"The Great Charter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the king's proclamation against vice and immorality, that which, without any constitution, keeps rulers in awe, force, and the spirit to use it. Parliaments, it is true, were rarely held, and were not very respectfully treated. The great charter was often violated. But the people had a security against gross and systematic misgovernment, far stronger than all the parchment that was ever marked with the sign-manual, and than all the wax that was ever ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... affections became more closely united to the place. "We love it so much," the parents are recorded to have said, "that we have chosen it as the place of sepulture for us and our heirs, and have already buried there our eldest son." Further and more extended benefactions followed. By the great charter, of date 1200, Inchaffray was endowed with the Churches of St. Kattanus of Abruthven, St. Ethernanus of Maderty, St. Patrick of Strogeath, St. Meckessok of Auchterarder, and St. Beanus of Kinkell; with tithe of the Earl's kain and rents of wheat, meal, malt, cheese, and all provisions ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... individual enterprise. He accepts the good old English principle that the man who pays taxes should have a voice in spending them; but he appeals not to an abstract political principle but to tradition. The reformer, as so often happens, calls himself a restorer; his political bible begins with the great charter and comes down to the settlement of 1688. Meanwhile the true revolutionary movement—represented by Paine and Godwin, appeals to the doctrines of natural equality and the rights of man. It is unequivocally democratic, and implies a growing cleavage between the working man and the capitalists. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... the better ordering of territories and tribes. That assembly was convened a half-century before the famous meeting between King John and his barons, at Runnymead among the Windsor meadows; and the seed then sown might have brought forth fruit as full of promise and potency for the future as the Great Charter itself. The contrast between these two historic assemblies is instructive. In the one case, we have a provincial king from the rich and beautiful country beyond the Shannon, gradually gaining such influence over the kings of the provinces and the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... as well as religion, has its superstitions. These, gaining strength with time, may one day give imaginary value to this relic for its association with the birth of the great charter of our independence. ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... justice and members of the bar of this country have done something to elevate the character of the profession of the law. I hope that the discussions above (in Congress) have done something to meliorate the condition of the human race, to secure and extend the great charter of human rights, and to strengthen and advance the great principles of human liberty. But I contend that no literary efforts, no adjudications, no constitutional discussions, nothing that has been done or said in favor of the great interests of universal ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... memory of a prince who indulged their passions and promoted their interest. Constantine gave them security, wealth, honors, and revenge; and the support of the orthodox faith was considered as the most sacred and important duty of the civil magistrate. The edict of Milan, the great charter of toleration, had confirmed to each individual of the Roman world the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion. But this inestimable privilege was soon violated; with the knowledge of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... soil, and acting in harmony with the national sentiment. God has created Ireland with the needs of a separate nation, and with the needs are associated the rights. 'Our patent to be a State, not a shire,' said Goold in 1799, 'comes direct from Heaven. The Almighty has in majestic characters signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. We plunged into the wave with the great charter of freedom in our teeth because the faggot and torch were behind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path, towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various |
