"Commons" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... standard, since Perth was the national capital until the "King's Tragedy" of 1457; but instead of the ruddy lion the shield bears the lamb with the banner of St. John, the city's saint. This side, too, has its motto, and one befitting an old capital of King and Commons, both in continual strife with the feudal nobles, "Pro Rege, Lege, et Grege." Here then, plain upon this apparent arbitrarily levised trifle, this petty provincial money-token, this poor bawbee, that is, this coin not only ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... much length Mr. Mill's parliamentary career, though it may be briefly referred to in evidence of the great and almost unlooked-for ability with which he adapted himself to the requirements of a philosophical politician as distinct from a political philosopher. His first speech in the House of Commons, delivered very soon after its assembling, was on the occasion of the second reading of the Cattle Diseases Bill, on the 14th of February, 1866, when he supported Mr. Bright in his opposition to the proposals of Mr. Lowe for compensation to their ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... discussion. Nicholas said that, if the treaty were not the law of the land, the President should be impeached. But the parts of the treaty into which the President had not the right to enter, he could not make law by proclamation. Swanwick supported the call as one exercised by the House of Commons. On the Federal side, Harper said that the papers were not necessary, and, being unnecessary, the demand was an improper and unconstitutional interference with the executive department. If he thought them necessary, he would change ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... I. mounting a horse that was unruly, said, "The de'il tak' my saul, sirrah, and ye be na quiet, I'll send ye to the five hundred kings in the House of Commons—they'll soon tame you." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... forms of manufactured leather—he turned out in Toronto a very good class of suitcase. Cruickshank had private connections to which they were all respectful. Nobody but Cruickshank found it expedient to look up the lost leader of the Canadian House of Commons, contributed to a cause still more completely lost in home politics; nobody but Cruickshank was likely to be asked to dine by a former Governor-General of the Dominion, an invitation which nobody but Cruickshank would be ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... mother having been Mrs. Siddons's dearest friend. Indeed, for many years of her life, Mrs. F—— seems to me to have postponed the claims even of her husband and children upon her time and attention, to her absolute devotion to her celebrated idol. Mr. F—— was a dutiful member of the House of Commons, and I suppose his boy was at school and his girl too young to demand her mother's constant care and superintendence, at the time when she literally gave up the whole of her existence to Mrs. Siddons during the London season, passing her days in her society and her ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the Oldinport family, and in that giddy elevation had enunciated a contemptuous opinion of boiled beef, which had been traditionally handed down in Shepperton as the direct cause of his ultimate reduction to pauper commons. His calves were now shrunken, and his hair was grey without the aid of powder; but he still carried his chin as if he were conscious of a stiff cravat; he set his dilapidated hat on with a knowing inclination towards the left ear; and when he ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... seemed to me that even with the aid of this fine, bright fire, the dinner took an unconscionable time to cook; but cooked it was, at last, and truly might the good woman stare at the travellers' appetites we had brought with us. She did not know what short commons we had been on ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... gravity of the position, he led them to seek the remedy in audacity and in union. He familiarized them with his theory, that the legal, historical government of the provinces belonged to the states-general, to a congress of nobles, clergy, and commons, appointed from each of the seventeen provinces. He maintained, with reason, that the government of the Netherlands was a representative constitutional government, under the hereditary authority of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... two-edged sword drawn, whereupon Hector seeing him called out to John that he would rather be burned where he was than face Donald Dubh. John called the latter away, and Hector rushed out into his nephew's arms and embraced him. That same night John and Hector, without "Dysman," saving God and such commons as were then present, agreed and condescended that Hector should have the estate till John was twenty-one years of age, and that John should live on his own purchases till then, Hector was to set the whole estate immediately, as tutor to John, which next day ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... hopelessly scotched although obviously not slain, and that Freethinkers should now devote themselves to cultivating the fields they had won instead of raiding into the enemy's territory. Alas for the illusions of hope! They were rudely dispelled by a few "scenes" in the House of Commons, and barred from all chance of re-gathering by the wild display of intolerance outside. I saw, in quite another sense than Garth Wilkinson's, the profound ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... inevitable under our system of competition for trade and markets. What a cry went up from the manufacturers of Great Britain when a bill to check the ruthless exploitation of babies in the cotton mills was introduced into the House of Commons. The very same arguments of interference with trade, despotic control over the right of the employe to bargain as an individual, are urged today, no matter how often their futility and ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... in the action in the Basque Roads, the admiralty went so far as to forge charts, and so to show that the admiral could not come to Cochrane's assistance, and Gambier was not only acquitted, but received a vote of thanks from the House of Commons for the victory in which he had taken no part. For four years Lord Cochrane received no appointment, but at the close of 1813 his uncle, Sir Alexander Cochrane, was selected for the command of the fleet on the North American station, and nominated ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... among them that of Cormantin, taking great quantities of goods belonging to our Company; he then sailed to Barbadoes, where he was beaten off by the forts. Then he captured twenty of our ships off Newfoundland, and so returned to Holland, altogether doing damage, as the House of Commons told His Majesty, to the extent of eight hundred thousand pounds. All this time the Dutch had been secretly preparing for war, which they declared in January, which has forced us to do the same, although we delayed a month in hopes that some accommodation ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... I know it!' she retorted. 'I was reading the life of Randolph Churchill the other day, and I came across a paragraph of filial admiration about the hold Lord Randolph had contrived to get so early in life over the House of Commons. It occurred to me to wonder just how much of a boy Lord Randolph was at the time. I was going to count up when I was saved the trouble by coming to a sentence that said he was then "an unproved stripling of thirty-two." You shouldn't laugh. It ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... House of Commons, Monday, July 21.—RITCHIE got another Bill through; not a measure of high imperial policy; nothing to do either with Heligoland or Zanzibar; only proposes to improve in various ways the dwellings of the industrial classes. Still, as JOKIM has shown in connection with one or two of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... comprised of House of Lords (consists of approximately 500 life peers, 92 hereditary peers and 26 clergy) and House of Commons (659 seats; members are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms unless the House is dissolved earlier) note: in 1998 elections were held for a Northern Ireland Assembly (because of unresolved disputes among existing parties, the transfer of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... you back, Tregellis, but you must really be more careful what you bring in upon your skirts. It was only yesterday that we had an infernal Dutchman here howling about some arrears of interest and the deuce knows what. 'My good fellow,' said I, 'as long as the Commons starve me, I have to starve you,' and so the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... consequences were, that I myself, and the rest of my uncle's host, laboured with Clifford and his army to rebuild this same Dangerous Castle; and feeling no stomach for the cheer that the Douglas had left us, we suffered hard commons, though I acknowledge we did not hesitate to adopt for our own use such sheep and oxen as the miserable Scots had still left around their farm-houses; and I jest not, Sir Minstrel, when I acknowledge in sad earnest, that we ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I suspect it is at least ten per cent of why Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone have debated so much in the House of Commons, and why Burnaby rode to Khiva the other day, and why the Admirals courted war like ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing about that. 'He will probably be at the House of Commons, or too busy somewhere to come to me then. But why do you ask? Do you wish to ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university; and more home truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending a formal one in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and gossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Chief-Justice Scroggs, for his arbitrary and illegal proceedings in the court of King's bench; and when the king declared his resolution not to sign the bill for excluding the duke of York, afterwards James II., he moved in the House of Commons that a bill might be brought in for the association of all his majesty's Protestant subjects. He also openly denounced the king's counsellors, and voted for an address to remove them. He appeared in defence of Lord Russell at his trial, at a time when it was scarcely more criminal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Weird-Eyed Wanton from the Crusty North, who can sing in five languages "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary." Ignoring the monotony of experience suffered by the ribs, and noting the obtrusiveness of one collar-bone, we may, with slight variation from a formula in use by the SPEAKER in the House of Commons, declare "The Nose has it." Happily no one regarding Lord CHARLES'S cheery countenance would guess that its most prominent feature had ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... non-resistance, was resolutely against war for any reason, good or bad. Other colonies often raised the more sordid objection that they were too poor to help in war. The colonial legislatures, indeed, with their eternal demand for the privileges and rights which the British House of Commons had won in the long centuries of its history, constitute the most striking of all the contrasts with Canada. In them were always the sparks of an independent temper. The English diarist, Evelyn, wrote, in 1671, that New England was in "a peevish and touchy humour." Colonists who go ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... advised their immediate restoration, and condemned the whole series of the measures of the President of the United States in relation thereto. A gentleman happening to be present who had heard Canning, Brougham, and Sir Robert Peel from the hustings and in the House of Commons, declared that the speech of Mr. Tazewell fully equalled their grandest efforts on such occasions; and all who heard it pronounced it a wonderful work of argument, eloquence, and declamation combined. A few days after the meeting, Mr. Tazewell was ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... London, and he didn't know when you'd come back, and he didn't know the name o' the place where you lived in London, though he said he thought it was in one o' them law courts, such as Westminster Hall or Doctors' Commons, or somethin' like that. So what was I to do? I couldn't send a letter by post, not knowin' where to direct to, and I couldn't give it into your own hands, and I'd been told partickler not to let anybody else know of it; so I'd nothing to do but to wait and see if you come back, and bide my time ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... midst of a political crisis. The House of Lords opposes a reform unanimously voted by the House of Commons. Great demonstrations are being held all over the country, to insist on the popular will being carried into effect, and there is a growing cry of "Down with the Lords." A spectator from another planet might wonder at all the fuss. He might marvel how forty millions of people needed to stamp ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... discouraging news which had prevailed, was heralded all over England by the ringing of the bells, and public thanksgiving. Bonfires blazed through the length and breadth of the land, it was a national victory which King, Peers and Commons could not sufficiently extol, and still what has been the ultimate result? By removing the French power from Canada—the only counterpoise to keep down the restless and thriving New England colonies, New England, from being strong got to be defiant. The surrender of Canada hastened the American ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... sole balance of State-business. Here, with great prudence, discourse is held of the importantest State-affairs, and of the supreamest persons in authority; and in their own imaginations know more then both the Houses of Lords and Commons. Although they never sate in Councel with any of their Footmen. Nay they know to the weight of an ace, and can give a perfect demonstration of it, which of the three Governments is best, Monarchy, Anarchy, or Democracy. Which many times takes such a deep root ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... evil cometh good, is strongly illustrated by these establishments at home; as the records of the Prerogative Office in Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove. Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady, surrounded by needy relatives, makes, upon a low average, a will a-week. The old gentleman or lady, never very remarkable in the best of times for good temper, is full of aches and pains from head to foot; full of ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... and kind friend. I was happy to see him. He may be considered now as the head of the religious party in the House of Commons, a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a difficult situation; for the adaptation of religious motives to earthly policy is apt—among the infinite delusions of the human heart—to be a snare. But I could ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mere view of their comparative distances from this country. I understand that a gentleman of great experience and respectability in the commercial world, has presented a calculation to the committee of the House of Commons, which is now occupied with an inquiry into the state of this colony, from which it appears that a family, consisting of a man, his wife and two children, with five tons for their accommodation and for the reception of their ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... shelter had he for his head, Whatever winds might blow; A neighb'ring commons was his bed, Tho' ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... sat at tea in Armstrong's family dining-room, which adjoined the school commons, we were made aware of the return of the swimming party by the constant shuffle and tramp of feet through the hall and the noise of feeding in the next room. At our table were present Mrs. Armstrong, her sister (who ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... weather off the Horn, an' short-handed, an' the house full o' lashin' water—not a dry spot, fore an' aft. 'Gad! we had it sweet down there. Freezin', too, an' th' sails hard as old Harry. Ah! a fine voyage, wi' rotten grub an' short commons at that!" ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... at our parting was so suffocating that I clung to the shelter of my new friend, the stranger of that House of Commons dinner. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... first consul was not as good as he, was quite enough to provoke her into making the consul her emperor, and doing her best to chastise her insulters. Charles James Fox, in Parliament, pronounced the royal answer "odiously and absurdly wrong"; but the squires and borough-mongers of the House of Commons supported the action of the king by a majority of 265 to 64. It is for such infamies as this that Newfoundland has even to-day to bear all the inconveniences of the French claims on their shores. I do not blame the French for insisting that England shall scuttle out of Egypt before she yields ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... Commons hath he pil'd with greeuous taxes And quite lost their hearts: the Nobles hath he finde For ancient quarrels, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... like, I am free to confess that so far as related to GOOD LIVING, I never passed three months more satisfactorily than while I was on board the Mary of Newbern. I often compared it with my wretched fare on board the Schooner John, or with my "short commons" in the Liverpool Infirmary, and the result was decidedly in favor of the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... again, and let the[1] sound From one pole to another pole rebound; The earth and sky each be a battledore, And keep the sound, that shuttlecock, up an hour: To Doctors' Commons for a licence I Swift as an arrow from ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... foreign service. As his heir, I inherit the claim, which has been formally recognized by the present Ministers. My petition for a settlement will be presented by friends of mine who can advocate my interests in the House of Commons." ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... in the Commons Mr. BOTTOMLEY made bitter complaint to the SPEAKER that he had been evicted from his favourite corner-seat by the Member for South-East St. Pancras. Mr. LOWTHER administered chilly consolation. Those little contretemps were apt to occur at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... matter we worked round the intention of the Act more successfully. We have never been able to understand why the Liberal party in the House of Commons should object to Local Self-Government taking place in public-houses. The objection implies a distrust of the people. And it so happens that down here we always take a glass of grog before inaugurating an era; we should as soon think of praetermitting this ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be enough to answer to these critics that Parnell could never hold the place he does in history, that he could never have overawed the House of Commons as he did, nor could he have emerged so triumphantly from the ordeal of The Times Commission were he not superabundantly endowed with all the elements and qualities of greatness. But apart from this no dispassionate student of the Parnell period can deny that it was fruitful ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Thomas Babington Macaulay, (1800-1859), an active and versatile man, who won splendid success in many fields of labor. He was prominent in public life as one of the leading orators and writers of the Whig party. He sat many times in the House of Commons, as member for Calne, for Leeds, and {281} for Edinburgh, and took a distinguished part in the debates on the Reform bill of 1832. He held office in several Whig governments, and during his four years' service in British India, as member of the Supreme Council ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... long forgotten that he initiated, drafted and carried through the House of Commons when he sat in that assembly as member for Exeter a Bill emancipating married women from the cruel conditions of servitude whereby their own earnings could legally be taken from them ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... tract, Dryden does not confine himself to answering his friend's arguments. He ridicules, what Shadwell had ridiculed before, Howard's coxcombical affectation of universal knowledge, makes sarcastic reference to an absurdity of which his opponent had been guilty in the House of Commons, mercilessly exposes his ignorance of Latin, and the uncouthness and obscurity of his English. The brothers-in-law afterwards became reconciled, and in token of that reconciliation Dryden cancelled ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... before been there, and had frequently met Mr. Edgeworth at Mrs. Ruxton's. In 1795 my father was presented to the living of Collon, in the county of Louth, where he resided from that time. His vicarage was within five minutes' walk of the residence of Mr. Foster, then Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, the dear friend of Mr. Edgeworth, who came to Collon in the spring of 1798 several times, and at last offered me his hand, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... constitution allows any share of power, though small, to an order of men who possess a large share of property, it is easy for them gradually to stretch their authority, and bring the balance of power to coincide with that of property. This has been the case with the House of Commons in ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... unlike than a soldier and a sailor? the children of fashion that stroll in St. James's and Hyde Park, and the care-worn hirelings, that recreate themselves, with their wives and their brats, with a little fresh air on a Sunday near Islington? The houses of lords and commons have each their characteristic manners. Each profession has its own, the lawyer, the divine, and the man of medicine. We are all apes, fixing our eyes upon a model, and copying him, gesture by gesture. We are sheep, rushing headlong ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... man with a heart and a brain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest house, the biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social homage, public honours, political power, is ready at his command. Does he fancy a seat in the British House of Commons, the best club in London, as it has been truly called? All other claims, those of the public service included, at once give way. I remember a question arising about a nomination for a certain constituency (a working ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... reformers. There had arisen in England a system of patronage, under which it had become gradually necessary for politicians to use their influence for the purchase of political support. A member of the House of Commons, holding office, who might chance to have five clerkships to give away in a year, found himself compelled to distribute them among those who sent him to the House. In this there was nothing pleasant to the distributer of patronage. Do away with ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... heart's content; for Aubrey House was their head-quarters, and all were out in full force. It was cheering to our spinster to find that things had moved a good deal since a former visit, five or six years before, when Mill had carried into the House of Commons a Woman's Rights petition that filled both arms. People laughed then, and the stout-hearted women laughed also, but said, 'Our next petition shall be so big it will have to go in a wheel-barrow.' Now the same people talked over the question soberly, and began to think something besides fun might ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... strengthened and improved both in bodily and mental powers, that he soon eclipsed in his oratorical efforts all his competitors for public favour. So popular a talent speedily gained him the suffrage of the Commons; and, being sent to Sicily as Quaestor, at a time when the metropolis itself was visited with a scarcity of corn, he acquitted himself in that delicate situation with such address as to supply the clamorous wants of the people without oppressing the province ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... returned, and reported that King Louis, with a small army, was within fifteen leagues of Peronne. He had quickly assembled the three estates at Paris, all of whom promised the king their aid. In the language of the chancellor, "The commons offered to help their king with their bodies and their wealth, the nobles with their advice, and the clergy with their prayers." This appalling news set Peronne ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Franchise Union. Last year Miss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him by a blow from her hunting-crop. This year his wife, Lady Victoria Threlfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... been republished continually. What novelist of our time would not give much to have so splendid a public recognition as was provided when Lord Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, after the Abyssinian Expedition, pictured in the House of Commons "the elephants of Asia dragging the artillery of Europe ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Quaker family, and himself a member of the Society of Friends, he has never used the Quaker thee and thou, nor persisted in wearing his hat where other men take off theirs. In the House of Commons he conforms to the usages of the place, and speaks of "the noble lord opposite," and "my right honorable friend near me," just as though the Quakers never had borne their testimony against such ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... committed. Every man is innocent until condemned by a legal tribunal; and the fate of even the greatest of criminals, if he is withdrawn from the law, ought to make good people tremble in common, with others. But, as is the custom in the English House of Commons, when an opposition member goes out, he requests a ministerial member to pair off with him, not to alter the strength of either party, Bonaparte never struck the jacobins or the royalists without dividing his blows equally between them: he thus made friends of all those whose vengeance he served, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... predictions. His proceedings were deemed of sufficient importance to be twice made the subject of a parliamentary inquiry; and even after the Restoration—when a little more scepticism, if not more wisdom, might have been expected—we find him examined by a Committee of the House of Commons, respecting his fore-knowledge of the great fire of London. We know not whether it 'should more move our anger or our mirth,' to see an assemblage of British Senators—the cotemporaries of Hampden and Falkland—of Milton and Clarendon—in an age which roused into action ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... London earned the honourable distinction of being the only body of men in the realm who dared to resist the king's systematic abuse of the royal power. Henry had revived the unconstitutional practice of imposing taxes without the consent of the Commons; but the citizens opposed his illegal demands with such resolution that he was compelled to desist for the time and to proceed with greater caution for the future. Another distinguishing feature of this reign was the profuse extravagance of the citizens ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... brisk march over a scorched and rugged country, which had already been ransacked of all that could have supplied us with fresh provisions; it was many days since we had heard the creak of a commissary's wagon, and we had been on very short commons. There was no reason to expect much in the village we were now ordered to. The French, who had just marched out, would, of course, have helped themselves to whatever was portable, and must have previously pretty well drained the place. We made a search, however, judging that, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... class whom Mackintosh designates as "a few freeholders then accounted wealthy," [1]) by the exclusion of all others than such freeholders from all voice in the election of knights to represent the counties in the House of Commons, that a repetition of these confirmations of Magna Carta ceased to be demanded. ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... let me live in fashion, in fulness, and abundance of worldly glory; and I did not to his glory improve, as I should, that his good dispensation to me. But when I lived in full and fat pasture, I did there lift up the heel (Deut 32:15). Therefore he will now turn me into hard commons, that with leanness, and hunger, and meanness, and want, I may spend the rest of my days. But let him do this without murmuring and repining; let him do it in a godly manner, submitting himself to the judgment of God. 'Let ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The Commons at Westminster absurdly passed a vote of thanks to Herbert. James, not less absurdly, ordered bonfires to be lighted, and a Te Deum to be sung. But these marks of joy by no means satisfied Avaux, whose national ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a water-hole on one side, and three or four fine trees of large girth on the other, we unsaddled our horses and made up our fire. We had provisions enough for the evening, but should have to go on short commons the next day, unless we could shoot a paddy-melon or ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... House of Commons, Monday, May 23.—REDMOND, Junior, said really funny thing just now. Rising to take part in resumed Debate on Irish Local Government Bill, he announced in loud angry tone that it would be waste ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... without any such charges and exactions, as are before limited, whereby it is to be thought that more plentie of fish shall come into this Realme, and thereby to haue the same at more reasonable prices: Be it therefore enacted by the king our soueraigne Lord, and the lords and commons in this present parliament assembled, and by authoritie of the same, that neither the Admiral, nor any officer, or minister, officers or ministers of the Admiraltie for the time being, shall in any wise hereafter exact, receiue, or take by himselfe, his seruant, deputie, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... is visited now chiefly by old ladies whose husbands—to judge by the black lace caps—have left Lombard Street for heaven. At the hotel where I stopped, which was at the top of the Commons outside the thicker town, I was the only man in the breakfast room. Two widows, each with a tiny dog on a chair beside her, sat at the next table. This ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... understands everything but gaming and music. In the House of Commons I sometimes think him only the second man in England; out of it he is always the first.' Prior's Burke, p. 484. See ante, ii. 450. Bismarck once 'rang the bell' to old Prince Metternich. 'I listened quietly,' he said, 'to all his stories, merely jogging the bell every now and then till ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the English Premier declared in the House of Commons that it was one of England's principal tasks to prevent food for the German population from reaching Germany via neutral ports. Since March 1 England has been taking from neutral ships without ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... that's what we're going to do—with Sir Wilfrid Lang. He's one of this brutal Cabinet that keeps women in prison—one of the strongest of them. His speeches have turned votes against us in the House of Commons, time after time. We mean to be ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made possible the despotism of Louis. Richelieu and Mazarin had labored with great success to strengthen the crown at the expense of the nobles and the commons. The nation had no Parliament to represent it and voice its demands, for the Estates-General [7] had not been summoned since 1614 A.D. It did not meet again till 1789 A.D., just before the outbreak of the French Revolution. In France there was no Magna Carta to protect the liberties of the people ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the only marked quality of Coriolanus. His pride was equally great. He was a noble of the nobles, so haughty in demeanor and so disdainful of the commons that they grew to hate ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... unutterable stupidity.' Lord Althorp is 'a thick, large, broad-whiskered, farmer-looking man.' O'Connell, 'a well-doing country shopkeeper with a bottle-green frock and brown scratch wig.... I quitted them all (the House of Commons) with the highest contempt.' Of Thomas Campbell, the poet, it is written that 'his talk is small, contemptuous, and shallow; his face has a smirk which would befit a shopman or an auctioneer.' Wordsworth, 'an ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... building, four stories high, with green trimmings, standing on the last promontory of some grassy commons beloved of geese and billygoats. The short, black cedars, which appear to be a species of vegetable crape, give a stubby look of grief to the region round the poor-house, and, thickest at the Congressional ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... purchase; and, simply for officiating in the service of his religion, any Catholic priest was liable to be imprisoned for life. Some of these penalties had fallen into disuse; but, as Mr. Dunning stated to the English House of Commons, "many respectable Catholics still lived in fear of them, and some actually paid contributions to persons who, on the strength of this act, threatened them with prosecutions." Lord Shelburne stated in the House of Lords "that even the most odious part of this statute had been recently acted ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... "certainly he was not, although I don't think that he quitted the House of Commons, which he always loved, without a pang of real regret. Amongst the many kind congratulations he received—for no man ever had more friends—was a very pretty one from his old friend, Mrs. Proctor, in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... me down in a chaise—sad chap—always reading Orme's History of India—wanted marry Frenchwoman. He wondered Mrs. Newcome didn't leave Tom anything—'pon my word, quite s'prise." The events of to-day, the House of Commons, the City, had little interest for him. All the children went up and shook him by the hand, with awe in their looks, and he patted their yellow heads vacantly and kindly. He asked Clive (several times) where he had been? and said he himself ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... swains, 'tis a tale most profane, How all the tyrannical powers, Kings, Commons and Lords, are uniting amain, To cut down this guardian of ours; From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms, Through the land let the sound of it flee, Let the far and the near, all unite with a cheer, In defense ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... definitely to establish the place of grazing in the administration of the national forests, properly subordinated to their functions of producing timber and conserving the water supply. Over 180,000,000 acres of grazing lands are still pastured as commons in the public domain with little or no regulation. This has made their use so uncertain that it has contributed greatly to the instability of the livestock industry. Very little of this land is suited to settlement or private ownership. Some plan ought to be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the proposal met with universal approval. It was at once agreed that Adrian Pauw, the now aged leader of the anti-Orange party in Holland, should go to London to intercede for the king's life. He was courteously received on January 26 o.s., and was granted an audience by the House of Commons, but the decision had already been taken and his efforts were unavailing. The execution of the king caused a wave of horror to sweep over the Netherlands, and an address of condolence was offered by the States-General to the Prince of Wales; but, to meet the wishes of the delegates of ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... are better than his speeches, and indeed his speeches are writings. But he seemed to feel himself more at ease, to have a fuller possession of his faculties in addressing the public, than in addressing the House of Commons. Burke was raised into public life: and he seems to have been prouder of this new dignity than became so great a man. For this reason, most of his speeches have a sort of parliamentary preamble to them: there is an air of affected modesty, and ostentatious trifling ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... hurt the oppressor. But the English (never having had a real revolution since the Middle Ages) find it very hard to understand this steady passion for being a nuisance, and mistake it for mere whimsical impulsiveness and folly. When an Irish member holds up the whole business of the House of Commons by talking of his bleeding country for five or six hours, the simple English members suppose that he is a sentimentalist. The truth is that he is a scornful realist who alone remains unaffected by the sentimentalism of the House of Commons. The Irishman is neither ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to uphold slavery; but allowing plebeian representation, to some extent, to the non-slaveholding classes. Others in the South had preference for constitutional monarchy, with a class of privileged legislators, and House of Commons, composing a government of checks and balances, analogous to the English government. Whatever the plan adopted, the leading idea was to institute a government that should be impervious, through one branch, to the future influence ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... look with favour on the expedition. I have had to point out to him that a Field Ambulance is not, as he would say, the House of Commons, and that there is a certain propriety binding even on a chauffeur and a limit to the freedom of the speech you may apply to your Commandant. This afternoon Tom has exceeded all the limits. The worst of Tom ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... the correspondent of PUNCHINELLO, I was on the floor of the House of Commons when Mr. GLADSTONE made his short speech, on the 25th, about England and possessions. I was standing by the O'DONOHUE when the Minister said, "A free and voluntary contract is the only basis for continued union." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... affairs, and gifted with an excellent judgment was Thomas Fell. He was as popular now, in the autumn of his days among his country neighbours, as he had been in former times in Parliament, and among the Puritan leaders. Thrice had he represented his native county in the House of Commons, and had been a trusted friend of Oliver Cromwell himself. It was only latterly, men said, since Oliver showed a disposition to grasp more and ever more power for himself that the good Judge, unable to prevent that of which ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... 1672, was very short-lived. Indeed it barely lasted in force a twelvemonth. Granted on the 15th of March of that year, it was withdrawn on the 9th of March of the following year, at the instance of the House of Commons, who had taken alarm at a suspension of the laws of the realm by the "inherent power" of the sovereign, without the advice or sanction of Parliament. The Declaration was cancelled by Charles II., the monarch, it is said, tearing off the Great Seal with ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... for all offices except the one charged under the Constitution with the framing and execution of the laws of the land. Aristocracy decrees that in the House of Lords the Bishops shall have a voice; but in the House of Commons no clergyman can hold a seat, and for members of Parliament no woman votes. Would any Suffragist hold that a clergyman was the inferior of men who do sit in the House of Commons? They are excluded for the same reason that woman has not the ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... Parliament. I feel convinced that sooner or later the influence which every English Government has at its command—the powerful and demoralizing influence—sooner or later will sap the best party you can return to the House of Commons.'" ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, Wake thy wild voice anew, Summon Clan Conuil. Come away, come away, Hark to the summons! Come in your war-array, Gentles and commons. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... boetram; and for being, generallie, daintie at his sizes, which she sayth is an ill example to soe manie young people, and becometh not one with soe little money in's purse: howbeit, I think 'tis not nicetie, but a weak stomach, which makes him loathe our salt-meat commons from Michaelmasse to Easter, and eschew fish of y'e coarser sort. He cannot breakfaste on colde milk like father, but liketh furmity a little spiced. At dinner, he pecks at, rather than eats, ruffs and reeves, lapwings, or anie smalle birds it may chance; but affects ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... justices the authority and power to impress any men they might select, with the exception of those who possessed a vote for members of parliament, was passed with the approval of parties on both sides of the House of Commons. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... higher law the Americans professed the purest Whiggism, and they claimed that their resistance to the House of Commons and the jurisprudence of Westminster only carried forward the eternal conflict between Whig and Tory. By their closer analysis, and their fearlessness of logical consequences, they transformed the doctrine and modified ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... I am dazed, bewildered by his genius, his audacity, his marvellous courage and resource. Do you know, Stafford, I think it would be an excellent idea to abolish the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the monarchical government, and place the whole business in the hands of a Board to be presided over ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... 1563 extended the lines of restriction so that the oath of supremacy must be taken by a much greater number of officials—by all school-masters, lawyers, and petty officers of court, and by all members of the House of Commons; and so that the first refusal of any person to take it, as well as the first occasion on which any one should in writing or speech support the claims of the pope, should be punished by confiscation and outlawry, the second offence by the penalties of treason. [Footnote: Eliz., ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... earth's vast unknown of air, Out of all summer, from wave to wave, He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair, Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave, And take his commons there— ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... kings were poor and all those schemes unknown Which drain the people to enrich the throne; Ere yet a yielding Commons had supplied Those chains of gold by which themselves are tied, Then proud Prerogative, untaught to creep With bribery's silent foot on Freedom's sleep, Frankly avowed his bold enslaving plan And claimed a right from God to trample man! But Luther's schism had too much roused mankind For Hampden's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is ever done in the House of Commons," says a Labour speaker. He forgets that the cleaners are at work in the building ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... would be hard if this were done without their consent. Accordingly they despatched Agesilaus as ambassador to the Mantineans, choosing him as the recognised ancestral friend of that people. When the ambassador arrived, however, the chief magistrates had no inclination to summon a meeting of the commons to listen to him, but urged him to make a statement of his wishes to themselves. He, on his side, was ready to undertake for himself and in their interests that, if they would at present desist ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... way our Hero got safely to college, Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge; A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat of satin, To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin That Tully could never have made out a word in it (Though himself ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... prominently, such as the new public-house opposite the Fleet, the "Fox Under the Hill," Sarjeants' Inn Coffee House, the public-house, opposite the Insolvent Debtors' Court, the Horn Coffee House in the Doctors' Commons and the "Spaniards," Hampstead Heath. Of these the "Fox Under the Hill," casually referred to by Mr. Roker as the spot where Tom Martin "whopped the coach-heaver," was situated on the Thames water-side in the Adelphi, at the bottom of Ivy Lane. The incident he related was no doubt a recollection ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... the subuersion of cathedrall churches to fill their owne cofers, not to ferret out concealed lands for the supporte of their owne priuat lordlines; not to destroy whole towneships for the erection of one statelie manour; not to take and pale in the commons to inlarge their seueralles; but like good and gratious common-wealth-men, in all things to preferre the peoples publike profit before their owne gaine and glorie, before their owne pompe and pleasure, before the satisfieng ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... thirtieth of November Durham landed at Plymouth, and by the middle of the following January he had finished his Report. Early in February it was printed and laid before the House of Commons. The {20} curious legend which credits Buller with the authorship is traceable to Brougham's spite. Macaulay and Brougham met in a London street. The great Whig historian praised the Report. Brougham belittled ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... still endures in England. The Commons pursue their project; there are massacres in Ireland. The Earl of Strafford ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sway—though not his uncontested sway—over our weariness and our fears. The moral sentiment, after high tension, has undergone a corresponding relaxation. All liberal measures are for the time at a discount. The Bill for the Abolition of Church-Rates, once carried in the House of Commons by large majorities, is now lost. The nominal leaders of the Liberal party themselves have let their principles fall into abeyance, and almost coalesced with their Tory opponents. The Whig nobles who carried the Reform Bill have owned once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Punch,—I am told that Mr. ASQUITH considers that this has been a most unsatisfactory election. So do I. As you know, the principal function of the House of Commons nowadays is to provide amusing "copy" for the late editions of the evening papers and to give the "sketch"-writers a chance of exercising their pretty wits. As Mr. SPENCER LEIGH HUGHES once remarked in an after-dinner speech to Mr. BALFOUR, "You, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... supposed a product of 7165 kilogrammes. The very correct information afforded by two Portuguese manuscripts on the gold-washings of Minas Geraes, Minas Novas and Goyaz, in the Bullion Report for the House of Commons, 1810, acc. page 29, goes as far only as 1794, when the quinto do ouro of Brazil was 53 arrobas, which indicates a produce of more than 3900 kilogrammes paying the quint. In Mr. Tooke's important work, On High and Low Prices part 2 page 2) this produce is still estimated ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... inferior one, impatient of his origin, will turn out to be nothing but a servant of the aristocracy, and (more or less openly) of a barrack-master. He will be the servant, not of the King, not of the House of Commons, but of the House of Lords, and (as long as such influence lasts, which can be but a short while), of its military leader. He will do nothing whatsoever contrary to their dictation, upon peril of being ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... People of the Realm be greatly impoverished for the Cause aforesaid: Our Sovereign Lord the King considering the said Mischief, and willing thereupon to provide Remedy, by the advice & assent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and at the request of the said Commons, hath ordained and stablished, That no Man nor Woman, of what Estate or Condition they be, shall put their Son or Daughter, of whatsoever Age he or she be, to Serve as Apprentice to no Craft nor other Labour within any City or Borough ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Mr. Franklin had, it appeared, gone straight to his father's residence. He arrived at an awkward time. Mr. Blake, the elder, was up to his eyes in the business of the House of Commons, and was amusing himself at home that night with the favourite parliamentary plaything which they call "a private bill." Mr. Jeffco himself showed Mr. Franklin into his father's study. "My dear Franklin! why do you surprise me in this way? ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... crofter is accustomed to trace his claims, the land was owned by the chief and clansmen in common, and allotments and reallotments were made from time to time to individual clansmen, each of whom had a right to some portion of the land, while the commons were very extensive. Rent or service was paid to the chief, who had more or less control over the clan lands and often possessed an estate in severalty, with many personal dependants. In many cases ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... the news spread through the House of Commons; but at nine men in the inner lobbies were gossiping, not so much upon how far Russia, while ostensibly upholding the Shah, had pulled the strings by which the insurgents danced, as upon the manner in which the 'St. Geotge's Gazette', the Tory evening newspaper, had seized upon the incident and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... decisive epoch in the constitutional as well as in the intellectual history of England. The Great Charter was extorted from John; the representation of the commons from his successors; the universities were founded or organized; the romantic poetry of France began to be transfused into a language intelligible throughout England; and above all, the Anglo-Saxon tongue was in this century finally ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... considerable figure as public speakers; and Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible, cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth, now courting popularity, now calling servility ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... elegant sedilia. Wenlock grew up beneath the patronage and protection of its Priory, by means of which it received many royal favours, and was protected by many royal charters, one of which conferred the right, at a very early period, of representation in the Commons House of Parliament. ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... a Scholar: I have been matriculated in the University, wore out six Gowns there, seen some fools, and some Scholars, some of the City, and some of the Country, kept order, went bare- headed over the Quadrangle, eat my Commons with a good stomach, and Battled with Discretion; at last, having done many slights and tricks to maintain my wit in use (as my brain would never endure me to be idle,) I was expeld the University, only for stealing a ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... curing of her own hams. In the year 1800 the Carbury property was sufficient for the Carbury house. Since that time the Carbury property has considerably increased in value, and the rents have been raised. Even the acreage has been extended by the enclosure of commons. But the income is no longer comfortably adequate to the wants of an English gentleman's household. If a moderate estate in land be left to a man now, there arises the question whether he is not damaged unless ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... he was arrested after all. There had been an order of the House of Commons for his arrest and for the burning of his books, possibly, as Masson thinks, obtained by his friends to make it seem unnecessary to except him in the Indemnity Bill. The books were duly burnt, or such copies of them as came to the hands of the hangman; and ultimately, at some uncertain ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... are a good prophet. Oh, into what a state have the scoundrels brought this devoted kingdom. If the House of Commons would but melt down their faces, it would greatly assist the copper currency—we ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... before the fascinated eyes of the people in the two most celebrated countries of Europe. The English commenced their career of extravagance somewhat later than the French; but as soon as the delirium seized them, they were determined not to be outdone. Upon the 22nd of January 1720, the House of Commons resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, to take into consideration that part of the King's speech at the opening of the session which related to the public debts, and the proposal of the South Sea Company towards the redemption and sinking ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... possessed the higher truth. Anyhow, while he and his had (thanks to a very small property which came with the late Mrs Gainsborough) always just enough to eat, they had always just not enough of anything else; short commons were ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... at the same time, that the legislature approved their sentiments, a bill was brought in and passed, in the House of Lords, for the better carrying on the war in the West Indies, which was lost, however, by a kind of ministerial craft, in the House of Commons; and soon after, for reasons which have never yet been explained to the public, all designs of this nature were laid aside. The only expedition of this nature, during the whole war, was that of the Duke and Duchess, under the command of Captain Woods ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Eve a great tournament was to be held in London, which the archbishop had devised to keep together lords and commons, lest they should grow estranged in the troublous and unsettled times. To the which tournament there came, with many other knights, Sir Ector, Arthur's foster-father, who had great possessions near to London; and with him came his son, Sir Key, ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... the aristocracy of England and her upper middle class, in the main, still sympathized with the South, while the English cabinet tried to maintain neutrality. Four-fifths of the House of Lords were "no well-wishers of anything American, and most of the House of Commons voted in sympathy ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a Town and a Village.—The other night it was warmly contested in the Reform debate in the House of Commons, whether Bilston and Sedgeley, in Staffordshire, were towns or villages. Mr. Croker spoke of the "village of Bilston," and the "rural district of Sedgeley," but Sir John Wrottesley maintained that the right hon. gentleman would find nothing in Bilston that would give him any idea of sweet Auburn. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... Lecturer, and her Course on the Physiology of the External Senses was a perfect model of elegant composition and refined oratory. Mrs. Gent died at the residence of her husband, Thomas Gent, Esq. Doctor's Commons, after a month of severe suffering, which she bore with singular fortitude, and the most pious resignation. There is a fine bust of her, by Behnes; it was in the Exhibition two years since, and, from ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... with the dead bodies of our sons and daughters. But why should I complete the picture? If you fail—and you must fail—you will fling the country into the arms of England. Our gentry will be terrified, our commons will be cowed. Designing Englishmen will make an easy prey of us. They will take from us even the hard-earned measure of independence we already possess. We shall become, and we shall remain, a contemptible province of their Empire instead of a sovereign and independent nation. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... further discussion of the prerogatives of the crown Mr. Otis said: "When the Parliament shall think fit to allow the colonists a representation in the House of Commons, the equity of their taxing the colonists will be as clear as their power is, at present, of doing it if ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... of appointments would have been given in all cases to persons qualified for them. But no: it was convenient to pay compliments; and Lord Colchester, whose talents and knowledge insured him respect as Speaker of the House of Commons, or as a British nobleman, was placed for years in the situation as one of the Commissioners of the Board of Longitude, for which every competent judge knew him to be wholly unfit. What was the return which he made for ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... that at the present time the mass of middle-class people are not only acquainted with, but convinced of, the truth, that, long before the war, the House of Commons had become a fraud; that its debates did not turn upon matters which really divided opinion, and that even its paltry debating points, the pretence of a true opposition ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... Jesu." To these may be added Mr. Simpson's biography of Campion. For our constitutional history during Elizabeth's reign we have D'Ewes's Journals and Townshend's "Journal of Parliamentary Proceedings from 1580 to 1601," the first detailed account we possess of the proceedings of the House of Commons. Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce gives details of the wonderful expansion of English trade during this period, and Hakluyt's collection of Voyages tells of its wonderful activity. Amidst a crowd of biographers, whose number marks the new importance of individual life and action at ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... at Plympton St. Mary, the 1886 elections were held, and my relative being in politics a conservative, took an active part in the return of Sir John Kennaway (who died a few years ago, father of the House of Commons). Mr. Newbery was chairman of many of his meetings at which I attended. A polling booth was at the school house at Plympton, and on the day of the poll, I was much amused to see gentlemen's carriages being driven to ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... subscription-rooms under authority, winked at by a pious corporation, patronized by nobles and gentlemen supporters of the turf, and who are good enough, sometimes, to make laws for us plebeians in the Houses of Lords and Commons. There is Doncaster, with policemen to keep order, and admit none but "respectable" people—subscribers, who fear Heaven and honour the Queen. Are you aware, my Lord Chief-Justice, are you aware, Mr Attorney, Mr Solicitor-General, have you the slightest notion, ye Inspectors of Police, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... burning of London, the popish plot, Godfrey's murder, and the Earl of Essex's death; and to crown all, it was pretended that the late King was poisoned by his orders: it was set forth that the King's religion made him incapable of the crown; that three subsequent houses of commons had voted his exclusion: the taking away of the old charters, and all the hard things done in the last reign, were laid to his charge: the elections of the present parliament were also set forth very odiously, with great indecency ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... shook his own ample person, but generally created a petty earthquake on every side of him. For the present, I shall not stop to particularize him more closely; but when I add that the person in question was a well-known member of the Irish House of Commons, whose acute understanding and practical good sense were veiled under an affected and well-dissembled habit of blundering that did far more for his party than the most violent and pointed attacks of his more accurate associates, some of my readers ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the British House of Commons are disappointing to the pilgrim in search of decorum. The Mother of Parliaments has trouble ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers |
