"Absolutism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which referred everything in society to the emperor as the origin of power, rights, and honor. They adopted this standpoint for the kings of the new dynastic states and, in the might of the Roman law, they established royal absolutism, which was unfavorable to the church and the feudal nobles. They found their allies in the cities which loved written law, institutions, and defined powers. Stubbs[101] regards the form of the Statute of Westminster ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... meant to mean, one cannot doubt, or by whom it was inserted. The 'Chancellor,' or whoever else transcribed those laws in Latin, was, of course, a cleric, priest or monk. From his hand comes the first hint of arbitrary power; the first small blot of a long dark stain of absolutism, which was to darken and deepen through centuries of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Retaining Absolutism in the Church, is approved. But they add a correction in reference to confession, namely, that the regulation headed, Omnis Utriusque, be observed, and that both annual confession be made, and, although all sins cannot be enumerated, nevertheless diligence be employed ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... of '48, and the imperial government, all have endeavored to do something to elevate France, to win for her new glories, and to regain for her her old position. The expedition into Spain, in 1823, ostensibly made in the interest of Absolutism, was really undertaken for the purpose of rebaptizing the white flag in fire. Charles X. and M. de Polignac were engaged in a great scheme of foreign policy when they fell, the chief object of which, on their side, was the restoration to France of the provinces of the Rhine,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... "presbyterian Hildebrandism" with factions of the turbulent noblesse; the alliance of the Power of the Keys with the sword and lance, was inconsistent with the freedom of the State and of the individual. "The absolutism of James," says Professor Hume Brown, "was forced upon him in large degree by the excessive claims of the ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... stated by any historian or by any biographer of Knox, except by the Reformer himself, partly in his History, partly in his letters to a lady of his acquaintance. The mystery of the Kirks turns on the Knoxian conception of the 'lawful minister,' and his claim to absolutism. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... lands of continental Europe; its influence was strongly felt in England, and even in the United States. Passing through the phases of constitutional reform, of anarchy, and of military despotism, the movement seemed for a time to have failed, and to outward appearances absolutism was stronger after Waterloo than it had been half a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... straw for what it talked about, and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they could get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite as the Jacobs themselves. As for the Tories, no great change in them was necessary; everything favouring absolutism and slavery being congenial to them. So the whole nation—that is, the reading part of the nation, with some exceptions, for, thank God, there has always been some salt in England—went over the water to Charlie. But going over to Charlie was not ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... would tolerate no influence but her own and had begun in fact the same policy she afterwards developed in Serbia. From that date—1832—the office of Gubernator was abolished. Imitation is the sincerest flattery. The Petrovitches began to model themselves on their patrons, the Tsars, and strove for absolutism. ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... out, there could be no such crime as treason, there could be no state, and no public authority. This new theory transfers to society the sovereignty which that asserted for the individual, and asserts social despotism, or the absolutism of the state. It asserts with sufficient energy public authority, or the right of the people to govern; but it leaves no space for individual rights, which society must recognize, respect, and protect. This was the grand ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Czechs again began to recover their national consciousness. This revival marked the beginning of the Czecho-Slovak struggle for the re-establishment of their independence. The movement was at first literary, and only in the forties became political. It was a continuous struggle against reaction and absolutism, and if the Czecho-Slovaks to-day can boast of an advanced civilisation, it is only owing to their perseverance and hard endeavours, and not because of any good-will on the part of the Austrian Government which put every possible ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... her old absolutism, came to his house continually to inquire and give orders, and to his room to see him every afternoon, found out for herself in the course of his convalescence this strange death of the sensuous side of Jocelyn's nature. She had said that Avice was getting extraordinarily handsome, and that ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... "Let your Majesty be pleased to receive public information from your Commons in Parliament, as well of the abuses in the Church as in the civil state and government." Words yet bolder, and which sound like a prelude to the Petition of Right, met the claim of absolutism which was so frequently on the new king's lips. "Your majesty would be misinformed," said the address, "if any man should deliver that the kings of England have any absolute power in themselves, either to alter religion or make any ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... been judiciously observed that in that age of growing absolutism, both spiritual and temporal, only a skilful Thomistic scholar could have discerned the limits to the legitimate exercise of the royal authority which Las Casas so clearly perceived and so boldly ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... The unchecked absolutism of a Socialist State will hardly be palatable to Socialist workers who have been told that Socialism means freedom, and these see the only solution in the establishment of Anarchism: "The damnable idea of ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... convenience, its ethics an historical accident, and its whole function simply to lend a warm mystical aureole to human culture and ignorance. The Reformation prevented this euthanasia of Christianity. It re-expressed the unenlightened absolutism of the old religion; it insisted that dogma was scientifically true, that salvation was urgent and fearfully doubtful, that the world, and the worldly paganised church, were as Sodom and Gomorrah, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... Duchesnays of the future, where their descendants could becomingly receive fealty and homage. (foi et homage) from their feudal retainers. There was, however, nothing here to remind one of the lordly pageantry of other times—the days of absolutism—of the dark era, the age of lettres de cachet, corvees, lods et ventes, and other feudal burthens, when the flag of the Bourbons floated over the fortress of New France. In 1846, at the time of my visit, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... because men in their dreadful degraded condition do not know how to appreciate it. In this condition, if the old systems would succeed so far as to crush down with absolute despotism all movements for deliverance, they could not keep for a long time people in bondage of absolutism. Crevices would be always found, from which the movements of the secret aspirations for liberty would commence to be made manifest, till the eruption of the flood of revolution and war would effect great destruction of life and property. ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... highly disapproved both of Palmerston's policy and of his methods of action. He was opposed to absolutism; but in his opinion Palmerston's proceedings were simply calculated to substitute for absolutism, all over Europe, something no better and very possibly worse—the anarchy of faction and mob violence. The dangers of this revolutionary ferment were grave; even in England Chartism was rampant—a ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... and a restlessness in society, which made bad subjects for an absolute monarch. The religious Reformation, which began in Germany and spread to the westward, was but the legitimate result of the intellectual agitation which preceded it; and the political absolutism of kings could no more expect exemption from searching criticism and final revolution than the religious absolutism of the Pope. The German Reformation was blind to the magnitude and significance of its own mission; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... arrived on the stroke of the hour, in a silk hat and frock coat, with a black bag, and had sat down at his desk and begun to rule the proceedings with an absolutism that no High Court Judge would have attempted. He was autocrat in a small, close, sordid room; but he was autocrat. He had already shown his quality in some indirect collisions with the Marquis of Lechford. The Marquis felt that he could not ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... in England and the execution of Charles I. The provocation was the same in the two nations; the result highly different. In both cases it was a revolt against the tyranny of the court and the attempt to establish absolutism. But the difference in results lay in the fact that England had a single parliament, composed of politicians, while France had ten parliaments, composed of magistrates, and unaccustomed to handle ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... indeed, was not the grotesque abolition of liberty in the name of liberty, but the failure of that usurpation to arouse anything approaching public indignation. It is impossible to imagine the men of Jackson's army or even of Grant's army submitting to any such absolutism without a furious struggle, but in these latter days it is viewed with the utmost complacency. The descendants of the Americans who punished John Adams so melodramatically for the Alien and Seditions Acts of 1789 failed to raise a voice against the far more drastic ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... opinions of the more enlightened changed. The fear of Napoleon was gradually forgotten, and the hatred of the absolutism ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... in due time have been extended and improved, receiving, as new wants arose, and wisdom and experience warranted, new developments, new adaptations, and daily increasing excellence. The constitutional element once removed, there was no medium between and safeguard against absolutism; on the one hand, and on the other anarchy, or the reign ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... stedfastly tending; but, at the same time, her sagacity and prudence enabled her to ward off the immediate result. She secured her throne,—she was able to maintain, in the rocking of those movements, her own political and spiritual supremacy,—she made gain and capital for absolutism out of them,—the inevitable reformation she herself assumed, and set bounds to: whatever new freedom there was, was still the freedom of her will; she could even secure the throne of her successor: it was mischief for Charles I. that she was nursing. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Wilhelm II, while the rigour of bureaucratic administration, controlled by a monarchical absolutism, continued and was even accentuated, the absence of the able hand of Friedrich the Great soon made itself apparent. As regards external policy, however, Prussia, while allowing territories on the left bank of the ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... passage to set over against that of the Yogi quoted above! But is not the good Abbot a little hard on the Westerners? For the full truth is that while the Yogi represents the old Absolutism, the Abbot is feeling his way to a wider and more human world-view. Buddhism has evidently better days in store. Let our views of ultimate Reality be what they may, the nature-mystic's position demands not only that man may hold communion with nature, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... phrase from a "Dictionary Of Polite English for Public Purposes" edited by a College graduate at present in the Andamans. True, later it had called him an "overbearing and insane procrastinator"—"an apostle of absolutism"—and, plum of all literary gleanings, since it left so much to the imagination of the native reader,—"laudator temporis acti." But that the was because he had withdrawn his private subscription prior to suspending the paper sine ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... government, the more of justice and humanity, of security and repose, will be the result. The exclusion of half the population from the polls, is not merely a gross injustice, but an immense loss of brain and conscience, in making up the public judgment. As a nation we have discarded absolutism, monarchy, and hereditary aristocracy; but we have not fully attained even to manhood suffrage. Men are proscribed on account of their complexion, women because of their sex. The entire body politic suffers from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... him," said Leonardo Donato, "and there is one fault. It limits his power to achieve; it increases his absolutism. It is near-sightedness—smallness ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... rapidly, under fearful exigencies, to the absolutism which, in a republic, alone can summon the full forces into the field. Power must be concentrated, and wielded with promptitude and precision, else we shall fail to achieve our independence. All obstructions in the way of necessary war measures must be speedily removed, or the finances, and ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders, Lord of Friesland, hereditary chief, in short, under various titles, of seventeen states, each one of which, although not republican, possessed constitutions as sacred as, and much more ancient than, the Crown. The resistance to the absolutism of Granvelle and Philip was, therefore, logical, legal, constitutional. It was no cabal, no secret league, as the Cardinal had the effrontery to term it, but a legitimate exercise of powers which belonged ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... {334} into the control of the wealthy families, and it mattered not what was the form of government, despotism prevailed. In many of the cities the excessive power of the despots made their reign a prolonged terror. As long as enlightened absolutism prevailed, government was administered by upright rulers and judges in the interests of the people; but when the power fell into the hands of unscrupulous men, the privileges and rights of the people were ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... phrase is styled Imperialism, and on the other a wise and benevolent modification of temporal sovereignty in the interests of all by an established and accepted spiritual power. No middle path lies before the people of Europe. Temporal absolutism we must have. The only question is whether or no it shall be modified by the wise, disinterested, and moderating counsels of the Church, as given by her ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... conflicts, is, through the very ignorance which shields him from all conscious guilt, bound over in the most impotent (though, because impotent and unconscious, the least humiliating) slavery to material circumstance,—a slavery which he cannot escape, and which, during the period of its absolutism, absorbs his very blood, bone, and nerve. To poverty, which the strong man resists, the child succumbs; on the other hand, that affluence of comfort, from which philosophy often weans the adult, wraps childhood about with a sheltering care; and fortunate indeed it is, if the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... get rid of her; on the contrary, he wanted to feel more securely that she was his to do as he liked with, and to make her feel it also. Moreover, he was himself very fond of yachting: its dreamy do-nothing absolutism, unmolested by social demands, suited his disposition, and he did not in the least regard it as an equivalent for the dreariness of the Maremma. He had his reasons for carrying Gwendolen out of reach, but they were not reasons ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... vindicate and maintain the liberties of the subjects in all these things which concern their consciences, persons, and estates." In short, it was a testimony for constitutional government in opposition to absolutism. ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... supposed, however, that her self-will was a passionate, moody absolutism. She had outgrown that, and was too well-bred ever to show much temper. The tendency of her mature purposes and prejudices was to crystallize into a few distinct forms. With the feminine logic of a narrow mind, she made her husband an exception to ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... every quarrel. Lady Markland was willing to make any concession but the one which he required, the abandonment of Geoff. But he would make no concession; he stood upon his rights. With all the fervour and absolutism of inexperience he stood fast. No, nothing less than everything, nothing but entire submission, nothing but obedience. Alarmed and anxious friends gathered to the fray, as was inevitable, and everything was made worse. The result ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... sovereignty of the people is entirely alienated, "transferred," in that of the other, administrative authority alone is granted, "conceded," while the sovereign prerogatives remain with the people. Bodin is the founder of the theory of absolutism, to which Grotius and the school of Pufendorf adhere, though in a more moderate form, and which Hobbes develops to the last extreme. Althusius, on the other hand, by his systematic development of the doctrine of social contract and the inalienable ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... "Absolutism with us is closely connected with the omnipotence of the Geheimrath and the conceited omniscience of the Professors who sit behind the green table, a product, and I venture to maintain a necessary product, of the Prussian ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Muenster, Hanoverian envoy at St. Petersburg, discovered that Russian civilization is "merely artificial," and first published to Europe the short description of the Russian Constitution,—that it is "absolutism tempered ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... XIV of France, who died in 1715, after a reign of 72 years, the longest reign of any monarch in history. His absolutism and complete disregard of the people unconsciously prepared the way for the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English view, sprang also the great intellectual movement of the age. Voltaire visited the England of Addison and Pope; Montesquieu studied the English Constitution of 1689; and these two men were the writers who overthrew absolutism in Europe, who paved the way for the epoch of Revolution that was to follow. Montesquieu's Persian Letters, satirizing French society, appeared as early as 1721. Voltaire's sarcasms and witty sneers got him into trouble with the French Government as early ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... cultural anti-Semitism of the West did not undermine the modern foundations of Jewish civil equality. But Russian Judaeophobia, more governmental than social, being fully in accord with the entire regime of absolutism, produced a system aiming not only at the disfranchisement, but also at the direct physical annihilation of the Jewish people. The policy of the extermination of Judaism was stamped upon the forehead of Russian reaction, receiving various ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... past, but had a much less vague conception of the moral to be drawn from them than had the multitude. Athens, for him as for them, was to be the first state in Hellas; she was above all to be the protectress of democracy everywhere, against both absolutism and oligarchy, and the leader of the Hellenes in resistance to foreign aggression. But, unlike the multitude, Demosthenes saw that this policy required the greatest personal effort and readiness ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... present times." p. 7.8. This all sounds well enough in the abstract, and we ourselves have frequently and with equal sincerity, praised these great reformers. But after all, they were fallible men. This same Melancthon, in this same Apology for the Augsburg Confession, regards Private Confession and Absolutism [sic] as the third sacrament. At the Diet of Augsburg, he was willing to yield to Romish bishops the dangerous powers which they formerly had exercised over the churches, and when he saw danger thicken around him, he positively wrote to Luther, inquiring whether they might not, yield to the ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... It is obvious that the method of police absolutism is open to very great abuse. In practice it works out as galling tyranny. A quotation from the Japan Chronicle illustrates ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... delighted surprise at all her amazing ways, and wonder what she will do next, though everything in his eyes was perfect that she did—such as may still be seen in the eyes of many a world-worn husband looking on at the movements of that directer, more simple, yet more subtle being, and the quick absolutism and certainty of the bright spirit at his side. The grey-bearded old soldier, leader of many a raid and victor in many a struggle, with this new revelation of beauty and purity bursting upon his later life, becomes to us a recognisable and friendly human ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... members directly or indirectly nominated by the royal Council. With a Parliament such as this Cromwell might well trust to make the nation itself through its very representatives an accomplice in the work of absolutism. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... obedience in all the four quarters". He was the sort of benevolent despot whom Carlyle on one occasion clamoured vainly for—not an Oriental despot in the commonly accepted sense of the term. As a German writer puts it, his despotism was a form of Patriarchal Absolutism. "When Marduk (Merodach)", as the great king recorded, "brought me to direct all people, and commissioned me to give judgment, I laid down justice and right in the provinces, I made all flesh to prosper."[279] That was the keynote of his long life; he regarded himself as the earthly representative ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... offering to give that body a yearly income of 10,000 francs to be spent in two prizes, one of 5,000 francs for the best essay in defence of Catholicism, and another of the same sum for the best essay in defence of Absolutism. The Academy declined ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... role of a spy, and then my great sympathy with the French, who I thought and still think were attacked by a powerful and prepared enemy bent upon their destruction. Then I thought and still think that France and England represent democracy against absolutism, and then, although every one of these reasons is powerful enough alone, yet another has ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to be defended is slavery, political absolutism, or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always expected to judge of it from its best instances; and we are presented with pictures of loving exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other—superior wisdom ordering all things for the greatest good of the dependents, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... Spain, where, notwithstanding the time spent by him in religious exercises, and in his favorite diversion of experimenting with clocks and watches, he remained an attentive observer of public affairs. Political and religious absolutism was the main article in Philip's creed. He was more thoroughly a Spaniard in his tone and temper than his father, who was born in the Netherlands, and always loved the people there, as he was loved by them. Philip was cold and forbidding in his manners. He was shy, as well ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Jefferson in forcing on the then unprepared mind of the public the idea of a complete and final separation from the "Mother Country," his aggressive denunciations of the English government's attempts at absolutism made him so hated by the English administration and its colonial representatives that, with John Hancock, he was specially exempted from General Gage's amnesty proclamation of June 1775, as "having committed offenses of too flagitious ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... present ministry I could expect but little; they consisted of men, the greater part of whom had been either courtiers or employes of the deceased King Ferdinand, who were friends to absolutism, and by no means inclined to do or to favour anything calculated to give offence to the court of Rome, which they were anxious to conciliate, hoping that eventually it might be induced to recognize the young queen, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... element of absolutism in the man, his uncompromising severity, his command of the situation regardless of cost, sorrow or suffering to other men, is seen in his realistic physiognomy. We study these facts more and ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... time become a convinced republican, but he was also an evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat. He believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition from monarchy. Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of symbol and ceremonial. He had ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... 1845 to 1867. Dr. Rafael Nunez succeeded him, and proved himself an intellectual President, who became more and more autocratic as his years of office increased. He continued, indeed, whether in the actual tenure of office or not, to exercise an influence of personal absolutism over the Republic until 1894, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... wasted and almost without inhabitants. I have read with great pain the Lord Lieutenant's speech at Belfast, aspersing the country as disloyal and threatening them with greater tyranny. The people are disloyal, to a system of oppression and absolutism which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear; but I believe from my heart that they are more loyal to Her Majesty than their oppressors are, for the system has made them oppressors. Only notice, from Mr. Smith's evidence at the Land Court recently, concerning the Enniskillen estate, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... the University of Paris, then the first university in Europe, had just appealed from the Pope to a General Council. In Germany opinions were on the whole divided between this and the theory of Papal absolutism. Again, the view that neither the decisions of a Council nor of a Pope were ipso facto infallible, but that an appeal therefrom lay to a council possibly better informed, had already been advanced with impunity by writers of the fifteenth century. The ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... races of the realm, who exercise the king's appellate jurisdiction in secular cases. But the king is bound by custom to govern with the counsel and consent of his great men—a Germanic tradition which no after growth of respect for Roman absolutism can destroy. A select body of influential nobles deliberates with the king on all questions of national importance. Their decisions are submitted for approval to a more general assembly (Mayfield), held annually in the spring ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Finch was an obstinate man, with a man's love of authority, and a Scotchman's sense of his right to rule in his own house. But while he talked much about his authority, and made a great show of absolutism with his family, he was secretly conscious that another will than his had really kept things moving about the farm; for he had long ago learned that his wife was always right, while he might often be wrong, and that, ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... harmony nor peace in connection, nations themselves wear the human form, and must, therefore, realize the various states of infancy, youthfulness, and manhood—of germ, growth, and fruitage. This is true of whatever national form. Nationalities founded upon the principles of absolutism, embody and express the same laws and conditions. Their principle of supreme external authority is first a condition of germination, then of growth or labored effort toward maturity, and lastly of fruitage, in which ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... VII: cf. note Fernando, p. 34, 5. Ferdinand welcomed the intervention of the French in Spain to support him in his absolutism against the advanced party, which clamored for constitutional liberties. The French expedition (1823) was completely successful, the resistance being so slight that the French describe the invasion as a ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... to son, much wealthier and much prouder than nowadays, were, in their old hereditary mansions, the real chiefs of the province, its constant representatives on the spot, its popular defenders against ministerial and royal absolutism. All these powers, which once counterbalanced episcopal power, have disappeared. Restricted to their judicial office, the tribunals have ceased to be political authorities and moderators of the central ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... England was a Commonwealth. Charles I., by obstinate insistence upon absolutism, by fickleness and faithlessness, had increased and strengthened his enemies. Parliament had seized the reins of government in 1642, had completely established its authority at Naseby in 1645, and had beheaded the king in front of his own palace in 1649. The army ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... precious part of our natures that lies out of the immediate domain of the logical understanding. One can understand how an honest man would abhor the darkness and tyranny of the Church. But then to borrow the same absolutism in the interests of new light, was inevitably to bring the new light into the same abhorrence as had befallen the old system of darkness. And this is exactly what happened. In every family where a mother sought to have her child baptized, or where sons and daughters sought to have the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... in 1883, was almost apologetic to his countrymen for abstaining from an act of political folly. He pleaded strenuously for delay in the introduction of parliamentary institutions into Egypt, on the ground that our attempts "to mitigate predominant absolutism" in India had been slow, hesitating, and tentative. He brought poetic metaphor to his aid. He deprecated paying too much attention to the "murmuring leaves," in other words, imagining that the establishment of a Chamber of Notables implied constitutional freedom, and he exhorted ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... genial and wise character, had fitted him to watch the course of events in which, according to the course of nature, he might be expected so soon to take chief part. But the years which made his sire venerable passed, and still he had no opportunity to shape public affairs. Absolutism feared his influence and that of his liberal and strong-minded English wife. The prime of life was his; but his best years were behind and not before him as at the age of fifty-five he filially and devotedly ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... of absolutism, slavery, and the bloody penal code; they were the resolute opponents of every political or social reform; and they had their reward from the nation outside parliament. The Bishop of Bristol had his palace sacked and burnt; the Bishop of London could not keep an ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... its first week the victorious advance of America and her allies terminated in the armistice of November eleventh. The power of organized despotisms had been proven to be inferior to the power of organized republics. Reason had again triumphed over absolutism. The "still small voice" of the moral law was seen to be greater than the might of kings. The world appeal to duty triumphed over the world appeal to selfishness. It always will. There will be far-reaching results from all this which no one can now foresee. But some things are apparent. The ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... University teacher, and drove out recusants. You must all know something of the purging of the University and the Ministry of Aberdeen by the Covenanting General Assembly of 1640. These deposed Aberdeen doctors may have had too strong leanings to episcopacy in the Church and to absolutism in the State, but they were not Vicars of Bray. The first half of the century was adorned by a band of scholars, who have gained renown by their cultivation of Latin poetry; a little oasis in the desert of Aristotelian Dialectics. It would be needless and ungracious to ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... interfere with the line of conduct he has conceived in advance. Already Reardon had spoken with far more bluntness than he proposed; involuntarily, his voice slipped from earnest determination to the note of absolutism, and, as is wont to be the case, the sound of these strange tones instigated him to further utterances of the same kind. He lost control of himself. Amy's last reply went through him like an electric shock, and for the moment he was a mere husband ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... those whose influence was directed to the support of the recognized dogmas of the Church in their connection with the absolute rule of kings. The interests of Catholic institutions have ever been identical with absolutism. Bossuet, the ablest theologian and churchman which the Catholic Church produced in the seventeenth century, gave the whole force of his vast intellect to uphold an unlimited royal authority. He saw in the bold philosophical speculations of Descartes, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the will of France;—the policy of Napoleon was accepted by many because it was his: it was his, because he knew it would be acceptable to many as the only safeguard against anarchy, and the only form of absolutism that could be substituted for liberty, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... struggle a matter of profound interest. Though it cannot be said that the contest is that of revolutionists or even of republicans against a legitimately ruling monarch, yet the real principles involved in the contest are in substance those of absolutism and of democracy. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... youth, who on their return would labour to introduce what they had learned. Their efforts were seconded by the clergy, through the close connection with canon law which was in force in Germany. German emperors and territorial lords also favoured Roman law because they saw how well suited it was to absolutism; they liked to engage jurists trained in Italy, especially if they were doctors of both canon and Roman law. Nor did the German people object. From the fourteenth century many schools of jurisprudence were established ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... colonies of Great Britain questioned the policy of the mother country toward her all too energetic children. Hobbes' "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil," appeared in 1651, a powerful argument for absolutism, but cast in such a form as to make the [36]writer an unwelcome adherent to ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... and surely, too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling these same minorities to council. As the king-in-council succeeded the king by the grace of God, so in future democracies the toleration and encouragement of minorities and the willingness to consider as "men" the crankiest, humblest and poorest and blackest ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... had met comrades of all nations, notably many Russians, who had initiated him in the beauties of anarchic brotherhood. On that point he disagreed with La Feuillette, who was a proper Frenchman, an adherent of the strong line and of absolutism in freedom. For the rest, they were equally firm in their belief in the social revolution and the working-class salente of the future. Each was devoted to a leader in whose person he saw incarnate the ideal man that ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... So here was kingly absolutism coming to the aid of the old religious intolerance. The English people, however, had already killed one king in defence of their liberties; and their resolute opposition to James began to suggest that they might kill another. Many of the leading ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... influence, patronage, power, preponderance, credit, prestige, prerogative, jurisdiction; right &c (title) 924; direction &c 693; government &c 737.1. divine right, dynastic rights, authoritativeness; absoluteness, absolutism; despotism; jus nocendi [Lat.]; jus divinum [Lat.]. mastery, mastership, masterdom^; dictation, control. hold, grasp; grip, gripe; reach; iron sway &c (severity) 739; fangs, clutches, talons; rod of empire &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that is it was an absolutism, marked by luxury, display, and taxation so heavy as to amount almost to oppression. Its luxuriousness and display are illustrated by his seraglio, which included seven hundred wives (1 Kings xi. 3); and its despotic nature is seen in such acts as his summary and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... forgotten, however, that the absolutism prevailing in the patriarchal family has its justification in a religious belief,—in the conviction that everything should be sacrificed for the sake [72] of the cult, and every member of the family should be ready to give up even life, if necessary, to ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... coming crisis, and we can observe the formation of the opinions which he consistently and valiantly upheld throughout his career. The whole instinct of his intellectual nature—and he never lost his trust in reason—was against the high Roman or sacerdotal absolutism in matters of dogma; he ranked Morals far above Faith; and he had that dislike of authoritative uniformity in church government which is in Englishmen a reflection of their political habits. Yet he discerned plainly enough the spring of a movement that was bringing ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... every theory,—so philosophy, in basing itself upon the a priori assumptions of reason, is inevitably led to attribute to the ME alone the generation and autocracy of ideas, and to deny the metaphysical value of experience; that is, universally to substitute, for the objective law, absolutism, despotism. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... was at an end. Tilly, whose purposes were the complete restoration of Catholicism in Germany, held the provinces conquered by him with an iron hand. Wallenstein, who seemingly had in view the weakening of the power of the League and the raising of the emperor to absolutism, broke down all opposition before his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... had become factors to be reckoned with by the ecclesiastical and civil rulers; the Feudal System, which had received a mortal blow by the intermingling of the classes and the masses in the era of the Crusades, was threatened, from above, by the movement towards centralisation and absolutism, and from below, by the growing discontent of the peasantry and artisans, who had begun to realise, but as yet only in a vague way, their own strength. In every department the battle for supremacy was being waged between the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... slavishly obedient tool that he thought he wanted. The only difference between the new governor and the old was that Requesens lacked Alva's ability; he had all the other's narrowly Spanish views, his bigotry and absolutism. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... only to let the term mislead, for they were not representative bodies or parliaments in the ordinary sense: their powers were chiefly judicial and they were no barrier in the way of the steady march to absolutism. The political structure of the Bourbon realm in the age of Louis XIV and afterwards was simple: all the lines of control ran upwards and to a common center. And all this made for unity and autocratic efficiency in finance, in ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... with the spirit of Treitschke and Bernhardi, which glorifies war as an end instead of holding it in abhorrence as an evil thing? Properly speaking militarism is a school for the people and an instrument to further political ends. But in the patriarchal absolutism of a military monarchy, militarism exploits politics to further its own ends, and can create a situation which a democracy freed from junkerdom ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... than that these excesses should produce other excesses, in a contrary direction. Moved by hatred or fear of revolutionary absolutism, nations seek an asylum in governmental absolutism, or they retrograde towards the middle ages, and consider the mutual bond of protection and dependence of that period as the ideal and the realization of true liberty. History ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... bulwarks against foreign aggression, but the national character. The downfall of Austria and of Prussia was practically decided by the first great battle. The nations yielded without further struggle. Strangers to freedom, crushed by military absolutism, the prostration of each and all to an irresponsible despot had paralysed individual energy. Spain, on the other hand, without an army and without a ruler, but deriving new strength from each successive defeat, first taught Napoleon that he ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Kingdom and the Serb Vojvodina. The dynasty and the monarchy survived, but Jugo-Slav hopes and the promises they had received were unfulfilled or soon withdrawn, as for instance the Vojvodina in 1861. Absolutism reigned supreme from ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... ambition is as great as its social ambition, and it aspires to authority as well as to equality. If privileges are an evil that of the king is the worst for it is the greatest, and human dignity, wounded by the prerogative of the noble, perishes under the absolutism of the king. Of little consequence is it that he scarcely uses it, and that his government, deferential to public opinion, is that of a hesitating and indulgent parent. Emancipated from real despotism, the Third-Estate ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... obstinate resistance with which republican principles combated Asiatic monarchy in Rome, we must even to-day render thanks for the fact that Europe was not condemned, like Asia, to carry the eternal yoke of semidivine absolutism, even in dynastic regimes. What social force destined to perish would still have power to struggle if it clearly foresaw its inevitable future dissolution; if it did not fortify itself a little with some deluding vision ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... accompanied by report after report from the rest of Germany, shaking the old structure of absolutism like the repeated shocks of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... feared by her fellow-citizens, who will not trust her with power, and shunned by the industrious aliens who seek our shores, because they will not become members of a society in which individualism and absolutism are the supreme law—for was it not to escape these parasites that they expatriated themselves from the shores of the Volga, the Danube and the Rhine? Men will not make their homes among people who, spurning the accepted canons of justice ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... one under her feet, gained power by the aid of Tartar swords and spears or through sheer dread of the Tartar name, and when the Golden Horde was at length overthrown the Grand Prince took the place of the Great Khan and ruled with the same absolute sway. It was the absolutism of Asia imported into Europe. Step by step the princes of Moscow had copied the system of the khan. This work was finished by Ivan the Great, at once the deliverer and the enslaver of Russia, who freed that country from the yoke of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... mission of our Republic is to maintain the fundamental principles initiated in our Declaration of Independence—that all true government rests on the consent of the governed. It is an impious profanation of our flag of freedom to make it the symbol of absolutism on any soil. In the conflict now waging for true American principles, I heartily concur in the views of the late Benjamin Harrison, who was one of the most clear-sighted and patriotic of our Presidents. Just before his death I addressed to that noble ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... what has happened to America since our federal government was converted into a centralized absolutism. The central government in Washington arrogated to itself the unconstitutional power and responsibility of regulating the relationships between private employers and their employees, enacting laws which established "collective ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... indirect valuation; and now and then she had a frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions. That innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him. Her husband's uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of the surprises ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the Greeks; and Samuel Gridley Howe, an impetuous young American doctor, crossed the seas, carrying to the Greeks his services and the gifts of Boston friends of liberty. A new conflict seemed to be shaping itself—a struggle of absolutism against democracy, ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... being told of it, or of the reasons by which my judges had been actuated. I was so certain that I had right on my side, that I reasoned accordingly; but this was not the attitude I should have assumed towards a court which stands aloof from all the courts in the world for its unbounded absolutism. To prove anyone guilty, it is only necessary for the Inquisitors to proceed against him; so there is no need to speak to him, and when he is condemned it would be useless to announce to the prisoner his sentence, as his consent is not required, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... splendid survival of the feudal absolutism exercised and enjoyed by mediaeval rulers is about to disappear beneath encroaching waves of civilization, that do not long spare the picturesque. Cables from far-off Adis Ababa, Menelek's capital, bring news that he has formed a cabinet and ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... and breaking anarchy. Therefore have men said that he swept away old French liberties. What old liberties? Richelieu but tore away the decaying, poisonous husks and rinds which hindered French liberties from their chance of life and growth. Therefore also have men said that Richelieu built up absolutism. The charge is true and welcome. For evidently absolutism was the only force in that age which could destroy the serf-mastering caste. Many a Polish patriot, as he to-day wanders through the Polish villages, groans that absolutism was not built to crush ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... under his compelling grasp; these antagonistic races all held together by the force of one terrible will, in unnatural combination with France. No political liberties, no popular assemblies discussing public measures; it is Charlemagne alone who fills the picture; it is absolutism—marked by prudence, ability, and grandeur, but ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... and so education, in a very stinted form, was encouraged. This was a fatal blunder on the part of the rulers, for as soon as the mind was unfettered the shackles began to fall from the body, and the days of absolutism were numbered. The spirit of knowledge, once released from its imprisonment, became a dominant power in the world, and as time went on the people demanded a voice in the management of affairs. In this way came constitutional ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... and, as in a civil polity the State exists and endures by means of the rivalry and collision, the encroachments and defeats of its constituent parts, so in like manner Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide;—it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful intellects and wild passions, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... married Isabella, daughter of Charles VI of France, and henceforth seems to have adopted French ideas, and to have made pretensions in the direction of absolutism. He proceeded to arbitrary prosecutions which led to the violent death of several leading nobles. Richard also quarrelled with Henry, son of John of Gaunt, whom as Duke of Lancaster he succeeded in 1399. The year before, Richard had banished Henry for ten years—fearing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... officially expressed it, "Democracy at last seated herself on the imperial throne, embodied in the Caesars,"—those worshipful incarnations of democracy, brought to our view in the tableaux of Suetonius and by the accounts of Tacitus. We have at last returned to Caesarism, or Asiatic absolutism, improved by modern light, and making the emperor a Second Providence, opening and shutting the mouths of the universal-suffrage people, for words or bread, as imperial divinity finds best. This is the progress of our age in Europe, while we, in this hemisphere, have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... was it possible to keep alive absolutism? The answer is so curious that we must be explicit ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale |
