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Body politic   /bˈɑdi pˈɑlətˌɪk/   Listen
Body politic

noun
1.
A politically organized body of people under a single government.  Synonyms: commonwealth, country, land, nation, res publica, state.  "African nations" , "Students who had come to the nation's capitol" , "The country's largest manufacturer" , "An industrialized land"






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"Body politic" Quotes from Famous Books



... my health, and partially for the good of the country. These people here exist as an undigested foreign mass. They must be digested and absorbed into the body politic. They must be taught our ways of thinking and living, or it will be a mighty bad thing for us in Western Canada. Do you know, there are over twenty-five thousand of ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... stifled in rooms heated by stoves, and was utterly disgusted, as he says, "by the servility and duplicity and rascality I have witnessed among the swarms of scrub politicians who crawl about the great metropolis of our State like so many vermin about the head of the body politic." ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... absolved from all such responsibility; and the more so, that the conviction of the importance of the object is come upon them with such a new and cogent force? When they say, reproachfully, that the nation, as a body politic, concentrating its powers in its government, disowns or neglects a most important duty, is it to be understood that this accusatory testimony is their share, or something equivalent in substitution for their share, of that very duty? Does a collective duty of such very solid substance, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... may well task the skill of the bravest and the faith of the most trustful. There are clouds on the horizon which may speedily turn jubilations into lamentations, and the best security against these is that each of us in his place, as a unit however insignificant in the great body politic, should use our little influence on the side that makes for righteousness, and see to it that we leave some small corner of this England, which God has given us in charge, sweeter and holier because of our lives. The ideal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... ate ion that which is made into a body: hence, a body politic, authorized by law to act ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... his victim (after he had trimmed him) upon a charge of grand larceny arising out of the same transaction. One crook bred another every time he made a victim, and the disease of crime, the most infectious of all distempers, ate its way unchecked into the body politic. Broadway was thronged by a prosperous gentry, the aristocracy and elite of knavery, who dressed resplendently, flourished like the green bay-tree, and spent their (or rather their victims') money with the lavish hand ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train

... enervates the administration of justice; and the pardoning power becomes the master-key to let out unwashed, unrepentant criminals. They have fleeced us, robbed us, and are ulcerous sores to the body politic; yet our heart turns to water over their merited punishment. A fine young fellow, by accident, writes another's name for his own; by a mistake equally unfortunate, he presents it at the bank; innocently draws out ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher

... the other. "How did you know what office they had charged upon me? Well—I am making as long a speech as if I were a member of Congress. By the way, Mr. Linden, can you imagine what could induce a man to be that particular member of the body politic? it occupies the place of the feet, I think; such members do little but run to and fro—though I remember I just seemed to give them the place of the tongue—unjustly. They don't do the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... persons who are diseased, of immoral life, or likely to become a public charge. And the attempt to keep them under the hand of the central government for years after they have taken their place for good or ill in the State body politic has recently failed in a monumental case vindicating ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... great and powerful empires they were, although the natural advantages of their situations are still unchanged. But what mighty ravages will not a blood-thirsty and overwhelming despotism effect? What health and vigor can belong to that body politic which is forced to inhale the nauseous effluvia of tyranny? Prosperity is a plant that can only flourish in an atmosphere fauned by the wholesome breath of freedom. The highest fertility of soil, the greatest benignity of climate, the most commanding superiority ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... annalists do not trouble themselves with the rights and aspirations of the masses; the results to general policy that naturally follow upon increase of population, perfecting of arms and munitions of war, admixture of foreign blood with the body politic, and such like matters. The heads of events being noted, it seems to be left to the reader to fill in the details from his imagination, and from his knowledge of contemporary affairs. For instance, suppose ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... him and are obedient to his commend. Without doubt, a King who is after this wise of his lieges is beloved and gaineth of this world eminence and of the next honour and favour with the Creator thereof. And we, the body politic of thy subjects, acknowledge in thee, O King, all the attributes of kingship I have noted, even as it is said, 'The best of things is that the King of a people be just and equitable, their physician skilful and their ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... Clarendon himself does so) chose a text in his Bible as a motto for his chapter on politics; and religion, in short, reached unto every place, and, like Elisha stretched on the dead child, (to use one of Jeremy Taylor's characteristic illustrations), gave life and animation to every part of the body politic. But years rolled on; and the original impulse given at the Reformation, and augmented at the Rebellion, to undervalue all outward forms, has silently continued to prevail, till, with the form of godliness, (much of it, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... among the peasants of that land. In the fifteenth century the influence of Huss and the humanists had in different ways formed channels facilitating the inrush of Lutheranism. The unpopularity of a wealthy and indolent church predisposed the body politic to the new infection. Danzig, that "Venice of the North," had a Lutheran preacher in 1518; while the Edict of Thorn, intended to suppress the heretics, indicates that as early as 1520 they had attracted the attention of the central government. But this persecuting measure, followed thick ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... this History will primarily deal with politics, with the History of England and, after the date of the union with Scotland, Great Britain, as a state or body politic; but as the life of a nation is complex, and its condition at any given time cannot be understood without taking into account the various forces acting upon it, notices of religious matters and of intellectual, social, and economic ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the worst. For as, taking the body natural for symbol of the body politic, the governing and forming powers may be likened to the brain, and the labouring to the limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circulation and communication of things in changed utilities, is symbolized by the heart; and, if that hardens, all is lost. And this is the ultimate lesson ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... spite of the enormous distance which separated him from it. The Czar then on the throne was Ivan IV. Wassiliewitch, called the Terrible. For some time before this, the Russians had shaken off the Tartar yoke, and Ivan had united all the petty rival principalities in one body politic, of which the power was already becoming considerable. The situation of Russia, exclusively continental, far from any frequented sea, isolated from the rest of Europe, of which it did not yet form part, so much were its habits and manners still Asiatic, promised success ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... sense has been sufficiently indicated, has, in particular, established out of the common fund public education as a means of diffusing intellectual gain, which is the great element of growth even in efficient toil, and also of extending into all parts of the body politic a comprehension of the governmental scheme and the organized life of the community, fusing its separate interests in a mutual understanding and regard. It has established, too, protection in the law, for the weak as against the strong, the poor as against the rich, the citizen as against ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... them blaze away at George Brown afterwards as vigorously as they please, but let not their old feuds with him close their eyes to the interests of their country, and their own interests as a powerful section of the body politic." ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... receives a good education and is trained to be a self-respecting member of the body politic might in time share on equal terms the chance of the poor boy to become a man of genuine influence and importance on his own account, just as now by the neglect, or worse, of his parents the very rich boy is apt to be relegated to ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... this body politic the surgeon was a thorn as sharp as any one of his scalpels. He was a hard-headed, sober-minded Scotchman, who had been elected to represent a group of his countrymen living in the eastern part of the village, and whose ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... great. Thus, in most of the States there exists that modification of the ancient Saxon system of local action by "hundreds"—the township organization. This alone carries a healthy political movement into the farthest nook and corner of the body politic: every citizen of common sense may well be consulted in this primary activity, and every household may be interested in the question whether its results are good or bad. But besides this, simple and slightly compensated as are the positions belonging ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... is a better shot than most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly desirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments, unaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. In a well- regulated body politic this natural desire on the part of a spirited young gentleman so highly connected would be speedily recognized, but somehow William Buffy found when he came in that these were not times in which he could manage that little matter ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... and drinking-cups. The whole tumult of the gathering is marshalled and at last met and, as it were, held in check, by a band of magistrates who face the procession just as it enters the presence of the twelve seated gods, at the east end. The whole body politic of the gods has come down to feast with the whole body politic of Athens and her allies, of whom these gods are but the projection and reflection. The gods are there together because man ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... may be learned also from other sources, that, while the positions of the two sexes are as such distinct, the one a degree superior, the other a degree inferior, the difference between them is limited—it is not impassable in individual cases. The two make up but one species, one body politic and religious. There are many senses besides marriage in which the two are one. It is the right hand and the left, both belonging to one body, moved by common feeling, guided by common reason. The left hand may at times be required to do the work ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... their work; the professional men complain that the cities are overstocked with young men calling themselves lawyers, doctors, engineers, and the like, but really unworthy to exercise either profession, who live on the body politic as parasites more or less hurtful. This has certainly become an evil in other countries: every enlightened traveler knows that the ranks of the anarchists in Russia are swollen by what are called "fruits secs''—that is, by young men ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... prose writings then in vogue,—Bentham, Mill and Comte being favourite authors. Theirs was the reasoning in terms of which our youths argued. The age of Mill constitutes a natural epoch in English History. It represents a healthy reaction of the body politic; these destructive forces having been brought in, temporarily, to rid it of accumulated thought-rubbish. In our country we received these in the letter, but never sought to make practical use of them, employing them only as a stimulant ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... though never so famous, must be taken for that of which mention was made afore. [13]As Christ then has a body mystical, which is called his members, his flesh, and his bones (Eph 5:30), so he has a body politic, congregations modelled by the skill that his ministers have in his word, for the bearing up of his name, and the preserving of his glory in the world against Antichrist. In this church, order and discipline, for the nourishing up of the true mystical body of Christ, has been placed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Constitution, and when sustained by force it becomes a practical ABDICATION by the State of all rights under the Constitution, while the treason it involves still further works an instant FORFEITURE of all those functions and powers essential to the continued existence of the State as a body politic, so that from that time forward the territory falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress as other territory, and the State, being according to the language of the law felo de se, ceases to exist." ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... these remarkable incidents is the execution of that instrument of government by which they formed themselves into a body politic, the day after their arrival upon the coast, and previous to their first landing. This is, perhaps, the only instance in human history of that positive, original social compact, which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... blue, the grass is dew-pearled, God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world. Even the beaten party feels that it has won a moral victory, and confidently looks forward to victory without morality at the next turn of the wheel. And so all these diseased humours of the body politic pass ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... come not within the cognisance of the civil power. It remains, as we have said, that the scope and aim of the State, within its own sphere and the compass of its own powers, is the temporal prosperity of the body politic, and the prosperity of its members as they are its members and citizens, but not absolutely as they are men. We cannot repeat too often the saying of St. Thomas: "Man is not ordained to the political commonwealth to the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... in this text, one of a ring of plague-spots on the body politic of Judah. The prophet six times proclaims 'woe' as the inevitable end of these; such 'sickness' is 'unto death' unless repentance and another course of conduct bring healing. But drunkenness appears twice in this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... on the edge of the Blue Ridge, in the middle of the eighteenth century. His father was a pioneer. Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia" reveal clearly his conception that democracy should have an agricultural basis, and that manufacturing development and city life were dangerous to the purity of the body politic. Simplicity and economy in government, the right of revolution, the freedom of the individual, the belief that those who win the vacant lands are entitled to shape their own government in their own way,—these are all parts of the platform of political principles ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... uncomfortable than its predecessor, and insisted on cramming France into them. So far the republics have gone to pieces and France has survived. So intense is her vitality, so tough appears to me to be the old traditional fibre in many parts of the French body politic, that before the great chapter of the Gesta Dei per Francos can be safely assumed to be finally closed, a good many more milliards will have to be spent on that State Establishment of Irreligion and Disestablishment ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... on the walls, besides those of the late and present King,—which hung on each side of the throne,—might be seen the features of Richelieu, who first organized the rude settlements on the St. Lawrence into a body politic—a reflex of feudal France; and of Colbert, who made available its natural wealth and resources by peopling it with the best scions of the motherland, the noblesse and peasantry of Normandy, Brittany, and Aquitaine. There too might be seen the keen, bold features of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... been interfered with by white men, they might have played a part analogous to that of the Romans in the Old World; but there is no real similarity between the two cases. The Romans acquired their mighty strength by incorporating vanquished peoples into their own body politic.[50] No American aborigines ever had a glimmering of the process of state-building after the Roman fashion. No incorporation resulted from the victories of the Iroquois. Where their burnings and massacres stopped short of extermination, they simply ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... teaching school he could not make a greater contribution to the productiveness of the Woodruff District than by working in the fields, he would go back to the fields. Whether he could make his teaching thus productive or not was the very fact in issue between him and the local body politic. ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... not to be identified with goodwill, though the latter is a condition precedent; we may feel goodwill, but not friendship, towards a person we have never seen or spoken to. Unanimity of feeling—not as to facts, but as to ends and means—is a sort of equivalent to friendship in the body politic. The reason why conferring a benefit creates more affection than receiving it seems to be that the benefactor feels himself the maker of the other; we all incline to love what we produced—as parents their children, or the artist his ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... running in a great number of small channels, has been taught to run principally in one great channel. But the whole system of her industry and commerce has thereby been rendered less secure, the whole state of her body politic less healthful than it otherwise would have been. In her present condition, Great Britain resembles one of those unwholesome bodies in which some of the vital parts are overgrown, and which, upon that account, are liable to many dangerous ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... Law and Order.—It is not an unusual thing for political parties to elect men to offices of trust and then to have these same men refuse to enforce the laws which they have sworn to uphold. In consequence we have all kinds of abuses and evils growing up in the body politic. Too often the political race is for the honour ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... public authority, to order and direct what is to be done by each, in relation to the end of the association. This political authority is the sovereignty." Again this writer remarks: "The authority of all over each member essentially belongs to the body politic ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... maladministration of public affairs, and to cleanse the city of the corruption which existed—as it has existed and always will exist in populous communities, agreeably to the sentiment of Jefferson, that "cities are scabs upon the body politic." And with the best of motives they believed that the organization of the Vigilance committee was the better and surer remedial agent to these wholesome and commendable purposes. But their action was akin to that of the thousands of citizens who refrain from voting ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara

... hateful to his dearest friends. In order to guard against this evil, the God who watched over Sparta gave you two kings instead of one, that they might balance one another; and further to lower the pulse of your body politic, some human wisdom, mingled with divine power, tempered the strength and self-sufficiency of youth with the moderation of age in the institution of your senate. A third saviour bridled your rising and swelling power by ...
— Laws • Plato

... Pereira do Carmo, said, (and he spoke the truth,) that the constitution was the social compact, in which, were expressed and declared the conditions on which a nation might wish to constitute itself a body politic: and that the end of that constitution, is the general good of each individual, who is to enter into that social compact. How then dares a mere fraction of the great Portuguese nation, without waiting for the conclusion of ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... component parts of the Italian body politic, with the addition of numerous petty principalities and powers, adhering more or less consistently to one or other of the greater States. The whole complex machine was bound together by no sense of common interest, animated ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... limits the right of property* by appropriating to public uses such portions of it as are needed for the maintenance, convenience, and well-being of the body politic. This is done, in the first place, by taxation, which—in order to be just—must be equitable in its mode of assessment, and not excessive in amount. As to the modes of assessment, it is obvious that a system which lightens the burden upon the rich, and thus ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... a society as this it may indeed be said, that it "exists for the benefit of its members, not its members for the benefit of society. It has ever to be remembered that great as may be the efforts made for the prosperity of the body politic, yet the claims of the body politic are nothing in themselves, and become something only in so far as they embody the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... flame. Class conflicts cause wars and selfish ambitions have often embroiled nations; in fact, war is like a boil, it indicates that there is poison in the blood. Christ is the great physician whose teachings purify the blood of the body politic ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... other) convention, clamoring against white oppression with all the fire of a Spartacus. It is not logical conviction of the justice of their claims that is needed, but a prevalent belief that they would form a wholesome and desirable element of the body politic. Their color exposes them to much unjust and damaging prejudice; but if their degradation were but skin-deep, they might easily overcome it. . . . . Of course, we understand that the evil we contemplate is complex and retroactive—that the political ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... is already recognized as necessary. So in political science, the actual working of the body politic needs to be taught, and this is too often neglected for explanatory theories and a special interpretation. A single elementary course in chemistry, physics, or biology presupposes two or three more courses which fill out the special ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... that the courts sometimes err in their interpretation of the constitution and the laws, since judges, however carefully selected, are but men; but there must be somewhere in the body politic of a free state some body of men with the power of authoritative interpretation of the fundamental law as well as other laws. Does earlier history or later experience point to any better equipped, more stable, ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery

... intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic. ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

... population, and the law of diminishing returns, led to a scramble for unappropriated lands producing the raw materials of industry. It was, in a sense, a war of capital; but capitalism is no accretion upon the body politic; it is the creator of the modern world and an essential part of a living organism. The Germans unquestionably made a deep-laid plot to capture all markets and cripple or ruin all competitors. Their aims and methods were very like those of the Standard Oil Trust on a still larger scale. The ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... around us—drunkenness, sensual immorality, commercial dishonesty, senseless luxury amongst the rich, heartless indifference to the wail of the poor, godlessness over all classes and ranks of the community. Surely, surely, if the body politic be not dead, it is sick nigh unto death. And I, for my part, have little hesitation in saying that as far as one can see, European society is driving as fast as it can, with its godlessness and immorality, to such another 'day of the Lord' as these words of my text suggest. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... things is one of the foundations of modern civilization. This distinction is based upon those great words which, eighteen hundred years ago, separated the domain of God from the domain of Caesar. Religion considered as a function of civil life; dogma supported by the word of a monarch or the vote of a body politic; the formula of that dogma imposed forcibly by a government on the lips of the governed—these are debris of paganism which have been struggling for centuries against the restraints of Christian thought.[26] The religious convictions ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... friction from which the party had suffered; to the widespread change that was taking place in the public mind; to the ever-increasing pressure from above and the never-ceasing fermentation from below; to the feverish restlessness that had come over the body politic, changing its form, its ideals, and its convictions; and to the more scrupulous and sometimes reactionary stand that was being taken on ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... Trojan aera, and in the pre-Trojan or Argonautic aera, already (and perhaps for many centuries before) the nominal kingdoms were virtually republics, the princes being evidently limited in their authority by the 'sensus communis' of the body politic almost as much as the Kings of Sparta were from the time of Lycurgus to the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... need than the Jews to steep itself again in the sources of its existence, and no period more than the present imposes upon it the duty of bringing its past back to life. Scattered over the face of the globe, no longer constituting a body politic, the Jewish people by cultivating its intellectual patrimony creates for itself an ideal fatherland; and mingled, as it is, with its neighbors, threatened by absorption into surrounding nations, it recovers a sort of individuality by the reverence it pays to men that have given best ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... it matters not how great the need of the change produced by it, is as such an enormous evil, a serious, and sometimes, fatal disease of the body politic, is self-evident. The injury to morals which the spectacle of victorious wrong almost always produces can be healed, as a rule, only in the following generation. Where law has been once trampled on, the "right of the stronger" will prevail; and the stronger is, to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... number of matters from within, we shall be regulated from without. Then, instead of giving the financial body a little griping in its gold-lined tummy, which is only the salutary effect of purging, a surgical operation will be required. It will be something like one they performed on the body politic of France not so long ago. Old Dr. Guillotine officiated. It was quite a successful operation, though the patient ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... not proposed in this place to deal either with the working of British political institutions, or with the various important social and economic problems which the actual condition of England presents, but only with the extremities of the body politic, and more especially with those where the inhabitants of the countries under British rule are not of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... wages to be paid by orders upon shops owned or controlled by employers, would oblige workers to herd together in dens of infection, and to breed physical and moral diseases which would injure the body politic. The need of a growing social control over modern machine-production, in cases where that production is left in the main to the direction of individual enterprise, is admitted on every side, though the development of that control ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli must become a part of Europe, with modern development and home rule. South Africa, stripped of its black serfs and their lands, must admit the resident natives and colored folk to its body politic as equals. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... intolerance shown towards dissenters was by this time not so much sectarian, not so much a lack of tolerance toward slightly varying fundamentals of faith, form of worship, and organization, as an intolerance based upon the conviction that the body politic must be protected by a state church. There was, of course, a little of the exasperating sense of superiority in belonging to the favored Establishment. The old objection to dissent as heresy—as a sin for which the community was responsible—had for the most part given way to opposition to ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... whose business it is to trade in human passion. We revolt from the red aphides upon the plant, the caterpillar upon the tree, the vermin upon bird or beast. How much more do we revolt from those human vermin whose business it is to propagate parasites upon the body politic! The condemnation of life is that a man consumes more than he produces, taking out of society's granary that which other hands have put in. The praise of life is that one is self-sufficing, taking less out than he put into the storehouse ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... to Virginia one hundred idle and dissolute persons, then in custody of the knight marshal. These were the first convicts transported to America. The policy which dictated this measure was soon perceived to be not less wise than it was humane. Men who, in Europe, were the pests of the body politic, made an acceptable addition to the stock of labour in the colony; and, in a new world, where the temptations to crime seldom presented themselves, many of them ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... of your kindly request, and urge all to study the intricate problem of bettering the world; not merely the individual sufferings in it, but the general conditions. Such study will show the great need of a new balance of power in the body politic; and the conscientious student must arrive at the conclusion that this will have to be obtained by enfranchising a new class—women. If the Y. M. C. A. really desire to make better moral and social conditions possible, they should hasten to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... neither choose nor be chosen for any of the cultured professions. They fail to perceive that the influence of these men would have a refreshing and invigorating effect upon the whole life of the people. They miss the need of some such transfusion of "vulgar blood" into the higher forms of the body politic. They cannot admit that it is these very parvenus who are the founders of new families and a new civilisation. Nor that many chasms must for ever be left yawning. They do not appreciate the peculiar pride which Gorki expresses in this romance, in such a classic and touching manner, in the character ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald

... century towards the close of the mediaeval and the commencement of the modern periods. He favours us with a paucity of maxims relating to government in general, or the different branches and offices which make up the body politic; but enters, with tedious fulness, into the rise, operation, consequences and proper restraint of the genuine passions and natural propensities of mankind in individuals, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... a disposition to create distempers in this body politic. Men are even uttering slanders against the United States as if to excite her. Men are saying that if we should go to war upon either side there will be a divided America—an abominable libel of ignorance. America ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... secret societies; it was prepared to grant a large toleration and a broad comprehension, but, as is the case with modern governments, it wished to have jurisdiction and the ultimate authority in every movement of the body politic and social, and its civil institutions were based, or essentially depended, on its religion. Accordingly, every innovation upon the established paganism, except it was allowed by the law, was rigidly repressed. Hence the professors of low superstitions, of mysteries, of magic, of astrology, were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... at war for many months, that we acquired hospital accommodations at Scutari for more than a thousand men. Errors, follies, and vices on the part of individuals there doubtless were; but, in the general reckoning, they were of small account— insignificant symptoms of the deep disease of the body politic— to the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... the clergy and of the bar have not unfrequently so far forgotten, if not truth and fact, at least the common courtesies and charities of life, as to attribute to the military profession an unequal share of immorality and crime. We are declared not only parasites on the body politic, but professed violators of God's laws—men so degraded, though unconsciously, that "in the pursuit of justice we renounce the human character and assume that of the beasts;" it is said that "murder, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... his particular affairs with the narrow pertinacity of a respectable ant, he subserves an economy larger than any purpose of his own. Society is happily not dependent for the growth of fellowship on the small minority already endowed with comprehensive sympathy: any molecule of the body politic working towards his own interest in an orderly way gets his understanding more or less penetrated with the fact that his interest is included in that of a large number. I have watched several political molecules being educated in this way by the nature of things into a faint feeling of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... finishing a generous cup of coffee, "I feel inclined to be a good Christian man. I have a broad charity for about every one except editors and politicians. I am a man of peace, and there can be no peace while these disturbers of the body politic thrive by setting people by the ears. I don't disparage the fare, mother, that thee gives us at the meetinghouse, that is, when thee does give us any, but I do take my affirmation that thee has prepared ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... nature; and the result shall be the inscription upon the wall which made their prototypes of old tremble, reflecting upon them also its ghostly and terrific glare. Were it not for the infusion almost constantly going on, from the country, of fresh blood into the veins of the diseased body politic in our largest cities, destruction, disgrace, and financial ruin would early mark the spot where once flourished a proud and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... when Cadmus brought from Phoenecia the letters which had been invented and adopted there for the representation and expression of articulate sounds; and by the combination of these letters to transmit and perpetuate human ideas. There is scarce a race of savages in our day where the mass of the body politic are as profoundly ignorant as were the great body of the Greek people a thousand years ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend

... back—coming back into her life, and into all their lives. Though everything seemed just the same as when he had left Old Place, everything was different, both in a spiritual and material sense. The War had made a deep wound, nay, far more than one wound, in the spiritual body politic of Old Place. And it was of a very material thing that Betty Tosswill thought first, and most painfully, this morning. This was the fact that from having been in easy circumstances they were ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... and non-Socialistic, points to the existence of ills in the body politic, and the Socialistic agitation is exceedingly valuable inasmuch as it draws general attention to these ills. Some complaints of the Socialists will be found to be imaginary, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... called. Mr. Clay, in turn, did not conceal his hostility to the mode of adjustment proposed in the messages of the President, and defended his own with vigor and eloquence. Reciting the measures demanded for a fair and lasting settlement, he said there were five wounds, bleeding and threatening the body politic, all needing to be healed, while the President proposed to heal but one. He described the wounds, numbering them carefully on his fingers as he spoke. Colonel Benton, who was vindictively opposed to the Omnibus Bill, made sport of the five gaping wounds, and believed that Mr. Clay ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... people supported the President, in the other they sustained Congress. Nothing could better illustrate the flexibility of the Constitution than the contrast between these administrations; but it needs no argument to show that to pass from one such extreme to another is not healthy for the body politic. The violent antagonisms aroused during Johnson's administration, when the difficult questions to be settled needed the best statesmanship of the country, and when the President and Congress should have cooperated wisely and sympathetically, did incalculable harm. Johnson, by habits, ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... the class of men who consider woman as an appendage to man, limiting her sphere to the physical duties of maternity; demanding perfection in that respect, but regarding her mentally as of no account. To such men the admittance of woman as an actual sharer in society, in the body politic, in the family, meant the subversion of the social system. In these days we are so far removed from this theory of primitive people that almost all women, even those who do not desire the fatal emancipation ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... for the real organs of power was going to the root of the matter in a spirit at once thoroughly scientific and thoroughly practical. Burke had, by the speculative training to which he had submitted himself in dealing with Bolingbroke, prepared his mind for a complete grasp of the idea of the body politic as a complex growth, a manifold whole, with closely interdependent relations among its several parts and divisions. It was this conception from which his conservatism sprang. Revolutionary politics ...
— Burke • John Morley

... at all this hollow pretence, having been brought up within the range of that which was no mockery. "I am willing to become a loyal member of the Society of the White Wolf for the furtherance of any honest purpose. All things, I admit, are not well within the body politic. Let us, in the city of Thorn, strive after the same rights as are possessed by the Free Cities of the North. If that be your object, the son of the Red Axe is with you—with you to the death, if need be. But for God's sake let us take off these masks and set ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... knows Boston as the centre of art, which he affects to despise, and New York appeals to him as the home of the millionaire, of the money-lender; but in Washington he recognizes the great nerve centre of national life. It is the political ganglion of the body politic. It appeals to the romantic in him as well. It is historical; it is the ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... absolute dominion over any creature in the image of man be a wholesome power in a free country; whether this is a school in which to train the young republican mind; whether slave blood and free blood can course healthily together in the same body politic. Whatever may be present appearances, and by whatever name party may choose to call things, this question must finally be settled by the democracy of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... look upon it as an evil which should be given up on account of its own intrinsic wrong? We would that we could answer these questions in the affirmative. But there are acts too patent to be denied, which show that the virus of this great iniquity still rankles in the body politic; that the system of slavery has been given up by the people of the South simply as a matter of necessity; that if they had the power they would re-instate it again though they should rend and ruin the Republic in their attempt; and hundreds ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... State institution ought to be considered the pride, not the shame of the State; and if we falsify such institutions, the disgrace is ours, not theirs. If slavery, however, is a blemish, a blot, an eating cancer in the body politic, it is not our fault if, by holding it up, others should see in the mirror of truth its deformity, and shrink back from the view. We have not, and we intend not, to use any weapons against slavery, but the moral power of truth and the force of public opinion. If we enter the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... graves of mankind. This opinion was strongly held, too, by Arthur Young, who ridiculed the general fear of depopulation, and declared that if money were provided, you could always get labour, but who looked upon the towns as destructive cancers in the body politic. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... nature of the Bantu is no whit different from the human nature of the Europeans then it is a fair question to ask why the two races should not be able to live together in liberty, equality and fraternity as people of one nation or body politic. It is because human nature is governed by laws which, unlike the laws of mathematics, cannot be laid down with certainty that we find ourselves unable to give a positive answer to this question. The human nature of the whites, like the human nature of all races that have been predominant before, ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... remained for Carteret and his friends to discover, with inspiration from whatever supernatural source the discriminating reader may elect, that the darker race, docile by instinct, humble by training, patiently waiting upon its as yet uncertain destiny, was an incubus, a corpse chained to the body politic, and that the negro vote was a source of danger to the state, no matter how cast ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... where people exist under unwholesome conditions, has some such phenomenon. In Palermo we have the traditional Mafia—a state of mind, if you will, ineradicable and all-pervasive. Naples festers with the Camorra as with a venereal disease, its whole body politic infected with it, so that its very breath is foul and its moral eyesight astigmatized. In Paris we find the Apache, abortive offspring of prostitution and brutality, the twin brother of the Camorrista. In New York there are the "gangs," composed ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... from it; till then let us be content to work and pray, and lay our hand to the wheel wherever we can find a spoke to grasp. Corruptio optimi est pessima; the national Church as it ought to be is the soul and conscience of the body politic, but a man whose body has the direction of his conscience we do not commonly consider in ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... the rural school. One-half of our entire school population attend the rural schools, which are still in the formative stage. The country youth is entitled to just as thorough a preparation for thoughtful and intelligent membership in the body politic as is the city youth. The State, if it is wise, will not discriminate in favor of the one as against the other, but will adjust its bounties in a manner equitable to the needs of both. Heretofore the rural schools have received very little ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... they would, must be balanced with an ability of paying when and as they ought. Nor is the resulting fact in this case at variance with the a priori theory. They succeeded in making their thought the life and soul of a body politic, still powerful, still benignly operative, after two centuries; a thing which no mere fanatic ever did or ever will accomplish. Sober, earnest, and thoughtful men, it was no Utopia, no New Atlantis, no realization of a splendid dream, which they had at heart, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... inadequate. Above all things, the government must go out of the business of repression, must cease tagging the Negro as an outcast among his fellows. The men who administer affairs must be made amenable to the sentiment of the whole body politic and not simply that portion ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... materially curb his freedom of action. The Council is a relic of the old provincial and colonial days, its inherited aristocratic body clothed in democratic garments. As its duties could be performed by the Senate without loss of dignity, and with pecuniary saving, its retention as a part of the body politic is due to the "let well enough alone" policy of the American citizen which has supplanted the militant, progressive democracy ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... condition and increasing his happiness that lies in education—unless our whole theory of modern life is wrong—and also of the political and social danger there is in a degraded class numerically strong. Granted integral membership in a body politic, education is a necessity. I am aware of the danger of half education, of that smattering of knowledge which only breeds conceit, adroitness, and a consciousness of physical power, without due responsibility and moral restraint. Education makes a race more powerful both ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... left no mark in history, no lessons for posterity, no political ideas for the education of the world. He might have made a name like Genghis Khan or Timur; but the story of his life would have dropped into oblivion. After his death every evil that festered in the body politic would have broken out afresh. His successors would have inherited the same wars, the same revolts, and the same mutinies; unless they had inherited his capacity, they would have died out in anarchy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... have equal rights. It matters not that the spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of luxury. That is a violation of civil society; and members are justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal. If the existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used: "Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free." Equally plausible ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... point of the argument is only that their material or other self-regarding interests are of such a nature as to be furthered by the material wealth of the community, and more particularly by the increasing volume of the body politic; but only with the proviso that this material wealth and this increment of power must accrue without anything like a corresponding cost to this class. At the same time, since this class of the superiors is in some degree a specialised organ ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... professional politicians and all those influences that have degraded politics since the days of Jackson and Van Buren. Happily, so far, the people of Canada have shown themselves fully capable of removing those blots that show themselves from time to time on the body politic. Justice has soon seized those men who have betrayed their trust in the administration of public affairs. Although Canadians may, according to their political proclivities, find fault with some methods of governments and be carried away at times by political passion ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... spy upon and terrorise the population; upon the German bureaucrats who do not consider themselves the servants of the public, but look upon the public as their servant, and whose spirit of meanness and corruption is so characteristic of the Austrian body politic; finally, the dynasty relies upon the Catholic hierarchy who hold vast landed property in Austria and regard it as the bulwark of Catholicism, and who through Clericalism strive for political power rather than for the religious ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... under which they sailed had no force in the territory of the Plymouth Company, they united themselves by the so-called "Mayflower compact," November 11, 1620, into a "civill body politic," and promised "submission and obedience to all such ordinances as the general good of the colony might require from time to time." Under the patent John Carver had been chosen governor, and he was now confirmed in that office under the new authority, which followed ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... pompously denouncing the very political corruption which they themselves cause and want and profit from; they are the fine fellows who come together in their solemn conclaves and resolve this and resolve that against "law-defying labor unions," or in favor of "a reform in our body politic," etc., etc. A glorious crew they are of excellent, most devout church members and charity dispensers; sleek, self-sufficient men who sit on Grand Juries and Trial Juries, and condemn the petty thieves to conviction carrying long terms of imprisonment. Viewing commercial ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone and metal and color to the future." "In her throes of agony she kept always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate, void of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and the regeneration of the body politic." "Her great men drew their inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who knew they were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do their minor work for her zealously and perfectly." The workmen who chiseled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... Abuses have been reformed, increased expedition in the transportation of the mail secured, and its revenue much improved. In a political point of view this Department is chiefly important as affording the means of diffusing knowledge. It is to the body politic what the veins and arteries are to the natural—conveying rapidly and regularly to the remotest parts of the system correct information of the operations of the Government, and bringing back to it the wishes and feelings of the people. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... No; it was not as a constitutional, but as a 'NATURAL right,' that Mr. Jefferson spoke of nullification by the people of a State. I say the people, for Mr. Jefferson well knew that the 'natural right' of a State to nullify, as an artificial body politic, would be a contradiction in terms. This 'natural right' is a personal, as contradistinguished from a State right; it is inalienable—it is neither given nor reserved by constitutional compacts—it exists in citizens of every State, the minority as well as the majority, and not in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... years ago, experienced the same troubles we are having. There is a fable comparing the corporeal body to the body politic. Once upon a time the feet became discontented and struck. They refused to be walked upon longer. The legs noted the dissatisfaction of the feet. Although they never had cause for complaint before, they said: 'Well, we ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... government, the American system of government began to be introduced there. American laws, American courts, and the whole American system of politics and jurisprudence spread over the country, changing, by degrees, the features of civil society; infusing life and vigor into the body politic, and introducing that restless spirit of speculation and improvement which characterise the people of the United States. The tide of emigration once more swept by the dwelling of Daniel Boone, driving off the game and monopolizing the rich hunting grounds. His office of ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... a resolution of the race problem presented by the Negro question in its present aspects. So long as the existing mass of our crude and unassimilated colored population holds its present place in the body politic, we must expect that civilization and political rights will oscillate between alternate perils—the peril that comes from the white man when he places civilization, or sometimes his travesty of it, higher than the Negro's political rights, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... new sect yet—I don't know what its tenets are, nor where to go and look for 'em. It strikes me they don't accord with the Tories, and yet arn't in tune with the Whigs, but are half a note lower than the one, and half a note higher than t'other. Now, changes in the body politic are always necessary more or less, in order to meet the changes of time, and the changes in the condition of man. When they are necessary, make 'em, and ha' done with 'em. Make 'em like men, not when you are forced to do so, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... of this nature, where a considerable body of people who have attempted to free themselves of the control of the superior government have reached such point in occupation of territory, in power, and in general organization as to constitute in fact a body politic; having a government in substance as well as in name; possessed of the elements of stability and equipped with the machinery for the administration of internal policy and the execution of its laws; prepared and able to administer justice at home, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... reason, is the lord Who from the body politic doth drain Lust for himself, instead of toil and pain, Leaving us lean as crickets on dry sward. Well too if he like Love would filch our hoard With pleasure to ourselves, sluicing our vein And vigour to perpetuate the strain Of life by spilth of life within us stored! Love's cheat ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... despots. Nor can we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. The boasting about English freedom implied some misunderstanding. But it was at least the boast of a vigorous race. Not only were there individuals capable of patriotism and public spirit, but the body politic was capable of continuous energy. During the eighteenth century the British empire spread round the world. Under Chatham it had been finally decided that the English race should be the dominant element in the new world; if the political connection had been severed by the bungling of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... causes which battle stuffiness and complacency and Golden Ages and monstrous things like that. Not thieves, of course. They're degradation, like body lice. But rebels and crackpots and revolutionaries who prevent hardening of the arteries of commerce and furnish wholesome exercise to the body politic—they're worth cherishing!" ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... was still a considerable party in favour of the Union, although the treason of Renneberg had hitherto prevented both city and province from incorporating themselves in the body politic of the United Netherlands. Within the precincts were five hundred of Verdugo's veterans under George Lanckema, stationed at a faubourg called Schuytendiess. In the city there was, properly speaking, no garrison, for the citizens in the last few years had come to value themselves ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... who their sovereign is they answer unhesitatingly—Kaiser Wilhelm! During Russia's recent military reverses, which threatened for a time to culminate in the capture of Riga, and possibly of Petrograd as well, these parasites in the body politic of Russia displayed their joy in various unseemly ways, which aroused the indignation of their Slav neighbours. In one of their schools the Russian visiting authorities were received with demonstrations of hostility. It is ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... the states, by which time it had become clear that they must totally fail of their purpose, for each state decided for itself whether to respond to the demands of congress. The poison of nullification thus infused into the body politic at its birth bore baleful fruit ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... They were sharers in a great national movement, and they came over when their cause was warm with the glow of martyrdom and on the eve of its coming triumph at home. After the Restoration, in 1660, the currents of national feeling no longer circulated so freely through this distant member of the body politic, and thought in America became more provincial. The English dissenters, though socially at a disadvantage as compared with the Church of England, had the great benefit of living at the center of national ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... we may feel it our duty to disapprove, officially, of a class so little necessary to the body politic, aeronauts are interesting talkers, being able, like Shakespeare's Moor, to speak of "most disastrous chances, of moving accidents by flood and field, of antres vast and deserts idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various



Words linked to "Body politic" :   political entity, renegade state, Eelam, estate of the realm, rogue state, major power, dominion, sea power, world power, ally, developing country, superpower, estate, rogue nation, foreign country, Tamil Eelam, power, Reich, city-state, great power, political unit, the three estates, city state, suzerain, commonwealth country



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