is contrary to it, is oftener a harder man to live with than one who is violently outspoken. Fenton was hardly conscious of the absolute despotism with which he ruled his home, but his wife was too susceptible to his moods not to feel keenly the unspoken protest with which he met any infringement upon his wishes or his pleasure. Tonight he was in good humor, and his sense of beauty was ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... oppression and misgovernment, doubtless Aristophanes would have lashed its members with his most biting sarcasms. It is just because Liberty is dear to his heart that he hates government by Demagogues; he would fain free the city from the despotism of a clique of wretched intriguers that oppressed her. But at the same time the Aristocracy favoured by our Author was not such as comes by birth and privilege, but such as is won and maintained by merit and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... of the finest portions of this quarter of the globe; countries in which man first emerged into civilization, literature, and knowledge; rich in climate and soil, but dreadfully degraded, oppressed, and impoverished by despotism. The exports from the European part of Turkey are carpets, fruit, saffron, silk, drugs, &c.: the principal port is Constantinople. From Asiatic Turkey there are exported rhubarb and other drugs, leather, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... loyalty which freedom gives. It had become rich, and enervated by luxury and ease. Solomon had civilised the Jewish kingdom, till it had become one of the greatest nations of the East; but it had become also, like the other nations of the East, a vast and gaudy despotism, hollow and rotten to the core; ready to fall to pieces at Solomon's death, by selfishness, disloyalty, and civil war. Therefore it was that Solomon hated all his labour that he had wrought under the sun; for all was vanity ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of experience are stubborn things; and the more open to reason the individual the more convincing the facts of experience. Ignorance, superstition, and fear recede in the presence of these Lights of man's intelligence, as do dogma and despotism, that seek to enslave the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... refusing to play the part of Judas, and had passed away in the fortress. Irene was found dead inside their small wooden hut, kneeling beside her bed. Her heart had broken! My little Snow Flower had been crushed under the iron heel of despotism. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... he The haughty monarch who the earth could rule, By his own furious passions was o'er-ruled: With pride his understanding was made dark, That he the truth knew not; and, by his lusts; The crushing burthen of his despotism; And by the fierceness of his wrath, the hearts Of men he turned from him. So to kings Be he example, that the tyrannous And iron rod breaks down at length the hand That wields it strongest: that by virtue alone And justice monarchs sway the hearts of men: For there hath God implanted love of these, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... stands on the faith of our fathers who created this Republic. The South stands for Constitutional freedom under the forms of established law. The North has lifted the red flag of revolution and proclaims the irresponsible despotism of an enthroned mob! ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... demeanour of horses in action; the course of a flying cannon-ball; the two ponderous troopers at the Horse Guards; Tom Tower and his Croats landing stores for our soldiers from the "Erminia." Or again, we have the light clear touches of a single line; "the decisiveness and consistency of despotism"—"the fractional and volatile interests in trading adventure which go by the name of Shares"—"the unlabelled, undocketed state of mind which shall enable a man to encounter the Unknown"—"the qualifying ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... of six millions of people. Notwithstanding the treatment that Ireland has received from England, which may be designated as a crime of three hundred years, the Irish still love Ireland. All the despotism in the world will never crush out of the Irish heart the love of home—the adoration of the old sod. The negroes of the South have certainly suffered enough to drive them into other countries; but after all, they prefer to stay where they were born. They ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... magnificence. Rome regal, throned on her eternal hills, With power supreme and wide-extended hand, Plundered the prostrate nations without stint Of all she coveted, and, chiefly thou, O Liberty, the birthright boon of Heaven. But Rome had passed her noon; her despotism Was overgrown; an earthquake was at work At her foundations; and new dynasties, Striking their roots in ripening revolutions, Were soon to sway the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... march was generally quiet, and we continued on to within a few miles of, and in sight of Paris, where we remained for a short time, coming up here with our allies the Prussians. They had already opened fire on that city of despotism, which was returned faintly by the enemy; but once the balance is turned, and once a man, however great, is defeated, all seem to forsake him, and he immediately becomes an usurper, as was shown to be true in this Napoleon's case. There is not a doubt that the populace would have held to him ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... was a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... sixteenth century, Spain was the incubus of Europe. Gloomy and portentous, she chilled the world with her baneful shadow. Her old feudal liberties were gone, absorbed in the despotism of Madrid. A tyranny of monks and inquisitors, with their swarms of spies and informers, their racks, their dungeons, and their fagots, crushed all freedom of thought or speech; and, while the Dominican held his reign of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... trust the sword and purse with a single assembly organized on principles so defective, so rotten? Though we might give to such a government certain powers with safety, yet to give them the full and unlimited powers of taxation and the national forces would be to establish a despotism, the definition of which is, a government in which all power is concentrated in a single body. To take the old Confederation and fashion it upon these principles would be establishing a power which would destroy the liberties of the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a sensible thought, more dependable indeed than Tom imagined, for in poor Alsace and Lorraine, of all places, people who loved their homes enough to remain in them under foreign despotism would probably continue living in them generation after generation. There is no moving day ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... The multiplication of bishops and endowment of the new bishoprics constituted another grievance. The troops had to be withdrawn, and in 1564 Granvelle left the Netherlands to join his master in Spain; but Philip's determination to bring the whole country into the system of Spanish despotism remained unchanged: and whereas the whole population was in favour of general religious toleration, he insisted, in the face of remonstrance, on intensifying instead of relaxing the edicts against the Reformed doctrines. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... grown By years of solitude,—that holds apart The past and future, giving the soul room To search into itself,—and long commune With this eternal silence;—more a god, In my long-suffering and strength to meet With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism ... Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart Envy, or scorn or hatred tears lifelong With vulture beak; yet the high ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... the finest old gabled houses I ever saw, Charley. I never tire in looking at them. They were the great houses of the time when the Duke of Alva made Antwerp the scene of his cruel despotism, and when the Inquisition carried death and misery into men's families. The oppressions of the Spaniards in this city sent many of the best manufacturers from the Low Countries to England; and ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... great holy syndicate no end of smaller charities which have been and are working efficiently. Again, the finally impenitent are to be cast off. Yes, that is just the rub. It will leave the good-for-nothings, many of them cast out as before. Nor will Booth's despotism do in the long run. But I am for the scheme and for old Booth too; but, nevertheless, there is both a limit and an end to all despotism and despotisms. But I am more favourable to the scheme than these ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... authority, the other the machinery of brute force—the church and the army, the mitre, and the sword, superstition and violence; with these, in all ages, have the multitude been subdued; and between these two representations of elemental despotism, clustered on a high wall, stood a crowd to watch the meek procession of worshippers, and the exactitude of the manual, or admire the spirited, yet controlled, evolutions of the officer on his noble charger. The whole scene typified France as ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... the world, nurtured in infancy, trained in childhood and matured into manhood, for one express purpose—to be hers alone. Her ownership ranged from absolute despotism to humble slavery, and he was ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... American states. Charging the administration, and especially John Quincy Adams, with subserviency to Great Britain, he demanded that the United States should become the center of a system against the despotism of the Old World and should act on its own responsibility. "We look too much abroad," said he. "Let us break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true Americans, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... and we know now that there is no hereditary "governing class" any more than a hereditary hooliganism. We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives. Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration, can at least recognize and appreciate ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... of Bolshevism and violence. Bolshevism cannot properly be judged by Western notions; it is not a revolutionary movement of the people; it is, as I have said before, the religious fanaticism of the Eastern Orthodox rising from the dead body of Tsarist despotism. Bolshevism, centralizing and bureaucratic, follows the same lines as the imperial policy of ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... without laws, and without honour, he is bound not to defend; nay, bound to redress by his own right hand that which he sees to be base in her. So sternly is this the law of Nature and life, that a nation once utterly corrupt can only be redeemed by a military despotism—never by talking, nor by its free effort. And the health of any state consists simply in this: that in it, those who are wisest shall also be strongest; its rulers should be also its soldiers; or, rather, by force of intellect more than of sword, its ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government—that is despotism. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Dr. Johnson and other authorities, was the first Whig. History tells us less about the first Radical—the first man who rebelled against the despotism of unintelligible customs, who asserted the rights of the individual against the claims of the tribal conscience, and who was eager to see society organized, off-hand, on what he thought a rational method. In the absence of history, we must fall back on that ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Yes. After many unhappy experiments in the direction of an ideal Republic, it was found that what may be described as a Despotism tempered by Dynamite provides, on the whole, the most satisfactory description of ruler—an autocrat who dares ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... twelvemonth; and you will see the flash and flame of French republicanism melting down every barrier of the Continent. The mob has the mob on its side for ever. The offer of liberty to men who have spent a thousand years under despotism, is irresistible. Light may blind, but who loves utter darkness? The soldier may melt down like the rest; he is a man, and may be a madman like the rest; he, too, is one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... said, by no means delightedly. "And wants you to go and live with her; or offered to make us an allowance, I suppose? At any rate, I won't have anything of that kind, Nell," he added, with fraternal despotism. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... peculiar in the streets of C—— than they had been, a few months before, in the streets of London. All this must be explained by the activity of the intercourse between France and America, and by the greater facility of the Americans in submitting to the despotism ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cardinal: "Unfortunately, as I was about to observe to your Eminence with regard to the Abbe Gabriel, unless they are very narrowly watched, the lower clergy have a tendency to become infected with dissenting views, and with ideas of rebellion against what they call the despotism of the bishops." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Her history is that of a nationality eager to attain the distinction of the first of powers. This fact, and this alone, can reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of her record. At one time the bold accuser of Despotism, she has with marvellous celerity turned to the inthralment of oppressed races. Maxim has superseded maxim, until her code of international law is a bewildering complication of anomaly and contradiction. To humble her rivals by every means, and to ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ascending from the plains to the tablelands of the Cordilleras, and abandoning a wandering life, would have subdued the civilized nations of Peru and New Grenada, overturned the throne of the Incas and of the Zaque,* and substituted for the despotism which is the fruit of theocracy, that despotism which arises from the patriarchal government of a pastoral people. (* The Zaque was the secular chief of Cundinamarca. His power was shared with the high priest (lama) of Iraca.) In the New World the human race has not experienced ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the like. He looked to education as the regenerating agent of the world,—that agent without the aid of which liberty runs into license, and the rule of the many, as he had witnessed it in terror-stricken France, may become one of the worst forms of despotism. He looked beyond mere pedagogical routine or formal learning, to the living spirit,—to the harmonious development of every human faculty and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... morganatic marriage with the gentle Marie, and she bore to him several children who were declared to be legitimate, and this happened notwithstanding the fact that the Emperor her husband was still living in anguish under a tyranny and cruel despotism instituted by the British oligarchy. This was the kind of anecdote that filled the sailors with sympathy for the great man who in the decline of his days was at the mercy of a lot of little men. Then they had stories of how he could throw off the thought of his wretched position, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Mexican brethren. The achievement of their independence of old Spain is no longer a question. But it is a very serious one what will then become of them. Ignorance and bigotry, like other insanities, are incapable of self-government. They will fall under military despotism, and become the murderous tools of their respective Bonapartes. No one I hope can doubt my wish to see them and all mankind exercising self-government. But the question is not what we wish—but what is practicable. ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... had fallen from their roofs and sides. At the top of each vault there was a man-hole for letting a prisoner down with cords into it. A visit to these six vaults of the Mamertine Prison gives one an idea that can never be forgotten of the cruelty and tyranny which underlay all the gorgeous despotism of Rome, alike in the kingly, republican, and imperial periods. Some of the remains may still be seen of the Scalae Gemoniae, the "steps of sighs," down which the bodies of those who were executed were thrown, to be exposed to the insults of ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... against him. The anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red moment, to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy night of despotism. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... true to life, of the democracy of despotism in which the express and combined will of the people is the only absolute law. Hence Russian autocracy is forced into repeated wars for the possession of Constantinople which, in the present condition of the Empire, would be an unmitigated evil to her and would be only too glad to see ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the feebleness of the central government, the French reformers demanded more government, and the English reformers less government.... The solution seems to be easy. In France, reformers such as Turgot and the economists were in favour of an enlightened despotism, because ... it would suppress the exclusive privileges of a class which, doing nothing in return, had become a mere burthen, encumbering all social development. But in England the privileged class was identical with ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... liberty, unless a remedy is found under the law of our national evolution. This remedy that law gives as follows: That the people must defend their liberties and "the rise of the individual," against this industrial despotism of money kings, railroad barons, political bosses, etc., better than they defended themselves against the foreign tyrants in 1775, or the slaveocrats of 1861,—to-wit, by organizing an army for their peaceful protection and safety—A free Army of Industry—before an army for war shall ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... antagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion are precisely the richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the most secure which is most completely illumined by reason. Religion at its best is not a dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical and destructive faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion on which it is exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and clamour of disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we have seen, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... the constitution of the mind did not permit them to bring one passion into the field against another? passions that operate in the human breast, like poisons of a different nature, extinguishing each other's effect. Our hero's grief reigned in full despotism, until it was deposed by revenge, during the predominancy of which he considered everything which had happened as a circumstance conducive to its gratification. "If I must be prisoner for life," said he to himself, "if I must relinquish all ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... despotism of all power of propagation on Russian soil, the noble spirit of Russian literature has by a force I cannot but call divine been allowed to be propagated on foreign soil; and if the literature of the west, which is now stagnating in ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... by other means, for what purpose they may have come; for you must be aware, Master Armitage, that the times are dangerous, and people's minds are various. In attempting to free ourselves from what we considered despotism, we have created for ourselves a worse despotism, and one that is less endurable. It is to be hoped that what has passed will make not only kings but subjects wiser than they have been. Now, what do ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... 1554, probably, Knox left Dieppe for Geneva, where he could consult Calvin, not yet secure in his despotism, though he had recently burned Servetus. Next he went to Zurich, and laid certain questions before Bullinger, who gave answers in writing as to ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... in official positions in and about the palace, as well as trusting some of the positions of the highest importance to the class. From her epoch, eunuchism has become an inseparable attendant on Oriental despotism, and has so continued to the present day. Like yellow fever, phthisis, and some diseases, as well as many other social afflictions and customs, eunuchism does not seem to flourish beyond certain degrees of north and south latitudes,—a fact that probably ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... the zeal of Christian missions judiciously directed to reclaim such a people from utter barbarism, and induce them to become true members of a faith which teaches forbearance and charity between man and man, and inculcates, with the love and hope of heaven, an abhorrence of despotism and blood, and a disposition to live in good-will and peace with all our fellow-creatures? There are here no prejudices of caste, as in India, to impede the missionaries' progress. Mr. Brooke has pointed out what may be effected ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... savagery and that of his brutal Spanish soldiers made the Netherlands a theatre of horror—and of heroism. The revolt in the southern provinces, now Belgium, was finally put down. The inhabitants there were mostly Catholics, and their strife was only against the general despotism and cruelty of Spain. But the North would never yield. The terrific siege of Leyden, with its accompanying horrors of starvation and defiance, is world-famed.[9] In 1581 Holland finally proclaimed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... sculpture, and a public library. Nothing escaped his notice, even to such minutiae as the alteration of Russian letters to make them more adapted to printing, and changing the dress of his subjects so as to be more in conformity with European costume. All this interference savoured of despotism, no doubt, but it led to the consolidation of a great nationality. The Russians belong to the European family, and must of necessity return to fulfil their destiny, although they had been temporarily diverted from their bondage under the Mongols. Owing to the mistake Peter ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... and it has a right, also, to establish those regulations which shall best promote the good of the whole population. Now, what political organization is most desirable for a particular people, depends on circumstances; but, whatever be that adopted, whether democracy, or despotism, or piratical confederation, the rights of man, as a human being, are trenched upon; and visionary have proved and will prove all projects of constructing and fashioning society according to philosophical ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... been done by other French political leaders, except that their measures were more trenchant than have been those of later statesmen of their country. The reason why the Revolution led to a military despotism was, that no party would tolerate its political foes, much less protect them in the exercise of the right of free discussion and legal action. The execution of Louis XVI. was but a solitary incident in the game that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various |
