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noun
Polity  n.  (pl. polities)  
1.
The form or constitution of the civil government of a nation or state; the framework or organization by which the various departments of government are combined into a systematic whole.
2.
Hence: The form or constitution by which any institution is organized; the recognized principles which lie at the foundation of any human institution. "Nor is possible that any form of polity, much less polity ecclesiastical, should be good, unless God himself be author of it."
3.
Policy; art; management. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Policy. Polity, Policy. These two words were originally the same. Polity is now confined to the structure of a government; as, civil or ecclesiastical polity; while policy is applied to the scheme of management of public affairs with reference to some aim or result; as, foreign or domestic policy. Policy has the further sense of skillful or cunning management.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Polity" Quotes from Famous Books



... which Hammurabi, the powerful king, settled, and caused the land to receive a sure polity and a ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... for a cathedral, and finds the State House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of God was not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men's hands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be best achieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants have of late years taken to decorating their places of worship, and Trinity Church (by H.H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitious and beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old Old South ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... woman, whom my father has chosen for me; whom I expect here to-morrow? And must I, then, be told 'tis criminal to love my poor, deserted Mary, because our hearts are illicitly attach'd? Illicit for the heart? fine phraseology! Nature disowns the restriction; I cannot smother her dictates with the polity of governments, and fall in, or out of love, ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman

... of one who opens a discussion which he cannot end, and the logical result of whose own opinion he dares not boldly state. The illustrations of the early opinions of Madison and Jefferson only show how permanent a factor the negro is in American history and polity, and how utterly futile are all attempts at his expatriation. Following Mr. Parton's advice, the negro has always prudently abstained from putting 'himself against inexorable facts.' He is careful, however, to make sure of two things,—that the alleged facts are verities and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... fists, and principles of no less eternal justice in the tumultuous detectors of a pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which an execution is surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than an hundred volumes of abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man, in all ages, has leaned to order and good government. Thus an art of extracting morality, from the commonest incidents of a town life, is attained by the same well-natured alchemy, with which the Foresters of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... they were cousins who grew up as children commonly do, whether in house or wigwam: they roamed the woods and hills together, filled their baskets with flowers and berries, and fell in love. But the marriage of cousins was forbidden in the Mohegan polity, and when they reached an age in which they found companionship most delightful their rambles were interdicted and they were even told to avoid each other. This had the usual effect, and they met on islands in the lake at frequent intervals, to the torment of one Nockawando, who wished to ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... Heat soon followed: but what of these? Shame, divine Shame (Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... a European nation. They were retarded in their advances by relations and compromises with other nations. The Anglo-Saxon, when translated to the wilds of America, needed only a stopping-place in order to found a peculiar and exclusive polity, which should enable him to march ever onward in his aggressions ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... and public fellowship, and lays down the position that the former is allowable between all Christians, recognizing one another as such, whatever their differences respecting minor points and church polity. The second is a scriptural exposition of the subject of lay-preaching, as it is now termed. The third is a defence of those who occasionally, and merely for the sake of hearing, attend upon the ministrations of the established clergy. An appendix to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... really and well; but he was averse to abstract and wide reasonings. Principles he rejoiced in: he worked with them as with his choicest weapons; they were the polished stones for his sling, against the Goliaths of presumption, error, and tyranny in thought or in polity, civil or ecclesiastical; but he somehow divined a principle, or got at it naked and alone, rather than deduced it and brought it to a point from an immensity of particulars, and then rendered it back so as to bind them into one cosmos. One of my young friends now ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... States; some of its provisions are imported from the British colonies, whilst others are apparently the inventions of the unknown and irresponsible Abbe Sieyes, who is the ingenious constitution-maker of the Cabinet. But the new polity as a whole resembles in its essence neither the American Commonwealth nor the Canadian Dominion, nor the Government either of New Zealand or of any other self-governing colony. It is an attempt—its admirers may think an ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... the Protestant Party. Defection of the radicals: the Anabaptists. Defection of the intellectuals: Erasmus. The Sacramentarian Schism: Zwingli. Growth of the Lutheran party among the upper and middle classes. Luther's ecclesiastical polity. Accession of many Free Cities, of Ernestine Saxony, Hesse, Prussia. Balance of Power. The Recess of Spires 1529; ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... insufficiency of British Imperialism is that it is British; when it is not merely Jewish. It is that just as a man is no more than a man, so a nation is no more than a nation; and any nation is inadequate as an international model. Any state looks small when it occupies the whole earth. Any polity is narrow as soon as it is as wide as the world. It would be just the same if Ireland began to paint the map green or Montenegro were to paint it black. The objection to spreading anything all over ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... mixture of religion with civil polity, gave permanence and stability to the Roman institutions; notwithstanding all the changes and revolutions in the government the old forms were preserved; and thus, though the city was taken by Porsenna, and burned by the Gauls, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... features and prohibitions which cramped and crippled the energies of the Church in the prosecution of her sublime mission, and that it no longer reflected the views of the whole Synod." The Holston Synod, then, did not model her polity after that of the mother synod. (Minutes, 1886.) But, while this was undoubtedly a progress in the right direction, the strict Lutheranism of the Holston Synod did not prove to be as pronounced and consistent as that of the Tennessee Synod had been. In 1886 the Holston Synod numbered 15 pastors ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... The Colonists contended that in proclaiming "no taxation without representation," they were appealing to a principle of Anglo-Saxon liberty inherent in their race. When King George, or any one else, denied this principle, he denied an essential without which Anglo-Saxon polity could not survive, but neither King George nor Lord North accepted the premises. If they had condescended to reply at all, they might have sung the hymn of their successors a ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... will readily find Isaac Reed, the editor. If you look for Molinaeus or Du Moulin, it is not there, but alphabetic vicinity gives you the good fortune to become acquainted with "Moule, Mr, his Bibliotheca Heraldica." The name Hooker will be found, not to guide the reader to the Ecclesiastical Polity, but to Dr Jackson Hooker's Tour in Iceland. Lastly, if any one shall search for Hartley on Man, he will find in the place it might occupy, or has reference to, the editorial ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... and so of the rest. And, which is yet worse, let every one but dive into his own bosom, and he will find his private wishes spring and his secret hopes grow up at another's expense. Upon which consideration it comes into my head, that nature does not in this swerve from her general polity; for physicians hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of every thing is the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... most opulent and enlightened part of the great European family. Rome, in the meantime, warned by that fearful danger from which the exterminating swords of her crusaders had narrowly saved her, proceeded to revise and to strengthen her whole system of polity. At this period were instituted the Order of Francis, the Order of Dominic, the Tribunal of the Inquisition. The new spiritual police was everywhere. No alley in a great city, no hamlet on a remote mountain, was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the Hebrew race; and for the fulfilment of this end they were located in a favored country, separated from other nations by mountains, deserts, and seas, and yet capable by cultivation of sustaining a great population, while they were governed by a polity tending to keep them a distinct, isolated, and peculiar people. To the descendants of Ham and Japhet were given cities, political power, material civilization; but in the tents of Shem religion was to dwell. "From first to last," says Geikie, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... extraordinary young men, who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary. When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, or books, or religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an active profession, and the forming Colossus[358] shrinks to the common size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... criticism exonerate them from the reproach at least of having witnessed without protestation the barbarous cruelties practised in the name of heaven; and the eminent names of Bishop Jewell, the great apologist of the English Church, and of the author of the 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' among others less eminent, may be claimed by the advocates of witchcraft as respectable authorities in the Established Church. The 'judicious' Hooker affirms that the evil spirits are dispersed, some in the air, some on the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... Russell ("A.E."), the poet-prophet of Irish agriculture, bases his whole conception of a desirable polity for the Irish State upon cooperative communities, and considers cooperative societies as a prerequisite to rural organization. After describing the marked economic and social changes which have taken ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... of trifles to behold: Proud peers—a nation's polity unrolled— Customs, pursuits—its clans, and how they fight, Slight things I labour; not for glory slight, If Heaven attend and Phoebus hearken me. First, then, for site. Seek and instal ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of fanatics he will not asperse the Government or the Church, the laws or the literature of England. Remembering that we are at peace with that power—that the most wholesome portions of our polity are modelled from hers—that we kneel at shrines and speak a language common to both, he will not flagitiously and foolishly advert to ancient animosities, nor with rash hand attempt to hurl the brand of discord between the nations." In the same connection he ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... How many a glance was toward her beauty bent Admiringly. In those primeval days The aristocracy that won respect, Sprang not from wealth alone, but laid its base In goodness and in virtue. Thus she held Her healthful influence in society Without gainsaying voice. The polity Of woman's realm,—sweet home,—those inner cares And countless details that promote its peace, Prosperity and order, were not deem'd Beneath the highest then, nor wholly left To hireling hands. This science she upheld, And with her circle of accomplishments And charms so ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... polity what is seemly; justice weighs and decides, polity surveys and orders; justice refers to the individual, polity to ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... sons of the Puritans he had exasperated by styling them the grand inquisitors of private life, and by asserting that a low sort of tyranny over domestic affairs was the direct result of their religious polity. He had roused the resentment of the survivors of the old Federalist party by declaring that its design during the war of 1812 had been disunion, and that in secret many of them still longed for a restoration of monarchy, and sighed for ribbons, stars, and garters. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... strength, politically speaking, lies in a recognition of expediency, complemented by respect for the established fact. One of the facts particularly clear to them is the suitability to their minds, their tempers, their habits, of a system of polity which has been established by the slow effort of generations within this sea-girt realm. They have nothing to do with ideals: they never trouble themselves to think about the Rights of Man. If you talk to them (long enough) about the rights of the shopman, or ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... The more it exercises its muscles in pulling men out of their pits, the more dexterous, powerful, and altogether desirable it will be, because the world will need it, and it will no longer appeal only to those who prefer its form of worship or have a bias towards its particular church polity. The law of demand and supply should be recognized as applying equally to the church as to other agencies. The desire to be needed, to find work, and not merely to be a big party product can alone develop communions able to remove the stigma of ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... of the history of China, a mighty nation which has "witnessed the rise to glory and the decay of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and still remains the only monument of ages long bygone," of its manners and polity, customs and religions, and of the extraordinary difficulties in the acquirement of its language, too often forgetful that the Chinese are a people whose "prepossessions and prejudices and cherished judgments are the growth ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... architecture are moral laws, as applicable to the building of character as to the construction of cathedrals. He finds those laws to be Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and, as the crowning grace of all, that principle to which Polity owes its stability, Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance, and Creation its continuance—Obedience. He holds that there is no such thing as liberty, and never can be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not. Man ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... having given the whole world into his hand, nor can Germany at the present period have a wish ungratified, Napoleon having reorganized her as the nursery of European civilization. Too sublime to condescend to every-day polity, he has given durability to Germany! Happy nation! what an interminable vista of glory opens to thy view!" Thus spoke John Mueller. Thousands of Germans had been converted into abject slaves, but none other than he was there ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... forgetting to inquire how much is to be understood as included in that good order, that deference and subordination, which the possession of more mind and knowledge by the people might disturb or destroy. May not the notion of it, as entertained by some persons, be rather an image of the polity of an age long past, or of that which remains unaltered as if it were a part of eternal nature in the dominions of the East, than a model for the conformation of society here in the present times? Is it required, that ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... already mentioned. And the moment we draw this line as an exponent of the mental and spiritual thought-life of the different peoples, we shall find it not only molding their language forms, both written and spoken, but manifest as well in their art, philosophy, and even their social polity. And of course we must be fair in our comparisons, and not set a Chinese coolie in the concrete against an English statesman, nor any concrete example of another kind of culture in its decay with the highest ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates

... vivid pictures of the religious and civil polity of the Aztecs, and of everyday life, as he imagines it, in the streets and market-places of the magnificent capital ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... to the Israelites, were greater than persons of their own nation could hold out to them, these wealthy Strangers would naturally procure the poorer Israelites for servants. See Levit. xxv. 47. In a word, such was the political condition of the Strangers, the Jewish polity furnished a strong motive to them, to become servants, thus incorporating themselves with the nation, and procuring those social and religious privileges already enumerated, and for their children in the second ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... more sober view of his character and history; while those of a later date surround their hero with a halo of extravagant admiration. Alexander Knox, a personal friend of Wesley's, thus writes of him: "How was he competent to form a religious polity so compact, effective and permanent? I can only express my firm conviction that he was totally incapable of preconceiving such a scheme. * * * * That he had uncommon acuteness in fitting expedients to conjunctures ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various

... will be unrivalled on earth, possessed of great prowess, he will be the king of all kings of the earth. Foremost among all the Surasenas, the puissant one, residing at Dwaraka, will rule and protect the whole earth after vanquishing all her lords, conversant as he will be with the science of polity. Assembling together, do ye all adore Him, as ye adore the Eternal Brahman, with speech, floral wreaths, and excellent incense and perfumes. He who wishes to see me or the Grandsire Brahma should first ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... falsehood; whether, on the whole, it had been better or worse for the cause of Christianity, had no such organization ever existed; whether her claims be groundless or well-founded, are questions foreign to our purpose. But that her polity is the most powerful—the best adapted to the ends she has in view—of all that man has hitherto invented, there can be no doubt. Her missionaries have been more numerous and more successful, ay, and more devoted, than ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... with bullets and bayonets, when it had been fondly hoped that the ballot would ever be a sufficiently formidable weapon in the hand of the American citizen, and that he never would have to become the citizen-soldier in a civil contest. Had Hamilton been allowed to shape our national polity, it would have worked as successfully for ages as that financial system which he formed has ever worked, and which has never been departed from without the result being most injurious to the country. At this day, when events have so signally ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... domestic senate, being dictated with no other view than to promote the general welfare; concerted with such children as were come to years of maturity, and accepted by the inferiors with a full and free consent; were religiously kept and preserved in families as an hereditary polity, to which they owed ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... brilliant passages in the history of Spanish adventure in the New World are undoubtedly afforded by the conquests of Mexico and Peru—the two states which combined with the largest extent of empire a refined social polity, and considerable progress in the arts of civilization. Indeed, so prominently do they stand out on the great canvas of history, that the name of the one, notwithstanding the contrast they exhibit in their respective institutions, most ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... democratic and Republican. But patience! This same people will one day demand that the public thing be the people's thing. I need not tell you how insolent, unregulated, and contrary to Scriptural polity such claims seem to me. But the people will make them, and enforce them, and then there will be an end of the present government. The moment cannot now be far distant; and it is then that we ought to act in the interests ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... between the policy of Alexander and the cosmopolitan teaching of Zeno. De Alexandri Magni virtute, i. Sec. 6.] It soon became familiar, popularised by the most popular of the later philosophies of Greece; and just as it had been implied in the imperial aspiration and polity of Alexander, so it was implied, still more clearly, in the imperial theory of Rome. The idea of the Roman Empire, its theoretical justification, might be described as the realisation of the unity of the world by the establishment of a common order, the unification of mankind in ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... not stay to hear what I say!" cried Tant Sannie. "There, take your Polity-gollity-gominy, your devil's book!" she cried, flinging the book at his head ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... sovereigns. While some retained the episcopate, others greatly modified it or rejected it altogether. In forms of worship, ritual, and other things numerous changes were also made. But notwithstanding the diversity in forms of worship and in church polity, in two respects there was perfect agreement among all the Reformed churches—two things brought over from the papacy—namely, first, the idea of a self-perpetuating clerical caste possessing in their corporate capacity legislative and judicial authority over the church; and second, ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... Princess, translated by Brathwaite from Mariano Silesio, a kind of metaphorical manual of judicial polity, is in no way pastoral. It may be remarked that in 1627 there appeared as the work of one I. D. B. an 'Eclogue, ou Chant Pastoral,' on the marriage (1625) of Charles and Henrietta Maria, in which two Scotch Shepherds, Robin and Jacquet, discourse ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... that "This wonderful philosopher explored and developed the true foundations of human knowledge, with a sagacity and penetration unparalleled in the history of mankind." What Clement VIII. applied to the eight books of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, may well apply to the writings of Bacon:—"there is no learning that this man hath not searched into. His books will get reverence by age, for there is in them such seeds of eternity, that they will continue till the last fire shall devour all learning." Monsieur Thomas, in ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... the century will have to record the marvellous fact that while in the reign of Queen Victoria there was initiated, formulated, and methodised an entirely new cosmogony, its most powerful and highly-gifted man of letters was preaching a polity and a philosophy of history that would have better harmonised with the time of Queen Semiramis. . . . Long before he launched his sarcasms at human progress, there had been a conviction among thinkers that it was not the hero that developed the race, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... the inventors and the original of book-licensing ripped up and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity or church; nor by any statute left us by our ancestors elder or later; nor from the modern custom of any reformed city or church abroad, but from the most anti-christian council and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever inquired. Till then books were ever as freely admitted ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... a critic of public affairs, and, in a measure, therefore, an item of that public opinion which moulded governments. Hence he had a finger, though but a little finger, in the destiny of nations and in the polity—a grand word that!—of national councils. He wrote frequent letters, thus, to the lesser weekly journals; these letters were sometimes printed; occasionally—oh, joy!—they were answered by others like himself, who referred to him as 'your esteemed correspondent.' As yet, however, his following ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... however, some able and experienced statesmen. They were convinced that instead of teasing the nation by holding out the probability of the restoration of ancient privileges, it was the duty of government to tranquillize the country by guaranteeing the stability of the new system of polity. These ministers were aware of the impolicy of attempting to re-establish the monarchy on its ancient principles; because by such an attempt it would be deprived of the only advantage which it possessed over the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal source of modern culture. Their moral traits are not so admirable. As a race they were less truthful, and less marked ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... the fierce, bitter strife of man with fellow-man be ended? And oh! when shall desolating war forever cease, and the bloody records of the past be viewed as monster distortions of a maddened brain? These things shall be when the polity of the world is changed. When statesmen cease their political, and prelates their ecclesiastical intrigues; when monarch, and noble, and peasant, alike cast selfishness and dissimulation far from them; when the Bible is the text-book of the world, and the golden rule observed ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... find—our fathers contending unremittingly for "the inalienable right, when formed into political communities, to exercise exclusive power of legislation in their local legislatures in respect to all things affecting their internal polity—slavery not excepted."[797] ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... not antagonistic indeed, but still, by the necessity of its position, a rival power—a new commercial star, before which all other stars, whatever their brightness had been, paled and waned—a new factor in the polity of nations, whereof account had of necessity to be taken; a new trade-centre, which could not but supersede to a great extent all former trade-centres, and which, however unwillingly, as it rose, and advanced, and prospered, tended to dim, obscure, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... after all, what worked most to the young carpenter's disadvantage was, first, the reserve and sternness of his natural disposition, and next, the fact of his not being a church-communicant, and the suspicion of his holding heretical tenets in matters of religion and polity. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... gardener in clearing a patch of waste ground. If he relaxes his efforts to maintain the state of art within the garden, weeds will overrun it and the state of nature will return. So the human race is doomed to a constant struggle to maintain the state of art of an organized polity in opposition to the state of nature; to substitute as far as possible social progress for cosmic evolution. ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... these shall be embodied, we must discover for ourselves in each age. It is the norm of our life with God; but it is not a standard fixing our scientific views, our theological opinions, our ecclesiastical polity, our economic or political theories. It shows forth the spirit we should manifest towards God and towards one another as individuals, and families, and nations; "and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... cause of absolute monarchy, or of any narrow form of oligarchy, or to exaggerate the evils of popular government. Our object at present is, not so much to attack or defend any particular system of polity, as to expose the vices of a kind of reasoning utterly unfit for moral and political discussions; of a kind of reasoning which may so readily be turned to purposes of falsehood that it ought to receive no quarter, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of great men! Could some of these the originators of new beliefs, of new methods in Art, of new systems of state and ecclesiastical polity, of novel modes of practice in medicine, and the like.—"revisit the pale glimpses of the moon," and look upon the streams of blood and misery that have flowed from fountains they have unsealed, they would skulk back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... parts of society in order of importance as follows: the People; the Gods; the Sovereign: and this has been a cardinal principle in Chinese polity. He saw clearly that the Chow dynasty could never be revived; and arrived at the conclusion that a dynasty was only sacred while it retained the "mandate of heaven." Chow had lost that; and therefore it was within the rights of Heaven, as you may say, to place its mandate elsewhere;—and within ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... would be perfectly sincere, should enclose it in quotation marks. Whole nations go for centuries without coining names for certain virtues; is it credible that among other peoples, where the names exists the need for them is epidemic? The author of the Ecclesiastial Polity puts a bolder and truer face on the matter. "Concerning that Faith, Hope, and Charity," he writes, "without which there can be no salvation, was there ever any mention made saving only in that ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... attention of England, and the events which immediately followed in rapid and striking succession raised interest into excitement, and excitement into passion. Men who had been accustomed from their childhood to regard the Monarchy of France as the type of a splendid, powerful, and enduring polity now saw a National Army constituted in complete independence of the Crown; a Representative Body assuming absolute power and denying the King's right to dissolve; the summary abrogation of the whole feudal system, which a year before had seemed endowed with perpetual vigour; an ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... inquiring how he got on, he informed me that he intended speedily to leave, having received little or no encouragement, the people in their Gothic ignorance preferring to deal with an old-fashioned shopkeeper over the way, who, so far from possessing any acquaintance with the polity and institutions of the Chinese, did not, he firmly believed, know that tea came from China. "You are come for some more, I suppose?" said he. On receiving an answer in the negative he looked somewhat blank, but when I added that I came to consult ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... John Smyth's Church at Gainsborough. The Scrooby Church. Plymouth Colony. Settles Plymouth. Hardships. Growth. Cape Ann Settlement. Massachusetts Bay. Size. Polity. Roger Williams. His Views. His Exile. Anne Hutchinson. Rhode Island Founded. Settlement of Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield. Saybrook. New Haven. New Hampshire. Maine. New England ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... could be only living and healthy, in as far as it was in harmony with certain spiritual, unseen, and everlasting laws of God; perhaps, as certain Alexandrian philosophers would have held, in as far as it was a pattern of that ideal constitution and polity after which man was created, the city of God which is eternal in the Heavens. If so, may we not suspect of this Alexandria that it was its own fault if it became a merely physical phenomenon; and that it ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... are extant, one or more to the famous archbishop Usher, Primate of Ireland, and another to Isaac Walton, concerning the three imperfect books of Richard Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, dated the 13th of November ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... United States, and has therefore been able to compose his learned works in theology, history, &c. under advantages but seldom enjoyed by our authors. His chief productions are, Apostolical Succession, 1842; Presbytery and not Prelacy the Scriptural and Primitive Polity of the Church, 1843; Ecclesiastical Republicanism; Ecclesiastical Catechism; Claims of the Free Church of Scotland; Life and Character of Thomas Chalmers, with Personal Recollections; Nature and Functions of Ruling Elders; Nature and Functions of Deacons; The Rite of Confirmation examined; Bereaved ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... than, by different peoples, is paid to that of Zoroaster, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred; but he has this peculiarity that he does not fade, like many other great legislators, into mythical indistinctness, but is himself the exponent of his own polity. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... will stand you in stead, when the annoyances of the journey are forgotten, and, in spite of your disclaimers, I am preparing to read your history of Frederic. You are an inveterate European, and rightfully stand for your polity and antiquities and culture: and I have long since forborne to importune you with America, as if it were a humorous repetition of Johnson's visit to Scotland. And yet since Thackeray's adventure, I have often thought ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... any power, against the precedents of the past, the spirit of our people, the theory of our civil polity and the rights of individual man succeed, and make headway against free speech, and put it in jeopardy, it would convulse the very frame-work of society. There would be no time for a revolution—there would be an eruption, and fragmentary Judges, Courts and their minions ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... miscarriages of Time are entered in our records. Nor, secondly, is the consent itself and the time it has continued a consideration of much worth. For however various are the forms of civil politics, there is but one form of polity in the sciences; and that always has been and always will be popular. Now the doctrines which find most favour with the populace are those which are either contentious and pugnacious, or specious and empty; such, I say, as either entangle assent or ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... 'Hail, sacred Polity, by Freedom reared! 'Hail, sacred Freedom, when by Law restrained! 'Without you what were man? A grovelling herd, 'In darkness, wretchedness, and want enchained. 'Sublimed by you, the Greek and Roman reigned 'In arts unrivalled: O, to latest days, 'In Albion may your influence, unprofaned, 'To ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... doubt that the legislator ought principally to attend to the education of youth. For in cities where this is neglected, the politics are injured. For every State ought to be governed according to its nature; since the appropriate manners of each polity usually preserve the polity, and establish it from the beginning. Thus, appropriate democratic manners preserve and establish a democracy, and oligarchic an oligarchy. Always, however, the best manners are the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... half-a-dozen positive baronetcies, the Customs for their constituents, and Court balls for their wives, might be induced to save the state. 0! England, glorious and ancient realm, the fortunes of thy polity are indeed strange! The wisdom of the Saxons, Norman valour, the state-craft of the Tudors, the national sympathies of the Stuarts, the spirit of the latter Guelphs struggling against their enslaved sovereignty,—these are the high qualities, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... termed it, to belong to the county of Cumberland and province of New York, and thereupon proceeding to reorganize the town, agreeably to the laws of that province. This change, however, does not appear to have been followed by any material alteration of their internal polity, or to have been productive of any great civil discord, till about the time of the opening of the American revolution; when the town became the prey of contending factions, of so fierce and lawless a character as to convert this once Arcadian abode of virtue, simplicity, and rural happiness, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... moreover, constantly occupied. When not in attendance upon the sultan, he devoted all his time to render himself intimately acquainted with the laws, polity, diplomatic history, resources, condition, and finances of the Ottoman Empire; he also studied the Turkish literature, and practiced composition, both in prose and verse, in the language of that country which was now his own! But think not, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... Ireland. While the prince was thus humoured with vain excuses, he was occupied in pleading his own cause by flattering communications to the Queen, 'whose fame was spoken of throughout the world.' He wished to study the wisdom of her government, that he might know better how to order himself in civil polity. He was most urgent that her Majesty would give him 'some noble English lady for a wife, with augmentation of living suitable.' If she would give him his father's earldom, he would make her the undisputed sovereign of willing subjects in Ulster; ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... other things that people hide only to show them Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act Dearness is a good sauce to meat Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time Friend, the hook will not stick in such ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger

... was elected Chancellor of the Cathedral at Salisbury, but he was presently deprived by the Parliament of that office, and of his living at Bishopston. He then lived in retirement abroad, made a translation into Latin of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" which his servants negligently used, after his death, as waste paper, and of the "Eikon Basilike" which was published in 1649. After the Restoration, Dr. Earle was made Dean of Westminster; then, in 1662, Bishop of Worcester. He was translated to Salisbury in 1663, died in November 1665, and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... leading nations of the earth. Americans regard Federalism with pardonable partiality. They are the original inventors of the best Federal system in the world, and Federalism has made them the greatest of all free communities. A polity under which the United States has grown up and flourished, and fought the biggest war which has been fought during the century, and come out of it victorious, and with renewed strength, must, it is felt, be a constitution suited for all ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... the representative or person of the Sovereign; it is a reverence for, and attachment to, the laws, order, institutions and freedom of the country. As Christianity is not a mere attachment to a bishop, or ecclesiastic, or form of church polity, but a deep love of divine truth; so Canadian loyalty is a firm attachment to that British Constitution and those British laws, adopted or enacted by ourselves, which best secure life, liberty, and prosperity, and which prompt us to Christian and patriotic deeds by ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... merry laugh enlivened the newly opened fields, and rang through the bordering woods as loud, jocund, and unrestrained as in these older and more crowded settlements. It is true that their theology was austere, and their polity, in Church and State, stern; but, in their modes of life, there were some features which gave peculiar opportunity to exercise and gratify a love of social excitement of a pleasurable kind. Let me mention some of the customs having a tendency in this direction, that prevailed in the early settlements ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... considered by the Taborites as coming far short of what the exigencies of the case required. These latter, indeed, the Covenanters and Puritans of their day, saw nothing in the Romish church except one mass of corruption. Her rites, her ceremonies, her polity, her constitution, all were odious in their eyes; and to hold friendly communication with her, on any subject whatever, was, according to their view of religion, to bring the accursed thing into their houses. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... into different parts civil polity. For in the shield which was made in imitation of the whole world by Hephaestus (that is, spiritual power) he imagined two cities to be contained: one enjoying peace and happiness; the other at war, and exposing the advantages of each ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... Room), is a brief treatise on the nature of Church Government, defending the right of visible church organization against prevailing latitudinarian and transcendental views on the one hand, and maintaining liberal principles of polity against the high claims of Episcopacy and the assumptions of the clergy on the other. The argument is conducted with candor and moderation, though not without spirit, and may be studied to advantage by all who would understand ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... book iv. chap. ii.—"As no city or village can exist without a magistrate and government, so the Church of God stands in need of a spiritual polity of its own. This is altogether distinct from the civil government, and is so far from hindering or impairing it, that it rather does much to aid ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... what they signify. No statesman dreams of doing whatever he pleases; he knows that it does not follow that because a point of morals or of policy is obvious to him it will be obvious to the nation, or even to his own friends; and it is the strength of a democratic polity that there are so many minds to be consulted and brought to agreement, and that nothing can be wisely done for which the thought, and a good deal more than the thought, of the country, its sentiment and its purpose, have ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson

... choose one man as the founder of Catholicism as a theocratic system, we should have to name neither Augustine nor St. Paul, still less Jesus Christ, but Plato, who in the Laws sketches out with wonderful prescience the conditions for such a polity, and the form which it would be compelled to take. Even in speculative thought we know that Augustine owed much to the Platonists, the Schoolmen to Aristotle, the mystics to the pupil of Proclus whom they called ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... causes of the rebellion. "There were," he says, "an exceeding great number of men of the better sort, that had been so educated as that in their youth, having read the books written by famous men of the ancient Grecian and Roman commonwealths concerning their polity and great actions, in which books the popular government was extolled by that glorious name of liberty, and monarchy disgraced by the name of tyranny, they became thereby in love with their forms of government; and out of these men ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... persons of their own nation could hold out to them, these wealthy Strangers would naturally procure the poorer Israelites for servants. Lev. xxv. 47. In a word, such was the political condition of the Strangers, that the Jewish polity offered a virtual bounty, to such as would become permanent servants, and thus secure those privileges already enumerated, and for their children in the second generation a permanent inheritance. Ezek. xlvii. 21-23. None but the monied aristocracy would be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... 'balance of power' system will yet be inaugurated among the family of nations yet to spring up on this continent. Her people think balance of power, and the London Times and like organs of the existing polity write balance of power for our edification, and for the future of America. They cannot conceive that there is any other way to get along for any considerable length of time. In like manner is it concluded—keeping up the old trains of thought—that if nations once fell into fragments when shaken, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... considers to be irrefragable proofs of the expediency, merely as it regards the parent country, of adopting the measures which he has proposed, he hopes that he shall eventually occasion an alteration of polity, by which both the parties concerned will be equally benefited. He has not, however, presumed on a contingency which it is thus reasonable to believe cannot be either doubtful or remote; but has restricted himself to an enumeration of the inducements ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... convictions, than this, that God's flock was wider than God's fold. Our Lord distinctly recognises Judaism with its middle wall of partition as a divine institution, and then as distinctly carries His gaze beyond it. To His hearers 'this fold,' their own national polity, held all the flock. Without were dogs, a doleful land, where 'the wild beasts of the desert met with the wild beasts of the islands.' And now this new Teacher, not content with declaring them hirelings, and Himself the only true Shepherd of Israel, breaks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... the Romans, I hated to see a noble hope evaporated into a lying phrase to sweeten the foul breath of demagogues. Leaving the sin of it to God, I believed, and still believe, that slavery is the Achilles-heel of our own polity, that it is a temporary and false supremacy of the white races, sure to destroy that supremacy at last, because an enslaved people always prove themselves of more enduring fibre than their enslavers, as not suffering from the social ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... of many portions of the book of Genesis;(233) objecting to the Hebrew view of Deity as too appropriating in its character, and as making the divine Being appear cruel.(234) He denied the originality of the Hebrew moral law,(235) and pointed out the supposed defectiveness of the Hebrew polity; comparing unfavourably the type of the Hebrew lawgiver as seen in Moses, and of the king as seen in David, with the great heroes of Greek history.(236) The Hebrew prophecy he tried to weaken by putting it in comparison with oracles. In ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... and, above all, correct. Up to that time it had been, on the whole, singularly informal and unprofessional, and by no means the literature of the "man of letters," as we understand him. Certain great instances there had been of literary structure or architecture—The Ecclesiastical Polity, The Leviathan—but for the most part that earlier prose literature is eminently occasional, closely determined by the eager practical aims of contemporary politics and theology, or else due to a man's own ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... of mankind, and had no public amusements. These causes are sufficient to account for the fondness for the weekly lecture; but if to them be superadded the peculiarity of their civil and religious polity, which inculcated an extraordinary affection for each other as God's chosen people destined to communion, not here only, but forever; and the isolation of their situation, cutting them off from participation in the stirring events to which they had ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... behavior; deportment, comportment; carriage, maintien[obs3], demeanor, guise, bearing, manner, observance. dealing, transaction &c. (action) 680; business &c. 625. tactics, game, game plan, policy, polity; generalship, statesmanship, seamanship; strategy, strategics[obs3]; plan &c. 626. management; husbandry; housekeeping, housewifery; stewardship; menage; regime; economy, economics; political economy; government &c. (direction) 693. execution, manipulation, treatment, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... accomplished and trustworthy Lecky, 'was Catholicism so free from domineering and aggressive tendencies as during the Pontificates of Benedict XIV and his three successors.' This covers a period extending from 1740 to 1775; and we know that cycles of ecclesiastical polity never close abruptly. The Catholic was first to perceive that 'when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... Massachusetts." That is what he did: in 1843 he ceased to pay the poll-tax. The highway-tax he paid, for he said he was as desirous to be a good neighbour as to be a bad subject; but no more poll-tax to the State of Massachusetts. Thoreau had now seceded, and was a polity unto himself; or, as he explains it with admirable sense, "In fact, I quietly declare war with the State after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases." He was put in prison; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... George Washington, as the first man who would exercise the powers of the executive office they were creating. So it turned out. Never did a country begin a new enterprise with so wise a ruler. An admirable polity had been adopted, but much depended upon getting it to work, and the man who was selected to start the government was the man of all men for the task. Histories many and from different points of view have been written of Washington's administration; ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... primary reference is manifestly to that perpetual danger of the Hebrews, the temptation to turn back from the Gospel, with its spiritual order and its hopes of things not yet seen, to the outworn Dispensation, with its externally majestic circumstances of glorious ritual and imposing shows of polity and power. They would need again and again to open the soul's ears and eyes, and steadfastly to recollect, against all appearances, that we "are come unto the Mount Sion," if they were to resist the magnetic forces which drew them back towards Sinai—and ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule

... national, of European importance. He was only forty-two, and in the ordinary course of nature he might have been expected to live at least thirty years longer. Had he done so it can hardly be doubted that the whole development of the English polity would have been changed. Already at the time of his death he filled a unique place in English public life; already among the inner circle of politicians he was accepted as a necessary and useful part of the mechanism of the State. Lord Clarendon, ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... I would have prevented your election had I been able," he said frankly; "but that was entirely a question of church polity. I hardly need say how complete is my confidence in ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... Greeks a peculiar national signification; publicity being, as we have already said, according to their republican notions, essential to the completeness of every important transaction. If in their compositions they reverted to the heroic ages, in which monarchical polity was yet in force, they nevertheless gave a certain republican cast to the families of their heroes, by carrying on the action in presence either of the elders of the people, or of other persons who represented some correspondent rank or position ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... it to be her duty to do, she humbly and tearfully acknowledged herself to be one of the Lord's most "unprofitable servants." It would be useless to endeavor to measure such a life by any rules of worldly polity or fashions. An extract written at this time, relative to the welfare and treatment of servants, may be of use in showing how she permitted her sound sense and practical daily piety to decide for her in emergencies and anxieties ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... institutions as the ordeal and duel; not only did it justify (and in the opinion of some still justifies) the wars of religion and the use of force in religious matters generally; not only was it the accepted national polity of such communities as the Vikings, the Barbary States, and the Red Indians; but it is still, unfortunately, the polity of certain European states. But the idea is a survival and—and this is the important point—an admission of failure to understand where right lies: to "fight it out" is ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... me to say, have been equally misrepresented to me. I was taught to believe you a fierce, imperious, hot-headed youth, ready, at the slightest provocation, to throw your sword into the scales of justice, and to appeal to those rude and forcible measures from which civil polity has long protected the people of Scotland. Then, since we were mutually mistaken in each other, why should not the young nobleman be willing to listen to the old lawyer, while, at least, he explains the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... at reformation in the Church, large and small, had failed, as had those of the early fifteenth century to reform its government, leaving the Church as thoroughly mediaeval in doctrine and in practical religion as it was in polity. It was the one power, therefore, belonging to the Middle Ages which still stood unaffected by the new forces and opposed to them. In other directions the changes had been many; here nothing had been changed. And its resisting power was very great. Endowed with large wealth, strong in numbers in ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... say, is he really accomplishing good? Second, Is he doing the work in the name of a divine, crucified, risen Christ? If so, "Forbid him not." We must not expect all Christians to repeat the same creed or to enjoy the same ritual or to accept the same polity or to employ the same methods of work. We should remember the word of the Master, "He that is not against you is ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... Indians will increasingly claim, as the Japanese are now claiming, the right to decide for themselves the forms of polity and the types of ritual which they will choose and ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... must have been enormous when the smallest number of her sons who fell victims to Hulaku Khan in 1258 was estimated at eight hundred thousand, while other authorities more than double the terrible "butcher's bill." Her policy and polity were unique. A well regulated routine of tribute and taxation, personally inspected by the Caliph; a network of waterways, canaux d'arrosage; a noble system of highways, provided with viaducts, bridges and caravanserais, and a postal service of mounted couriers enabled it to collect ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... a very powerful one, of the Celtic polity, was Druidism. At its head was a priesthood, not in the present meaning of the word, but in the more extended acceptation which it received in the middle ages, when it embraced the whole class of men of letters. Although we ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... for rights, with rapine in their soul! Who can, with patience, for a moment see The medley mass of pride and misery, Of whips and charters, manacles and rights, Of slaving blacks, and democratic whites, Of all the pyebald polity that reigns In free confusion o'er Columbia's plains? To think that man, thou just and gentle God! Should stand before thee with a tyrant's rod, O'er creatures like himself, with soul from thee, Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty: Away, away, I'd rather ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... good-bye, wandered away up the half-dozen steps to the Parade, sat down on a bench, and opened the morning paper that I had brought out unread. During the War one felt it a duty to know the worst before breakfast; now that the English polity is threatened merely from within, one is apt to dally.... Merely from within? Is that a right phrase when the nerves of unrestful Labour in any one land are interplicated with its nerves in any other, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... separation, probably a change of life which leaves the ruder stage behind. The colony is led forth to a new land by its hero, who lays the foundation of a social order by building houses, temples to the Gods, and a wall round the city, and who divides the territory. Thus a civil polity begins by getting away from "the insolent Cyclops" or savages. On the other hand, civilized enemies who might bring war, seem not to dwell near the Phaeacians, beloved of the Gods. Beyond all conflict, inner and outer, lies the fortunate ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... physically fine with the morally hard, trenchant, tenacious. Close your eyes, and Arnold Jacks was a high-bred bulldog endowed with speech; not otherwise would a game animal of that species, advanced to a world-polity, utter ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... hast strayed; or, if thou wilt have it banishment, hast banished thyself! For no one else could ever lawfully have had this power over thee. Now, if thou wilt call to mind from what country thou art sprung, it is not ruled, as once was the Athenian polity, by the sovereignty of the multitude, but "one is its Ruler, one its King," who takes delight in the number of His citizens, not in their banishment; to submit to whose governance and to obey whose ordinances is perfect freedom. Art thou ignorant ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... of the French monarchy. What the age of Pericles was in the history of the Athenian democracy, what the age of the Scipios was in the history of the Roman Republic, that was the reign of Louis XIV in the history of the old monarchy of France. The type of polity which that monarchy embodied, the principles of government on which it reposed or brought into play, in this reign attain their supreme expression and development. Before Louis XIV the French monarchy has evidently not attained its full stature; it is thwarted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... farther by Coleridge, Arnold, Robertson, Maurice, Kingsley, and Stanley; till the advance has met a sharp check at the point where rejection of miracle involves a collision with the formularies of worship. In America, a like advance has had the advantage of that more elastic polity which allows to churches of the Congregational order an easier change of creed and worship. The leaders have been, in the Unitarian line, such as Channing, who purified Christianity of its Calvinistic harshness and then of its Athanasian metaphysics; and Parker, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... that they might give their approbation to the same poets, or all take delight in the same diversions, but that they may all unanimously obey the laws, because that obedience is the security and the happiness of the State. Concord, therefore, is so necessary, that without it good polity and authority cannot subsist in any State, nor good economy and order ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognise and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent at the governed. . . . No nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... bound together by the polity of instinct and consanguinity alone. They had no laws, but only natural customs. The cacique was an arbitrator: if his decision did not appease a litigant, the parties had an appeal to arms in his presence. Their cacique received unbounded reverence, and for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... Greek and European literature, concerning those ancient civilisations. But, as culture advances, human development becomes so complex that we must refrain from attempting to pursue, even in summary, its many outgrowths. The evolution of morality, of art, of religion, of polity, and of literature would each require a whole volume for satisfactory treatment. All that we can do here is to show how the modern world and its progressive culture are related ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... 14. The antient Athenians worshipped Isis: and were in their looks, and in their manners particularly like the Egyptians. [Greek: Kai tais ideais, kai tois ethesin homoiotatous einai tois Aiguptiois.] The whole of their polity was plainly borrowed from that country. Diod. Sic. l. 1: p. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... me in point of religious opinion, was first to teach me the existence of the Church, as a substantive body or corporation; next to fix in me those anti-Erastian views of Church polity, which were one of the most prominent features of the Tractarian movement. On this point, and, as far as I know, on this point alone, he and Hurrell Froude intimately sympathised, though Froude's development of opinion here was of a later date. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... a Cambridge master of arts and sometime fellow of Christ's College, issued in 1681 Melampronoea, or a Discourse of the Polity and Kingdom of Darkness, Together with a Solution of the chiefest Objections brought against the Being of Witches. Hallywell was another in the long list of Cambridge men who defended superstition. He set about to assail the "over-confident Exploders of Immaterial ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... satisfied. But here is a book prepared to our hands, which we all receive as the inspired record of our faith, and as containing the purest morality that has ever been taught in this lower world. Episcopalians can not object to it, because they believe it teaches the doctrines and polity of their own church; and this is just what they want. Neither Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Universalists, nor any other denomination, can object to it for the same reason. Every denomination believes, so far as it differs from the rest, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... famous breakfast-parties of the time were given by Mr. Gladstone, on every Thursday morning in the Session; when, while we ate broiled salmon and drank coffee, our host discoursed to an admiring circle about the colour-sense in Homer, or the polity of the ancient Hittites. Around the table were gathered Lions and Lionesses of various breeds and sizes, who, if I remember aright, did not get quite as much opportunity for roaring as they would have liked; for, when Mr. Gladstone had ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... The Polity of Lacedaemon and the Polity of Athens were two of Xenophons short treatises. In the Polity of Lacedaemon the Spartan code of law and social discipline is, as Mr. Mure says in his Critical History of the Language and Literature ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... the United Netherlands was the Reformed Church. Its polity was that of Geneva or of Presbyterianism. The minister and ruling or lay elders of the local church formed its consistory, corresponding to the Scottish or American kirk session. The next higher power, administrative or judicial, resided in the classis, consisting of all the ministers in a given ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... office and in pride of heart past all hope of humility, and thus of salvation. The holy ministry is a great nursing-house of pride as we see in a long line of popes, and prelates, and priests, and other lords over God's heritage. And our own Presbyterian polity, while it hands down to us the simplicity, the unity, the brotherhood, and the humility of the apostolic age, at the same time leaves plenty of temptation and plenty of opportunity for the pride of the human heart. Our preaching and pastoral ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... car il croit tout ce qu'il dit, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity to family life, to the horror of many nominal allies. His treatise on Divorce was the next of his publications in chronological order, but is so entwined with his domestic life that it will be best to postpone it until we again take up ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... with husbands, they pursue the very worst polity, they respect their wives, and, sooner or later, every woman is enraged at finding herself respected, and divines the secret education to which she is entitled. Once married, you ought not to live ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... busied with the restoration of their ravaged fields and the development of the new system of self-rule inaugurated by the Convention of Halifax in 1776. There were many good and wise men in America who had no confidence in the perpetuity or effectiveness of a polity which rested upon the wisdom and virtue of the masses ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... taking place in the course of Indian polity. These speeches, with no rhetorical pretensions, contain some of the just, prudent, and necessary points and considerations, that have guided this transaction, and helped to secure for it the sanction of Parliament. The too limited public that follows Indian affairs with ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... civilisation. There was, in truth, some idea that very indefinite dues might be exacted of us during our progress through the northern districts of the Asben territory. Still it was a comfort to get at last within the limits of the influence of a form of polity, however rude. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... estimate, by the changes from the old to the present system, but it is in a manner to render further violent changes necessary. I say violent, for political changes are everywhere unavoidable, since questions of polity are, after all, no other than questions of facts, and these are interests that will regulate themselves, directly or indirectly. The great desideratum of a government, after settling its principles in conformity ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... association to a quiet end. But the threatening Irish famine and the growing Irish disturbances remained, to embarrass the Ministry of Lord John Russell, which came into power within less than a week of that great success of the Tory Minister, defeated on a question of Irish polity on the very day when his Corn Bill received the assent of the House ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... sacred Polity, by Freedom rear'd! Hail, sacred Freedom, when by law restrain'd! Without you, what were man? A grovelling herd, In darkness, wretchedness, and want enchain'd. Sublimed by you, the Greek and Roman reign'd In arts unrivall'd! O, to latest days, In Albion may your influence ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... Some may think it too soon to expect any action from the Convention. Many facts lead us to think that public opinion is more advanced on this question than is generally supposed. Beside, there can be no time so proper to call public attention to a radical change in our civil polity as now, when the whole framework of our government is to be subjected to examination and discussion. It is never too early to begin the discussion of any desired change. To urge our claim on the Convention, is to bring our question before the proper tribunal, and secure at the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and 1908 he made himself increasingly famous by his pleadings in court on behalf of women who with dauntless courage and at the cost of much bodily pain and even at the risk of death had forcibly called attention to this grave defect in the British polity, the withholding of the ordinary rights of tax-paying ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... ecclesiastical authority. And he noted, too, many a protest against the political, rather than religious, character of much of the business transacted in the office to which he was attached. In the discharge of his ordinary duties he necessarily became acquainted with much of the inner administrative polity of the Vatican, and thus at times he learned of policies which stirred his alien soul to revolt. In his inferior position he could not hope to raise his voice in protest against these measures which excited his indignation; but in the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... has even deserved a place among the worthies of the revival; but a family of thirteen children, some of whom it appears too closely resembled the sons of Eli, had compelled him to take advantage of the indulgent character of the ecclesiastical polity of those days by becoming a pluralist and a non-resident, so that the curate had Olney to himself. The patron was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowper says, "wore a coronet and prayed." John Newton was one of the shining lights and foremost leaders and preachers of the revival. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith



Words linked to "Polity" :   order, disposal, authorities, administration, organisation, civil order, organization, government



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