"Despotical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... magnanimity, to raise him to the rank of deacon in Simon's church. Deacon John generally acts as a privy counsellor to the king; and is sometimes a judge in criminal cases, when his majesty allows of one, which is not very often; for he most commonly acts in as despotic and summary a manner as ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... leading Republicans, of different States, thought he should be welcomed and honored by the withdrawal of all party opposition to his re-election to the Senate. They argued that in no other way could the despotic power of the Democratic power be so effectually broken, and the real interests of republicanism advanced. This feeling, for a time, prevailed extensively, and threatened to put in abeyance or completely supersede the principles so broadly ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... property in front of his residence or palace. At that time there could not have been much less than two hundred thousand troops encamped in various parts of and around Paris, and those all of foreign nations: truly a downfall for that noble but despotic city. ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... of woman in that empire only as we bear in mind that its government is despotic, and that no constitutional safeguards shield the subjects of a thoroughly selfish and profligate nobility. The Nestorians, too, are marked out alike by religion and nationality as victims of oppression. However great their wrongs, they can hope for little redress, for a distant court ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... more under his own eye; but Mashotlane, fearing that this meant the punishment of death, sent a polite answer, alleging that he was ill and unable to travel. Sekeletu tried again to remove Mashotlane from the Falls, but without success. In theory the chief is absolute and quite despotic; in practice his authority is limited, and he cannot, without occasionally putting refractory headmen to death, force his subordinates ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... above two hours in the street when I had gone to wait upon him, and who had qualified me with the title of impostor without examination; but it seemed that any act of aggression on the part of the general was to meet only with submission and respect. Embarrassment sheltering itself under despotic power, was evident in this letter; but it gave no further insight into the reasons for making me a prisoner, and consequently no opportunity of vindicating my innocence. It therefore seemed wisest, seeing ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... already improved certain streets, and the eye was immediately attracted to points which bore the unmistakable stamp of a British occupation; but nothing can be effected in the arrangement of such a town without an unlimited purse and a despotic power. It is almost as hopeless as London in the incongruity of architecture, and the individual indulgence of independent taste, which absolutely dismays a stranger. The beautiful Gothic cathedral of the Venetians has been converted into a mosque by the conquerors, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... his powers. St Jerome, indeed, lays down, as the principle of the compact between the abbot and his monks, that they should obey their superiors in all things, and perform whatever they commanded (Ep. 2, ad Eustoch. de custod. virgin.). So despotic did the tyranny become in the West, that in the time of Charlemagne it was necessary to restrain abbots by legal enactments from mutilating their monks and putting out their eyes; while the rule of St Columban ordained 100 lashes as the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The despotic rule of the Oriental countries is most favourable to the production of the political criminal: Russia and Germany are not without their representatives. Occasionally bands of political criminals are formed, and then, in the midst of demonstrations, unpremeditated ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... and many were the public rejoicings at Rome upon the retreat of the Volscian army;[3] but they were clouded soon after by the intrigues of Spu'rius Cas'sius, who, wanting to make himself despotic by means of the people, was found guilty of a number of crimes, all tending towards altering the constitution; and was thrown headlong from the Tarpei'an rock,[4] by those very people whose interests he had ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... he had taken what he had a right to consider very effectual measures for carrying the orders of the king into faithful execution. But Astyages seems to have been one of those inhuman monsters which the possession and long-continued exercise of despotic power have so often made, who take a calm, quiet, and deliberate satisfaction in torturing to death any wretched victim whom they can have any pretext for destroying, especially if they can invent some new means of torment to give a fresh piquancy ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Here he was absolutely despotic. And in less than half an hour he had ascertained several important facts. He learned that a team had come in from Crowsfoot the previous afternoon, bringing a passenger for the farm. The team had remained at the farm, likewise the teamster. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Barbara had a despotic way with her men friends, especially with Adrian and Jaffery, who, each after his kind, paid her very ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... legislative discretion. Besides, you must repose confidence somewhere, and judges, on the whole, are more trustworthy than legislators. How can you say that, retorted the opposition, when you, better than most men, know the line of despotic legal precedents from the Ship Money down to the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... fall. Those glorious triumphs were now over when the people of Italy consoled themselves for defeat and submitted to the magical power of that liberty which preceded the Republican armies. Now, on the contrary, it was to free themselves from a despotic yoke that the nations of Europe had in their turn taken up arms and were preparing to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... confronted with the perils of government, close responsibility might improve them, and make them tolerable. But they would not be left to themselves. A voluntary constituency will nearly always be a despotic constituency." ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away. As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a steam autocrat,—passionless, untiring, and supreme,—we should advance further, and live more at ease than ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... place was deserted, and the stony ground was literally covered with bodies. It was a terrible example of Rao Khan's despotic rule. ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... tyrant, Hurl'd from his blood-cemented throne by the arm Of the almighty people, meets the death He plann'd for thousands. Oh! my sickening heart Has sunk within me, when the various woes Of my brave country crowded o'er my brain In ghastly numbers—when assembled hordes, Dragg'd from their hovels by despotic power, Rush'd o'er her frontiers, plunder'd her fair hamlets, And sack'd her populous towns, and drench'd with blood The reeking fields of Flanders.—When within, Upon her vitals prey'd the rankling tooth Of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... why, I say, why should I not revenge? Beware! tempt me no farther! Do my bidding! Thou slave, that thought'st but now to be the master, obey my bidding to the letter!" And she stamped her foot on the ground, with the imperious air of a despotic queen. And in truth, crest-fallen and heavy in spirit, were the proud men ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... could secrete from their husbands. The obligation I was under to them on this account is great, as the hazard they ran in conferring these favours was little less than death. The men, unrestrained by any laws or ties of conscience in the management of their own families, exercise a most despotic authority over their wives, whom they consider in the same view they do any other part of their property, and dispose of them accordingly: Even their common treatment of them is cruel; for though the toil and hazard of procuring ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... see the Papal Church in the capacity of a popular reformer, and in contra-position to the despotic potentates of the several states, as well as to the German Emperor, who nominally inherits the sceptre of the Caesars. Such was its common character under its more illustrious Pontiffs; and the old Republics of Italy grew up under the shadow of the Papal throne, harbouring ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... received with much attention, and Madame Roland admired exceedingly the comparatively free institutions of that country. She felt that the English, as a nation, were immeasurably superior to the French, and returned to her own home more than ever dissatisfied with the despotic monarchy by which the people of France ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... in 1537, was built without regularity of plan, but the present city, owing to the despotic sway of Francia, is most symmetrical. That South American Nero issued orders for all houses that were out of his lines to be demolished by their owners. "One poor man applied to know what remuneration he was to have, and the dictator's answer was: ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... ever assured to the worker; on the contrary, the produce belonged either to small capitalists who, while themselves taking part in the undertaking as workers, shared the produce according to the amount of capital they had invested, or it belonged to the whole as a body, who as such had a despotic right of disposal over both the labour and the produce of the labour of every individual. These reformers were, without exception, associated small capitalists or communists. They were able, if they ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... unheard, my gracious sovereign," he said. "I speak not to a harsh and despotic king, who brings his faithful subjects to the block at the first whisper of evil or misguided conduct cast to their charge; were Edward such Gloucester would speak not, hope not for justice at his ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... household than of anything at Raynham. And yet the young man loved his father, loved his home: and I daresay Caesar loved Rome: but whether he did or no, Caesar when he killed the Republic was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to feel his despotic moustache. Did he know what he was made of? Doubtless, nothing at all. But honest passion has an instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying from the bow. His ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... great pleasure in this tale of a man of politics is that politics really have little, very little place in the novel; it is love that dominates it and in the most despotic and pleasant way possible. This great man of Grenoble who arrives at Paris in order to reform everything, repair everything, elevate everything, falls at once under the sway of a most charming Parisian adventuress. See Sulpice Vaudrey the slave of Marianne. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... religion. Long as he had lived, and many as had been the vicissitudes of his great career, he had willingly been spared this last most miserable experience. On November 25, 1560, he gave up the ghost: he was a great seaman, but still more a passionate lover of his country;—despotic in his love, but not the less ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... great in history and in story; great in the field and the forum; great in the old country and in the new. They had been a brave, fierce, cruel, and despotic race, equally feared and hated at home and abroad, equally loved and trusted as well; for never were such dangerous foes or such devoted friends as were these Berners; no one ever loved as these Berners loved, or hated as they hated. In the intensity of their ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off than a large class of the population of England. You see, you must not infer, from what I have told you, that Alfred is what is called a hard master; for he isn't. He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a sort of pride in having his slaves ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... particularly upon his brother, felt disposed to show towards Anne of Austria more submission and attachment than his character really dictated. Anne of Austria had adopted this line of conduct especially towards the young queen. In this manner she ruled with almost despotic sway over the royal household, and she was already preparing her batteries to govern with the same absolute authority the household of her second son. Anne experienced almost a feeling of pride whenever she saw any one enter her apartment with woe-begone ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... moderate rates of the customs levied; and although the Portuguese and their ships were continually plundered, those belonging to every Asiatic power, from Mecca in the West to Japan in the East, appear to have enjoyed protection and security. The despotic authority of the monarch was counterpoised by the influence of the orang-kayas or nobility, who are described as being possessed of great wealth, living in fortified houses, surrounded by numerous dependants, and feeling themselves above control, often giving a licentious range to their ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the nation saw that the only hope for the country was in being governed by the same king and parliament as the English, many of the most powerful men wished not to be governed at all, but to be altogether despotic over their dependents and neighbours, and to have their own way in everything. These lords and gentlemen did such violent things as are never heard of now in civilised countries; and when their inferiors had ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... historian, whom I shall presently cite, speaks far otherwise of those times when the intellect was prominently active. China was for many centuries the seat of a number of petty principalities, which were limited, not despotic; about 200 years before our era it became one absolute monarchy. Till then idolatry was unknown, and the doctrines of Confucius were in honour: the first Emperor ordered a general burning of books, burning at the same time between 400 and 500 of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... the sole memorial of a rule and of nations that would then have past away forever, even into nothingness and oblivion, scarcely was anticipated by the haughty conquerors who filled those halls with their despotic presence, and entered those consecrated gates in the pomp of triumph to render thanks for bloody victories and warlike exploits which elated their souls in pride till they felt themselves half divine. Nothing doubting but that those walls, ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... prevent excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments; eliminate general warrants for search and seizure; provide jury trials in property disputes; assert "that the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments"; provide for a well-regulated militia and warn against standing armies in peacetime; declare that no government can exist within the state independent of the government of Virginia; and grant to all men equally "the ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... without concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon perfectly understood. He ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... commercial interests; no civilized dependence of one part on another; no natural ties as yet developed to their real significance between the several countries of the Roman Empire: it was held together by the strong and despotic arm of Rome. The Empire of Charlemagne embraced the territory of Middle and Western Europe, inhabited by barbarous peoples, isolated, warlike, and speaking different languages; there were none of the civilized bonds of union; only the genius of Charlemagne held them together; and upon his death ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The laws of nature and the moral laws are not the mere despotic mandates of His Omnipotent will; for, then they might be changed by Him, and order become disorder, and good and right become evil and wrong; honesty and loyalty, vices; and fraud, ingratitude, and vice, virtues. Omnipotent power, infinite, and existing alone, would necessarily ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... to argue with the native, but overbears him by sheer force, and is prone to resort to physical coercion. Even just men, who have the deepest theoretical respect for human rights, are apt to be carried away by the consciousness of superior strength, and to become despotic, if not harsh. To escape this fault, a man must be either a saint or a sluggard. And the tendency to race enmity lies very deep in human nature. Perhaps it is a survival from the times when each race could maintain itself only ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... militarist, and has no ideals. True, that there is a contemporary movement, and a strong one, in favour of what is called "national education," in favour of "the teaching of civics." But we must be on our guard! Here is a new peril. They would make a sort of state idol, despotic and soulless; they would make a state superstition, a state egoism, to which our minds are to be enslaved. Do not let us stoop to the lure. An immense task lies before us, and the Zofingerverein must lead the way. It must play its part in the fulfilment of the moral and intellectual ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... make me your heir.' No wonder that estates went down like a row of bricks, one after another, when they had such managers. Had Jamaica been occupied at the time of emancipation by a resident proprietary, it is not likely that even they could have so far overcome their despotic habits and contempt for the negro as to treat the laboring population with fairness, and what they value still more, with decent respect. But still less could it be expected of the overseers that they would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... agreeable to the temper of James: and accordingly, by a course of slow, and often crooked and cunning policy, he laboured to arrange the church-government upon a less turbulent and menacing footing. His eyes were naturally turned towards the English hierarchy, which had been modelled, by the despotic Henry VIII., into such a form, as to connect indissolubly the interest of the church with that of the regal power.[A] The Reformation, in England, had originated in the arbitrary will of the prince; in Scotland, and in all other countries of Europe, it had ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... On the contrary, it exhibited a mixture of ferocity with a large share of cunning—a countenance, in fact, full of all wickedness. It resembled a good deal the faces I have afterwards observed in India,—among the fat despotic princes that are still permitted to misrule some portions of that unhappy land,—and a large black beard, whiskers, and ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... pacific protestations and promises of freedom and liberal reforms; for they see that he always means war when he prates about peace, that he means tyranny when he promises liberty, and that he gives Draconic laws instead of establishing liberal institutions. The nations hate Napoleon and abhor his despotic system. They seek for means to annihilate him and deliver at length the bloody and trembling world from him. If the princes were as unanimous in their hatred as the nations are, Germany would stand as one man, sword in hand; and this sublime ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... child; but I must now prepare you to meet with a very different person than perhaps the fond anticipations of youth may have led you to expect. Your father has no paternal feelings that I can discover; he has wealth, and he wishes to leave it—he has therefore sought you out. But he is despotic, violent, and absurd; the least opposition to his will makes him furious, and I am sorry to add, that I am afraid that he is very mean. He suffered severely when young from poverty, and his own father was almost as authoritative ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... independence, they suffered themselves to be entirely guided by chance, or by the most wild, untamed caprice: yet they enjoy almost all the advantages, which a well-regulated authority can procure to the most civilized nations. Born free and independent, they hold in horror the very shadow of despotic power; but they rarely swerve from certain principles and customs, founded upon good-sense, which stand them in the stead of laws, and supplement in some sort to their want of legal authority. All constraint mocks them; but reason alone ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... Sweden was one of the most remarkable of the world's historic boys. Elevated to a throne founded on despotic power and victorious memories, at an age when most lads regard themselves as the especial salt of the earth, he found himself launched at once into a war with three powerful nations, only to become in turn the conqueror of each. A singularly good boy, so far as the customary ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the imagination exercises a despotic power. So strong is the perception of what is unreal that it often overpowers all the passions of the mind and all the sensations of the body. At first, indeed, the phantasm remains undivulged, a hidden treasure, a wordless poetry, an invisible painting, a silent music, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... feet of the Elector Frederick, Luther's friend, but he declined it in favor of Charles, only exacting a solemn pledge that he would not disturb the liberties of Germany. Civil freedom is one of the glorious fruits of the Reformation, and here already it began to raise barricades against despotic power. ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... vastly different; and soon those millions of monotonous murmurings from brook and field and forest were soothing his senses. He slept soundly, with that complete relaxing of every nerve and muscle which does not come until the mind wholly yields up its despotic control and itself plunges ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the time to be called cowardice. Such ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... even his own deluded followers that Aaron Burr is engaged in machinations to destroy this Federal Union which the men of Lexington and Bunker Hill fought and died to establish. Behold the Brutus who would stab, not a despotic Caesar, but the nourishing bosom of his native country. We have here, in loyal Kentucky, a Lexington, our most populous city. Remember that it was named in commemoration of the first battle of the Revolution. Shall our Lexington be ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Casas ought to be cherished by every true democrat of these later times, for he announced, in his quality of Protector of the Indian, the principles which protect the rights of all men against oppressive authority. He was eager to convince a despotic court that it had no legal or spiritual right to enslave Indians, or to deprive them of their goods and territory. In framing his argument, he applied doctrines of the universal liberty of men, which are fatal to courts themselves; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... but they militate with a double effect and stronger purpose against the poor whites of the North and of the South, against the German, the Irishman, and the poor and oppressed of every race, who come to our shores to escape the oppression of despotic governments, and to seek the protection of a Government the true theory of which reposes in every citizen a portion of its sovereign power. Against this attempt to deny or abridge in any way the rights of the weak, the poor, and the defenseless, and to transfer ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... complete scheme of life, and actually wished to form a political party and overthrow the government, founding a gynecocracy on the ruins. His ebbing mind could not grasp the thought that tyranny founded on goodness is a tyranny still, and that a despotic altruism is a despotism nevertheless. Slavery ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... restraining the Press, forbidding free discussion among the people, diminishing popular rights and preparing the way, by all the means in their power, for another revolution. The most explicit provisions of the Constitution have been set aside and the government of the Republic is really more despotic than was that of Louis Philippe at any time during his reign. A warm debate occurred in the Assembly on the bill for restricting the liberty of the press. It commenced on the 8th of July and gave occasion to a violent scene. M. Rouher, the Minister of Justice, spoke of the Revolution ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... their career by the privileges granted to the Comedie Francaise, which company alone enjoyed the right to play first-rate productions: it also possessed that of censorship, and sometimes exercised it in the most despotic manner. Authors, ever in dispute with the comedians, who dictated the law to them, solicited, but in vain, the opening of a second French theatre. The revolution took place, and the unlimited number of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... frequently reappeared.[1] Again, the personal causes of war, although in a large measure incalculable, have much smaller scope under modern conditions than formerly. Under ancient conditions, with power centred in despotic monarchs or autocratic ministers, the personal causes of war counted for much. In more recent times it has been said, truly or falsely, that the Crimean War was due to the wounded feelings of a diplomatist. Under modern ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... father and mother she still steadily refused to become his wife. Irritated already by Lady Lydiard's letters, he lost the self-command which so eminently distinguished him in the ordinary affairs of life, and showed the domineering and despotic temper which was an inbred part of his disposition. Isabel's high spirit at once resented the harsh terms in which he spoke to her. In the plainest words, she released him from his engagement, and, without waiting for his excuses, ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the human mind to anything, by habit and interest. Nevertheless, the effects of Christianity, even in this view, have been important. It has mitigated the conduct of war, and the treatment of captives. It has softened the administration of despotic, or of nominally despotic governments. It has abolished polygamy. It has restrained the licentiousness of divorces. It has put an end to the exposure of children and the immolation of slaves. It has suppressed the combats of gladiators,* and the impurities of religions rites. It has banished, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... Under these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising to find the women described as "great shrews, who would on the slightest provocation drive their offending husbands out of the house."[68] This is a curious case of the despotic rule of women. Westermarck accounts for their position by the strict monogamy that is enforced, but I do not think this can be ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... were declared to be the only legitimate authority and alone were admitted to the tribunals or taught in the schools. The rescripts of the early emperors recognized too many popular rights to suit the despotic character of Justinian, and the older jurists, like the Scaevolas, Sulpicius, and Labeo, were distasteful from their sympathy with free institutions. Different opinions have been expressed by the jurisconsults as ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... organize viscera and victory anywhere, at any moment; and all works merrily. The Fatless was similar, yet different. His stomach changed not its local habitation, was never victorious; yet, from cap to boot, it was ubiquitous and despotic. Brain and heel alike felt themselves to be mere squatters on another's soil, and had a vague idea that the rightful lord might some day come to oust them, and build up a new capital in these far-away districts. Sometimes they went so far as to style ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... activity should seem, to my contemporaries, Utopian, I would point out that it has existed throughout the past, and in states of society infinitely worse than are ever likely to recur. For even slaves and serfs could make unto themselves some kind of art befitting their conditions; and even the most despotic aristocracies and priesthoods could adequately express their power and pride only in works which even the slave and serf was able to see. In the whole of the world's art history, it is this present of ours which forms the exception; and as the changes of the future will ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... V and Philip II proved the truth of the remark that no nation is ever so formidable to its neighbors, for a time, as a nation which, after being trained up in self-government, passes suddenly under a despotic ruler. The energy of democratic institutions survives for a few generations, and to it are superadded the decision and certainty which are the attributes of government when all its powers are directed by a single mind. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... form a body politic, I confess myself totally ignorant. Some of them told us, that the power of the king is unlimited, and that the life and property of the subject is at his disposal. But the few circumstances that fell under our observation, rather contradicted than confirmed the idea of a despotic government. Mareewagee, old Toobou, and Feenou, acted each like petty sovereigns, and frequently thwarted the measures of the king, of which he often complained. Neither was his court more splendid than those of the two first, who are the most powerful chiefs in the islands; and, next ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... perceive his folly, and answer him accordingly. Hence he may imagine himself triumphant when no one disputes the field with him. He may think he reigns supreme in the circle, when, in fact, he reigns only over his own opinions, or rather is a slave to their despotic power. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... law, family, state, are but so many fetters forced upon me in the name of an abstraction, but so many despotic lords whom "I," the individual conscious of my own "concerns," combat by every means in my power. Your "morality," not merely the morality of the bourgeois philistines, but the most elevated, the most humanitarian morality is only religion which has changed its supreme ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... clime This way of writing will appear exotic; Pulci[233] was sire of the half-serious rhyme,[dj] Who sang when Chivalry was more quixotic, And revelled in the fancies of the time, True Knights, chaste Dames, huge Giants, Kings despotic; But all these, save the last, being obsolete, I chose a modern ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... To this despotic epistle the young man answered in a few lines. He said that he intended to marry Sylvia, and that nothing would make him give her up, and that he would not meet his father again until that father remembered that his son ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... ruler,—virtually supreme in the land, since Pharaoh delegates to him his own authority, persuaded both of his fidelity and his abilities. It is difficult to understand how Joseph arose at a single bound to such dignity and power, under a proud and despotic king, and in the face of all the prejudices of the Egyptian priesthood and nobility, except through the custom of all Oriental despots to gratify the whim of the moment,—like the one who made his horse prime minister. But nothing short of transcendent talents and transcendent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... fallen in; you are safe on the bank; you can do as you please; your power is despotic; you can shut me up in a convent, and break Graham's heart to-morrow, if you choose to be so cruel. Now, autocrat, now ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... passionate poetry dedicated to the rights of country and of kind. Articles asserting that all Irishmen should be held equal before God and the law, and that Orange ascendancy and all party ascendancy was destructive to Ireland, were strangely in contiguity with others asserting the most despotic claims for the church of Rome that ever were put forth in her name. On the whole, the inference might be fairly drawn from the writings and speeches of Mr. Duffy that he hated England with an indiscriminating and malignant rancour; that her peculiar virtues were as hateful to him as her vices, her ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands—Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke, soon became ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... on securing for his own despotic purposes a standing army. Hence he obtained permission from Parliament to have a permanent bodyguard, and he gradually increased its numbers until he had some 6,000 troops regularly under his command. James II increased ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... long again the family is his own kingdom. Its ideals, constantly interpreted in action, determine our ideals. Where the father is greedy, self-centered, regarding the home as solely for his convenience as his private boarding-house, where he is a despotic boss, why should not the son at least tolerate bossism in his city if he does not himself pattern after his father on a wider scale and regard the city or the state as his private boarding-house and the treasury as his private manger? Where the mother is a petty ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... was Henry III., King of France, doing whilst two great parties and two great men were thus carrying on, around his throne and in his name, so passionate a war, on the one side to maintain the despotic unity of Catholic Christianism, and on the other to win religious liberty for Christian Protestantism? We will borrow here the words of the most enlightened and most impartial historian of the sixteenth century, M. de Thou; if we acted upon our own personal impressions alone, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... never yet taken for a prophet, even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable prediction: 'The despotic government of France is screwed up to the highest pitch; a revolution is fast approaching; that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and sanguinary.' This appeared in the letters of the prophet long before the accomplishment of this wonderful prediction. Now, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as despotic as the English navigation-law! I hear the foot of the child still pacing her chamber, and she shall come. But there need be no explanations, to recall old intercourse.—The affair can pass as a bit of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... true also that the sex which reads the most novels reads the fewest newspapers; and, besides, the reporter does not command the novelist's skill to fix impressions in a young girl's mind or to suggest conjecture. The magazine is a little despotic, a little arbitrary; but unquestionably its favor is essential to success, and its conditions are not such narrow ones. You cannot deal with Tolstoy's and Flaubert's subjects in the absolute artistic freedom of Tolstoy and Flaubert; since ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... withal each its own body, and separate set of notions and advantages. Friedrich was at least a unity; his whole strength going one way, and at all moments, under his own sole command. The value of this circumstance is incalculable; this is the saving-clause of Pitt and his England (Pitt also a despotic sovereign, though a temporary one); this, second only to Friedrich's great gifts from Nature, and the noble use he makes of them, is above all others the circumstance that saved him in such a duel with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... centaur had helped him powerfully in his task of populating his lands. He was capricious, despotic and with the same paternal instincts as his compatriots who, centuries before when conquering the new world, had clarified its native blood. Like the Castilian conquistadors, he had a fancy for copper-colored beauty with oblique ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and even the barrack. In the provinces there are no such centres of intelligence and discussion, and, therefore, on political subjects, there is no public opinion. The consequence is, that the action of the Government is there really despotic; and it employs its irresistible power in tearing from the departmental and communal authorities all the local franchises and local self-government which they had extorted from the central power in ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... said, railway men are not out of the reach of temptation. Let the various officers of a railway manage it so as not to exceed the average expense of other roads of their State, and their reputation stands high. Let them reduce their expenses below the average, and their power is despotic. If they are men of ability, they can do all this,—operate their road for less than many others, run their trains regularly and without accident, even treat the public with civility, and make themselves rich, in a few years, by percentages and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and to undermine a republican government that relied on Venetian methods of rule. Reviewing the events of those days, Madame de Stael finely remarked that only the free consent of the people could breathe life into political institutions; and that the monstrous system of guaranteeing freedom by despotic means served only to manufacture governments that had to be wound up at intervals lest they should stop dead.[124] Such a sarcasm, coming from the gifted lady who had aided and abetted the stroke of Fructidor, shows how far that event had ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... mind!— Cradled in truth, and 'mid distractions born To pure emprise on that despotic morn When freedom yearned along the westering wind, And tyranny, that hound among the blind, Bayed toward the deep where faith ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... Count Louie, thou hast voiced my very thought! Traitors who fellowship with filthy graft And find one single virtue in the creed Of these Republicans who long have ruled These Islands with despotic, cruel hand, Until their tyranny doth smell to Heav'n, Indeed should find no place to lay their heads Within the ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... had not written on this subject) telling me he is convinced that Bismarck put on a mask of fanatical reactionarism in order to win the confidence of the King of Prussia! ... It seemed to me certain, that when new States had to be incorporated with Prussia, despotic reaction would be impossible, much more if a German Parliament were summoned. And now the King himself proposes Universal Suffrage for all men above twenty-five and of unblemished character! This seems to make any English Reform Bill impossible, which is not far more democratic than any practical ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... law about the liberty of the press, and forthwith usurps authority, even in times of peace, to send out its edict to every postmaster, whether in the village or at the cross-roads, clothing him with a despotic and absolute censorship over one of the dearest rights of the citizen. It degrades labor by giving it the badge of servility, and it impedes enterprise by withholding its proper rewards. It alone has claimed exemption from the rule of uniform taxation, and then demanded and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was in continual dread lest that consideration in his colleagues should clash with his own intentions, the presence of Quiroga at Buenos Ayres was far from satisfactory to the remaining two. His influence over half a dozen of the despotic governors in the interior was still immense; the Pampa was his own, after all his defeats; and it was shrewdly suspected that his indifference to power in La Rioja, and his mysterious visit to the maritime capital, were indications of a design to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... passed under an alien sway without consent on its own part! Did it not require a Napoleon to work out this false premiss to its bitter end, drenching Europe in blood to gratify his own greed of power, and reducing nation after nation to his alien and despotic rule, till it was felt to be intolerable, and with a convulsive struggle Europe threw off the yoke? Truly a struggle which was the birth-throes of national sentiment and the recognition that the tie between the governed and the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... 12th section of the said 11th article of said constitution provision is made by which, under certain circumstances, may be seized, transported to, indicted, tried and punished in distant counties, any confederate under ban of despotic displeasure, thereby contravening the Constitution of the United States and every principle ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... full in the face. He seemed to feel how enormous was the exigence of that despotic character, which requires—and all such natures do the like—not only obedience, but submission, absolute submission, and that, too, wearing the air ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... his friend lazily. "And despotic. Was there nothing left of all that immense property? I've just ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... and State has never died out, because the Church has felt it to be her duty, in every age, to raise her voice against the despotic and arbitrary measures of princes. Many of them chafed under the salutary discipline of the Church. They wished to be rid of her yoke. They desired to be governed by no law except the law of their licentious passions ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Bawne hadn't been a nun," reflected Lady Hannah, as she went out of the Matron's office and back to her patients, who had long ago dined, "I think she would have made rather a despotic Empress. 'Refer him to me,' indeed. What is it, Sergeant? Don't say ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a greater tyrant or more inhuman and cruel than James II. After the insurrection of Monmouth had been suppressed, all the sanguinary excesses of despotic revenge were revived. Gibbets were erected in villages to intimidate the people, and soldiers were intrusted with the execution of the laws. Scarce a Presbyterian family in Scotland, but was involved in proscription or penalties. ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... more than once against the citadel of the Constitution by adventurers of this character, through the folly and heedless impulses of the masses. Fifty years hence, and a condition of society will probably exist among us that would effectually have carried out the principle of despotic rule which is beginning to show itself in the bud amongst us, and which is nothing more than the shadowing out of ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... PARTY.—The hatred which the National Republicans felt for Jackson was intense. They accused him of trying to set up a despotic government, and, asserting that they were contending against the same kind of tyranny our forefathers fought against in the War of Independence, they called themselves Whigs. In the state elections of 1834 the new name came into general use, and thenceforth ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the Medes, scattered over separate villages, suffered all the evils of anarchy, till the reputation of Deioces made him the arbiter of their disputes. He then retired into private life; anarchy returned, a king was called for, and Deioces was elected. He organized a despotic power, which had its central seat in Ecbatana, which he made his capital, built upon a hill, on the summit of which was the royal palace, where the king reigned in seclusion, transacting all business through spies, informers, petitions, and decrees. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... good, of subjecting its wildest passions to a sense of justice,—qualities so rare, that, when they are most strikingly manifested in us, foreign observers stand astonished and incredulous. Accustomed to seeing other races carried away by their own frenzy the moment they break free from despotic restraint and attempt to act for themselves, they cannot believe that Americans actually have that uncommon virtue, self-control. The predictions of the London "Times" with regard to us have always proved such ludicrous failures, because they have been based upon this false estimate of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... part of Africa," said he, "saving Egypt, can boast of any ancient monuments of the arts or of civilization. Even the pyramids, the great boast of Egypt, are proofs of nothing more than ordinary patient labour, directed by despotic power. Besides, look at that vast region, extending five thousand miles from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, and four thousand from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. Its immense surface contains only ignorant barbarians, who are as uncivilized now as they were three thousand years ago. Is ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... existence, because God, when he created man, gave his divine nature human form. Reason and freedom are the same: the former is theoretical, the latter practical elevation to the suprasensible. Nevertheless virtue is not based upon an inflexible, despotic, abstractly, formal law, but upon an instinct, which, however, does not aim at happiness. Thus Jacobi attempts to mediate between the ethics of the Illumination and the ethics of Kant, by agreeing with the former in regard to the origin of virtue (it ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... you to your aunt at once," said Krauss, descending heavily from the car, but making no effort to assist his niece. Then he led the way upstairs, striding along the veranda with a heavy, despotic tread, and through a large, dim drawing-room, where Sophy caught an impression of much carved furniture, the figure of a large alabaster Buddha gleaming through the shadows, and a stifling atmosphere of dust and sandalwood. Pushing aside a tinkling bamboo screen, they entered another apartment, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the world possessed this despotic imbecile to form a senate? His action in this can only be accounted for in the light that it was one of those unpremeditated whims of a narrow-minded faddist. One naturally wonders what the newly created senators were doing while the king was ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... the Duke Decres, the Duke of Otranto, the Duke of Vicenza, &c. &c., remonstrated with the Emperor, that this was not what he had promised France; that a new constitution was expected from him, purged from the despotic acts of the senate; and that he must fulfil the expectations of the nation, or prepare to lose ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... message to Congress declaring that in some of the states the laws could not be enforced and asked for remedial legislation. Congress responded with an act (April 20, 1871), commonly called the "Ku Klux Act," which gave the President despotic military power to uphold the remaining Negro governments and authorized him to declare a state of war when he considered it necessary. Of this power Grant made use in only one instance. In October 1871, he declared nine counties of South Carolina in rebellion ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... him a particularly absolute and despotic king, that was a trying Question; so I discreetly held my peace, fearing less to be classed with those obnoxious savans who compile geographies than to ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to control its own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... vocations in comparative liberty and peace. But from the sixteenth century onwards the control of the Sultan declined, power became decentralized, the Ottoman Empire grew ever more anarchic and the rule of the provincial governors more despotic. ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... the Cape Colony became more and more serious, the most arbitrary and despotic methods were adopted to quell the rebellion by trying to intimidate the Colonists. The policy of the gallows was unscrupulously brought into practice, and the barbarous method of compelling the Dutch residents ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... colony of Portugal, but it was not long to remain so. The Cortes of Portugal grew anxious to milk the colonial cow, and passed laws to bring Brazil again under despotic control. One of these required the young prince to leave Brazil. They were laying plans to throw the great colony back into its ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... the time, in fact, is deep-rooted in the conditions of the past. Locke could not have written had not Hobbes and Filmer defended in set terms the ideal of despotic government. He announced the advent of the modern system of parliamentary government; and from his time the debate has been rather of the conditions under which it is to work, than of the foundations ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Hildebrand in the eleventh, and carried into execution by Innocent the Third in the thirteenth century, were wrought into the very texture of the soul of Boniface, and could not be concealed, in spite of the altered condition of mediaeval society. Intolerant, headstrong, and despotic, he undertook to exercise a theocratic rule, and commanded contending monarchs to lay down their arms, and submit their disputes to his arbitrament. To such a summons Philip was not inclined to submit. The crafty and unscrupulous prince, whose ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... spirit of the camp was General Hughes, who rode about with his aides-de-camp in great splendour like Napoleon. To me it seemed that his personality and his despotic rule hung like a dark shadow over the camp. He was especially interesting and terrible to us chaplains, because rumour had it that he did not believe in chaplains, and no one could find out whether he was going to take us or not. The chaplains in consequence were very polite ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... Human Life's a complex maze, And Nature's laws are most despotic. Vice is not killed by kindly craze. Nor suffering quelled by zeal Quixotic. Big questions the Big Scheme beset. Bid Pity think, and do not ask it Too blindly all its eggs to get In ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... observe that songs and strains have all of them preludes, but that laws, though called by the same name (nomoi), have never any prelude. Now I am disposed to give preludes to laws, dividing them into two parts—one containing the despotic command, which I described under the image of the slave doctor—the other the persuasive part, which I term the preamble. The legislator should give preludes or preambles to his laws. 'That shall be the way in my colony.' I am glad that you agree ...
— Laws • Plato
... adopting the spirit, of Romans. A mercenary army, levied among the subjects and barbarians of the frontier, was the only order of men who preserved and abused their independence. By their tumultuary election, a Syrian, a Goth, or an Arab, was exalted to the throne of Rome, and invested with despotic power over the conquests and over the country ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... regency of Baira n Khan, a Turkoman noble, whose energy in repelling pretenders to the throne, and severity in maintaining the discipline of the army, tended greatly to the consolidation of the newly recovered empire. Bairam, however, was naturally despotic and cruel; and when order was somewhat restored, Akbar found it necessary to take the reins of government into his own hands, which he did by a proclamation issued in March 1560. The discarded regent lived for some time in rebellion, endeavouring to establish an independent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fanatical race, down through the 600 years succeeding! How would the Church in these islands have stood such fiery trials? Would we have continued an enterprising missionary Church through it all? It might be good for us to try to understand that, when a despotic Sultan stands over you, allowing you to breathe on condition of no proselytising, the conditions are not favourable to well advertised missionary effort. All that can be done in such circumstances, and under such conditions, ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... thought that these fugitives from the tyrant's power would, in little more than a century, grow like the tribes of Israel into a people able to withstand the onslaughts of the oppressor, and to abolish forever within their borders despotic rule? Who could have had faith that men of different creeds, speaking various tongues, bred in unlike social conditions, would here coalesce and co-operate for the general purposes of free government? Above all, who could have believed that a form ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... despotism, the monarch has entire control over his subjects. They have no law but the will of the ruler, who has at command a large force of armed men to keep his people in subjection. The governments of Russia and Turkey are highly despotic. ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... show that a perpetual and impassable barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery and governed as subjects with absolute and despotic power, and which they then looked upon as so far below them in the scale of created beings that intermarriages between white persons and negroes or mulattoes were regarded as unnatural and immoral, and punished as crimes, not only in the parties, but in the person who joined them in ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... irretrievable, or, if hope remains, to offend that Being who can most strongly support it? but are my passions then voluntary? Am I so absolutely their master that I can resolve with myself, so far only will I grieve? Certainly no. Reason, however we flatter ourselves, hath not such despotic empire in our minds, that it can, with imperial voice, hush all our sorrow in a moment. Where then is its use? For either it is an empty sound, and we are deceived in thinking we have reason, or it is given us to some end, and hath a part assigned it by the all-wise Creator. ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... it was for the last time unfurled; and the cowardice and the treachery of the few patricians who recommended the fatal neutrality, were confined to the persons of the traitors themselves. The present race cannot be thought to regret the loss of their aristocratical forms, and too despotic government; they think only on their vanished independence. They pine away at the remembrance, and on this subject suspend for a moment their gay good humour. Venice may be said, in the words of the Scripture, "to die daily;" and so general and so apparent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the idea that Louis Napoleon has increased the tax on tobacco, latterly, very largely, in the hope of discouraging its use, and so contributing to the weal of the nation? If so, it would illustrate one of the beautiful uses of despotic privilege. ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... hand, where selfishness is outgrown and forgotten, and where the spirit of comradeship and brotherhood pervades the school, there can be no preparation for anarchy, if only for the reason that there is no authority—no despotic authority, forcibly imposing its will on the school ab extra—to be potentially dethroned. For all her scholars, Egeria is the very symbol and embodiment of love, the centre whence all happy, harmonious, life-giving, peace-diffusing influences radiate, and to which, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... of her grief, loomed the desertion of her lover. She tried not to think of Stafford; for every thought bestowed on him seemed to rob her dead father and to be disloyal to his memory; but, alas! the human heart is despotic; and as she lay awake and listened to the wailing of the wind and the rain as it drove against the window, Stafford's voice penetrated that of the storm; and, scarcely consciously, her lips were forming some of the passionate words of endearment ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... said than done; for the count was not the man to be led openly, nor was he willing to listen to good advice, simply because it was good. Irritable, jealous, and despotic, like all weak men, he dreaded nothing so much as what he called an insult to his authority. He meant to be master everywhere, in every thing, and forever. He was so sensitive on this point, that his wife had only to show the shadow of a purpose of her own, and ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... Proudie. This lady is habitually authoritative to all, but to her poor husband she is despotic. Successful as has been his career in the eyes of the world, it would seem that in the eyes of his wife he is never right. All hope of defending himself has long passed from him; indeed he rarely even attempts self-justification; and is aware that submission produces the nearest ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... who says in the Upper House, that whatever may be the distresses of the people, they shall not be gratified at the cost of one of the despotic privileges of the aristocracy. Go to!—I will have none of him. As to Lesborough, he is a fool and a boaster—who is always puffing his own vanity with the windiest pair of oratorical bellows that ever were made by air and brass, for the purpose of sound and smoke, 'signifying ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... government which had driven them and thousands of their compatriots from the land and friends they loved, and from the estates they owned, into resigned and determined agitation for popular government and the amelioration of their people. The upholders of this despotic system of government are now engaged in a life-and-death struggle, and all civilized nations are looking forward to the time when, for the first time in its history, Right and not Might shall prevail in Russia. It has been said, "Happy is the nation that has no history." Russia knows ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably spring up wheat or tares—a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific growth of evil. He made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of his people. With a stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to despotic rule. Yet he hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This tall, pale, gentle, determined man was a man of courage. When the time came he faced the consequence of his own temerity with an ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... against this Continent by the British troops, in the bloody scene of the 19th of April last, near Boston—the increase of arbitrary imposition from a wicked and despotic ministry—and the dread of insurrections in the Colonies—are causes sufficient to drive an oppressed people to the use of arms. We, therefore, the subscribers, inhabitants of South Carolina, holding ourselves bound by that most sacred of all obligations, the duty ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... ruler of Suburbopolis was not a despotic man. He was certainly a little pedantic, and who, I should like to know, would not be inclined to lean that way if they had taken part in a great annexation fight with the chiefs of the big bouncing city of Glasgow, and beaten ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... expression of "the Ideal of Sense or Matter" by their universal style, must be received with severe modification, and is indeed thus far only true, that the mass of Life supported upon that fruitful plain could, when swayed by a despotic ruler in any given direction, accomplish by mere weight and number what to other nations had been impossible, and bestow a pre-eminence, owed to mere bulk and evidence of labor, upon public works which among the Greek republics could be rendered admirable only by the intelligence ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... hardly be supposed that our fathers would tamely submit to such an odious and despotic procedure. To have done so would have been to subscribe to a statute for their own enslavement. Nor may we pass from the consideration of these writs and the resistance offered thereto by the patriots of all our colonies without noticing the un-English character ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... either of the parties from prevailing. And the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor at that time also reached its height; so that the city seemed to be in a truly dangerous condition, and no other means for freeing it from disturbances and settling it to be possible but a despotic power. ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... sublime vigil, silent, yet expressive, in the heart of busy life and through the lapse of ages! We could never pass Duke Cosmo's imposing effigy in the old square of Florence without the magnificent patronage and the despotic perfidy of the Medicean family being revived to memory with intense local association,—nor note the ugly mitred and cloaked papal figures, with hands extended, in the mockery of benediction, over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... capacity of the people to govern themselves; that there is greater safety in a numerous representative body than in the single Executive created by the Constitution, and that the Executive veto is a "one-man power," despotic in its character. To expose the fallacy of this objection it is only necessary to consider the frame and true character of our system. Ours is not a consolidated empire, but a confederated union. The States before the adoption of the Constitution were coordinate, coequal, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... corruption of her court, had only consented to this last after she had taken counsel with Andre d'Isernia, a very learned lawyer of the day, respected as much for his lofty character as for his great learning. The prince, annoyed at being shut out in this way, began to act in a violent and despotic manner. On his own authority he released prisoners; he showered favours upon Hungarians, and gave especial honours and rich gifts to Giovanni Pipino, Count of Altanuera, the enemy of all others most dreaded and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "Eternal City," was regenerated, and a new life bounded through her old limbs; and the August head of the Catholic Church, the greatest religious potentate of the civilized world, the infallible, the object of veneration to half Christendom, and hitherto the most despotic and conservative sovereign in Europe, was now the daring innovator, the radical, the idol of the populace. Austria looked on with distrust and dismay, and tried to pick a quarrel and thus find a pretext for invasion by ordering its troops, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... have preferred to live among brutes rather than among men; as boys or youths, who cannot peaceably endure the chidings of their parents, will enlist as soldiers and choose the hardships of war and the despotic discipline in preference to the comforts of home and the admonitions of their father: suffering any burden to be put upon them, so long as they may ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... engendered by the manner in which the Scriptures have been distorted to make them seem to sanction almost every social and civil wrong. They have been quoted as authority for the absolute subjection of woman; and, with equal fairness, for servile submission to despotic monarchs, for the use of intoxicating drinks, for the burning of heretics, and for the justification of slavery. Within a very few years past, these very Epistles have been brought forward to prove the "sum of all villainies" a God-given boon to man, ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... greatly to the strength and value of the Colony as a whole, brought their own special difficulties to its rulers. With rare exceptions the settlers came from England and Scotland, not from Australia, and were therefore quite unused to despotic government. Having no Maori tribes in overwhelming force at their doors, they saw no reason why they should not at once be trusted with self-government. They therefore threw themselves heartily into the agitation for a ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the English conquest, [Footnote: 46] though never governed by a despotic power, had no Parliament. How far the English Parliament itself was at that time modelled according to the present form is disputed among antiquaries; but we have all the reason in the world to be assured that a form of Parliament such as England then enjoyed she instantly communicated to Ireland, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... and Boris knew well enough that no usurper, however strongly intrenched in their affections he might be, could hope to win those superstitiously loyal people to his support against any prince of the right line, however brutal, unjust, and despotic that prince might be. He knew, in brief, that so long as any descendant of Rurik should live, no other man could hope to seat himself upon the Muscovite throne. Feodor had no children, but he had one brother, the ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... in Latin must often have been puzzled by dialects of English strange to him. When each side in a trial claimed its own customary law, and neither side understood the speech of the other, the president of the court had every temptation to be despotic and corrupt, and the interpreter between him and his suitors became an important person who had much influence in deciding what mode of procedure was to be followed. The sheriff, often holding a hereditary ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... has by degrees developed the idea of political legitimacy; it is thus that it has become established in modern civilization. At different times, indeed, attempts have been made to substitute for this idea the banner of despotic power; but, in doing so, they have turned it aside from its true origin. It is so little the banner of despotic power, that it is in the name of right and justice that it has overspread the world. As little is it exclusive: it belongs neither to persons, classes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... directed to the Greek temples of Paestum. Trained, as he had been, in the strictest academic architecture of the Renaissance, he was struck by many points of difference between these temples and the Palladian formulae which had hitherto held despotic sway over his studies. In grand and minor proportions, in the disposition of triglyphs in the frieze, in mouldings and general sentiment, he perceived a remarkable freedom from the restraints of his school,—a freedom which, so far from detracting from the grandeur of the architecture, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... songs of my country! The soul patriotic Ye fill with the wishes of mighty emprise, Till conquers he tyranny harsh and despotic, Or first in the front of the battle he dies. Ye offer him laurels, ye crown him with praises, Who falls in the fight with his face to the foe, And gratitude over his sepulcher raises The ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... crown. In no country in the world has loyalty existed under greater difficulties, in none has it been so ill requited, in none has so much been done as if of set purpose to starve it to death. In the reign of Elizabeth the capricious will of a despotic sovereign was exerted to crush the national religion, while the greatest military exploits of her ablest viceroys consisted of predatory excursions, in which they slaughtered or carried away the horses and cattle, burned ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... self-government did the people of England become during their "tutelage" that, when Rome at last withdrew, they found themselves totally unfitted for self-government, much more for facing a foreign enemy. As the last, and best, historian of the English people tells us, the purely despotic system of the imperial government "by crushing all local independence, crushed all local vigor. Men forgot how to fight for their country when they forgot how to govern it."[3] The end was that, through six centuries more, England was overrun, first ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... Its transactions, picturesque rather than important, wholly failed to affect the framework of society. That floor of ice which sealed down the wide ocean of opinion retained all its mid-winter solidity, and furnished foundations as firm as before for the old despotic monarchies and the blood-stained persecuting churches. But how immensely different the events of the year now at an end! Its tempests have been, not those of a Greenland winter, but of a Greenland spring: the depths of society have been stirred to the dark bottom, where all slimy ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... delivers him to the tormentors till he shall pay all- -all this is a state of things impossible in a free country, though it is possible enough still in many countries of the East, which are governed in this very despotic fashion; and justice, and very often injustice likewise, is done in this rough, uncertain way, by the will of the ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... was certainly a good woman, but a made good woman. Married to another man, I suspect that she would have been a shrew. Petruchio would never have tamed her, I'll swear. But she, poor lady, had been gradually, but completely, subdued, subjugated, absolutely cowed beneath the weight of her spouse's despotic mildness; for in Hartopp there was a weight of soft quietude, of placid oppression, wholly irresistible. It would have buried a Titaness under a Pelion of moral feather-beds. Mass upon mass of downy ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... paint the agony of kindred torn from each other's arms, to meet no more in time; I may depict the inflictions of the blood-stained lash, but I cannot describe the daily, hourly, ceaseless torture, endured by the heart that is constantly trampled under the foot of despotic power. This is a part of the horrors of slavery which, I believe, no one has ever attempted to delineate; I wonder not at it, it mocks all power of language. Who can describe the anguish of that mind which feels itself impaled upon the iron of arbitrary power—its living, writhing, helpless victim! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society |
