"Despotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other day, Mr Snow and the lads had discussed many things together; among the rest, the institutions of their respective countries, and Mr Snow had, as he expressed it, "Set their British blood to bilin'," by hints about "aristocracy", "despotism," and so on. "He never had had such a good time," he said, afterwards. They were a little fiery, but first-rate smart boys, and as good natured as kittens, and he meant to see to them. He meant to amuse himself with them too, it seemed. The boys fired up at once, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... will be wearing stripes in Sing Sing to-morrow. We are merely passing through a period of transition which brings suffering and confusion. The end is sure, because evil carries within itself the seed of death. A despotism of money cannot be fastened on the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... and, in a word, attempting to tear from its bosom the representative of the executive power, and to annihilate by a stroke of the pen, all the tribunals and establishments necessary to its existence and future prosperity? This unheard-of despotism, this horrible political perjury, was certainly not merited by the good and generous Brazil. But the enemies of order in the Cortes of Lisbon deceive themselves if they imagine that they can thus, by vain words and hollow ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... their privileges, or allow his engagements to fetter his power and debar him from any considerable interest or convenience. They had, indeed, arms in their hands, which prevented the establishment of a total despotism, and left their posterity sufficient power, whenever they should attain a sufficient degree of reason, to assure true liberty: but their turbulent disposition frequently prompted them to make such use ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... when the world will be filled with the knowledge, the fear, and the praise of God Not always will war deluge the earth with fire and blood. Not always will idolatry offend the heavens with its abominations. Not always will despotism, political and spiritual, national and domestic, degrade and corrupt the masses of mankind. Not always will superstition, on the one hand, and infidelity, on the other, reject and despise the blessed revelation of forgiveness ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... yielded only a troubled and unutterable anxiety. Repining and supineness, however, were not suited to my father's character; for, with mildness, he united decision and even boldness of spirit. He had, for several years previous to this explosion of lordly despotism in the patron of his chapel, corresponded with some of his college friends in the new Republic of America; and had been encouraged by them, and through them, by one of the most distinguished of the American patriots, to leave his meagre benefice and cross the Atlantic. These invitations he had ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... interests, and have used the authority they possessed to force the societal organization to work and fight for their interests. The force is that of the society itself. It is directed by the ruling class or persons. The force enters into the mores and becomes a component in them. Despotism is in the mores of negro tribes, and of all Mohammedan peoples. There is an element of force in all forms of property, marriage, and religion. Slavery, however, is the grandest case of force in the mores, employed to make some serve the interests of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... room to doubt whether he approved this dreadful determination or not. What part he took in the catastrophe is still a mystery to the Russians: either they are ignorant on the subject, or they make a secret of the matter: the effect of despotism, which enjoins ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... kingdom of the ten tribes its military character; the commander-in-chief was the first person in the kingdom. In internal affairs its interference was slight; with systematic despotism it had little in common, although of course within its narrow sphere it united executive and legislative functions. It was little more than the greatest house in Israel. The highest official was called "master of the household." The court ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... less than to govern; and clerical education means a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the parish at large is a far more delicate question. To the outer world a parish seems a sheer despotism. The parson prays, preaches, changes the order of service, distributes the parochial charities at his simple discretion. One of the great cries of the Church reformer is generally for the substitution of some constitutional system, some congregational ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... proposed in the first place that this right and the machinery created to enforce it, which gave birth to various acts of despotism, should be abolished. How often had the property of wards been ruined by those to whom the rights of the state were transferred. The debts which were chargeable against them were never paid.[366] The Lower House desired that not only the royal ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... here as the apostle of a creed which is a creed of force, which is a creed of oppression, which is a creed of the destruction of all liberty, and of the erection of a despotism against it, and on its ruins, different from every other despotism only in this,—that it is more absolutely detached from all law, from all tradition, and from all restraint." Sir William Harcourt also referring to Mr. Dillon in the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... from the field—flitted before the eyes of the people in this weird and midnight shape of a Ku Klux Klan." Ryland Randolph, an Alabama editor who was also an official of the Klan, stated in his paper that "the origin of Ku Klux Klan is in the galling despotism that broods like a nightmare over these Southern States—a fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... the tendencies of the present time—viz. the bayonet, a return to the true principles of the original government, or the sway of money. For the first it may be too soon; the pressure of society is scarcely sufficient to elevate a successful soldier to the height of despotism, though the ladder has been raised more than once against the citadel of the Constitution by adventurers of this character, through the folly and heedless impulses of the masses. Fifty years hence, and a condition of society ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... political institutions bequeathed to Humanity by preceding ages, and a movement towards that ideal of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which has in all times been the ideal of the popular masses. Fettered in its free development by despotism and by the narrow selfishness of the privileged classes, this movement, being at the same time favoured by an explosion of popular indignation, engendered the Great Revolution which had to force its way through the midst of a thousand obstacles both ...
— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin
... Styx, the Elysian fields, and the place of the dead, as fixed by the Mantuan. More on the height and nearer to the sea, lie, buried in the earth, the vast vaults of the Piscina Mirabile—and the gloomy caverns of the Hundred Chambers; places that equally denote the luxury and the despotism of Rome. Nearer to the vast pile of castle, that is visible so many leagues, is the graceful and winding Baiaen harbor; and against the side of its sheltering hills, once lay the city of villas. To that sheltered hill, emperors, consuls, poets, and ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... cried. "There are times when a higher law than that of military despotism should control our actions. I am going there, orders or no orders. Ebers can command your detachment and accomplish all the service you possibly could. Your rightful place is between these ruffians and the woman you love. How many additional men will be required to make ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... rolled back the overflowing tide of Asiatic luxury and despotism, giving instead to Europe and America models of the highest political freedom yet attained, and germs of limitless mental growth. A different result at Plataea had delayed the progress of the human race more than ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... personal quarrels more or less disgraceful, with never a single high purpose or a principle involved. It was all a gay, ambitious pageant, adorned by a mantle of chivalry, and made sacred by the banner of the Cross. In the history of no other European country do we see a great state develop under despotism so unredeemed by wholesome ideals, and so unmitigated and unrestrained by gentle ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... destroy herself." "Well, then, if France likes the policy of England, it is her own affair. But I am angry at France; she has stabbed Liberty in Europe for one thousand years. A French Republic! Bah! France is yet fit for nothing but a despotism. I wish the Assembly ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... interesting class of persons, but, except Condillac, Hume, and Berkeley, scarcely metaphysicians. As for his politics, Hazlitt seems to me to have had no clear political creed at all. He hated something called "the hag legitimacy," but for the hag despotism, in the person of Bonaparte, he had nothing but love. How any one possessed of brains could combine Liberty and the first Napoleon in one common worship is, I confess, a mystery too great for me; and I fear that any one who could call "Jupiter Scapin" "the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... coterie of officials, land-owners, dependents of the Crown, often men of too worthless a character to be tolerated longer in England—who lied us impudently and unblushingly out of court. To please these gentry, the musty statutes of Tudor despotism were ransacked for a law by which we were to be haled over the seas for trial by an English jury for sedition; the port of Boston was closed to traffic, and troops crowded into the town to overawe and crush its citizens; a fleet of war-ships was despatched under Lord Howe to enforce by broadsides, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissensions, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... the two predominant partners behaved throughout as benevolent despots, to whom despotism came more easily than benevolence. As we saw, they kept their colleagues of the lesser states as much in the dark as the general public and claimed from them also implicit obedience to all their behests. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Anarchy, is the problem which the revolutionists have and will eternally have to resolve. It is the rock of Sisyphus that will always fall back upon them. To exist a single instant, they are and always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without other reason of existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy of Reason, only to fall under the irregular ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... seigneur exact and pillage, and the tax-gatherer squeeze out the little the other oppressors had left; anger, discontent, wretchedness, famine, a terrible separation between one order of people and another; an incredible indifference to the miseries their despotism caused on the part of the aristocracy; a sullen and vindictive hatred for the perpetration of those miseries on the part of the people; all places sold—even all honours priced—at the court, which was become a public market, a province of peasants, of living ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Church has always sided with despotism is only too true, it must be remembered that in the policy she follows there is much of political necessity. She is urged on by the pressure of nineteen centuries. But, if the irresistible indicates itself in her action, the inevitable manifests itself in her life. For it is with the papacy as with ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... street-fighting that accompanied the more regular conflict. The city fell through revolt of the people and defection of the King's troops rather than by the assaults of Garibaldi's men, "twenty thousand soldiers of despotism" capitulating "before a handful of citizens" self-devoted in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the slave is compulsory and uncompensated; while the kind of labor, the amount of toil, the time allowed for rest, are dictated solely by the master. No bargain is made, no wages given. A pure despotism governs the human brute; and even his covering and provender, both as to quantity and quality, depend entirely on the ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... history. But there was a third measure that provoked a new attack on the Government. The gracious words of the Mercury on the tax in kind came as an interlude in the midst of a bitter controversy. An editorial of the 12th of March headed "A Despotism over the Confederate States Proposed in Congress" amounted to a declaration of war. From this time forward the opposition and the Government drew steadily further and further apart and their antagonism grew steadily ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... cannot be identified. The Filippo Strozzi mentioned as having been his master was the great opponent of the Medicean despotism, who killed himself in prison after the defeat of Montemurlo in 1539. He married in early life a daughter of Piero ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... welcome is also extended and sympathy encouraged towards the persecuted, whether of fortune or despotism. The exile is sure to find shelter and security here, without encountering suspicion, whether necessity or choice induced him ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Cotton," "King Corporation," "King Monopoly," and all the other "Kings" of modern growth—swaying, like the reed in the wind, to the powers that be, whether of tyranny reared upon a thousand years of usurpation, military despotism of a day's growth, or presumptuous wealth accumulated by robbery, hypocrisy and insidious assassination. Instead of leading in the reformation of leviathan wrongs, the ministry waits for the rabble to applaud before ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... arrived at the age of sixty-nine, was as unconvinced as ever of the fact that time had got the better of him, and that its despotism was daily deepening. He admitted that he had become something of an invalid, but that his elder daughter should have classified him as an old person would have appeared to him as absurd and offensive. There ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... doctrine is atheism—you could not believe how openly. Don't wonder, therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, "Il est bigot, c'est un deiste!"' French politics, he professes a few years afterwards, must end in 'despotism, a civil war, or assassination,' and he remarks that the age will not, as he had always thought, be an age of abortion, but rather 'the age of seeds that are to produce strange crops hereafter.' The next century, he says at a later period, 'will probably exhibit ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... happenings which arose in his immense dominions, desiring always to have at hand the man whom he loved; from whom, with his amazing grip of political problems and endless fertility of resource, he was certain of sympathy and sound advice. But in an oriental despotism there are other forces at work besides those of la haute politique, and Ibrahim had one deadly enemy who was sworn to compass his destruction. The Sultana Roxalana was the light of the harem of the Grand Turk. This supremely beautiful woman, originally a Russian ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... taken up with concrete realities instead of abstractions, and hence they have contributed nothing to science or philosophy, much as they have to faith. Their social order is patriarchal, with a leaning to a despotism, which in certain of them, such as the Jews and Arabs, goes higher and higher till it reaches God; called, therefore, by Jude 'the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... group yonder there probably was more than one who knew the evil genius in person, and yet they were held in a thralldom of fear which no offer of riches could break. What manner of man was this Cardi? What hellish methods did he follow to wield such despotism? Those card-players were impudent, unscrupulous blades, as ready to gamble with death as with their jingling coins, and yet they dared not lift a hand ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... French Revolution, and his unqualified abhorrence of the Alliance against the Republic. Third Stanza. The blasphemies and horrors during the domination of the Terrorists regarded by the Poet as a transient storm, and as the natural consequence of the former despotism and of the foul superstition of Popery. Reason, indeed, began to suggest many apprehensions; yet still the Poet struggled to retain the hope that France would make conquests by no other means than by presenting to the observation of Europe ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... signs of a movement that was in revolt against its despotism. The great wind from the East began to drop, and veered to the North. Scandinavian and Russian influences were making themselves felt. An exaggerated infatuation for Grieg, though limited to a small number of people, was an indication ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... regularly under his command. James II increased them to 15,000, and by their means tried to overthrow the religion and the liberties of the nation. He was defeated and driven out; but his effort to establish a military despotism made the name of "standing army" stink in the nostrils of the nation. "It is indeed impossible," said one of the leading statesmen of the early eighteenth century, "that the liberties of the people can be preserved in any country where a numerous ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... a question of whether our institutions are perfect. The most beneficent of our institutions had their beginnings in forms which would be particularly odious to us now. Civilization began with war and slavery; government began in absolute despotism; and religion itself grew out of superstition which was oftentimes marked with human sacrifices. So out of our present imperfections we shall develop that which is more perfect. But the candid mind of the scholar will admit and seek to remedy all wrongs with the same zeal with which ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... manners of the time to be called cowardice. Such forced marriages were not uncommon even in our own country, when the right of wardship, now vested in the Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel despotism by the sovereign. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... struggle must be between the honorable men of the nation and bands of brigands and evil-doers. The time for indulgence has gone by: it would only encourage the despotism of bands of incendiaries, of thieves, of highwaymen, and of murderers of old men and ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... "that 'under a despotism all are contented, because none can get on, and in a republic, none are contented, because ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... with horror. He wrote: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." He described what he had seen. "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions,—the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal.... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... to a considerable distance: and then, when toleration is no longer the cry, and the Whigs are no longer backed by the populace, see whether the editors of the —- will stand by them; they will prove themselves as expert lick-spittles of despotism as of liberalism. Don't think they will always bespatter the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the New Ireland has begun to shed its light over the country, and the call of Patriotism will bring Irishmen from the farthest limits of the world, as it drove them away in the bitter time of blood and strife and ignorance and despotism. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... which feed all this rank luxuriance of sedition, it is not intended to cut them off in order to famish the fruit. If our liberty has enfeebled the executive power, there is no design, I hope, to call in the aid of despotism to fill up the deficiencies of law. Whatever may be intended, these things are not yet professed. We seem therefore to be driven to absolute despair, for we have no other materials to work upon but those out of which God has been pleased to form the inhabitants of this island. If these be radically ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... all his glory, and all his despotism, could not, with impunity, force a Roman knight [1] to go upon the stage: but modern anecdote-mongers, more cruel and insolent than Caesar, force their friends of all ages and sexes to appear, and speak, and act, for the amusement or derision of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... government. Hitherto the doctrine that the King can do no wrong had been used not to protect the indispensable sanctity of the king's constitutional character, but to protect the wrong. Used in this way, it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for a nation where law had no empire. Many of the illustrious patriots of the Great Parliament saw this; and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so fatal to the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Bible. Wherever the gospel was received, the minds of the people were awakened. They began to cast off the shackles that had held them bond-slaves of ignorance, vice, and superstition. They began to think and act as men. Monarchs saw it, and trembled for their despotism. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the injustice a husband does to his wife, the less he is willing to submit to from her; the oftener he becomes unfaithful to her, the stricter he is in demanding faithfulness from her. We see that despotism nowhere denies its own nature: the more a despot deceives and abuses his people, the more submissiveness and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the American people on every question that caused international friction; and the Jeffersonian Democrats, who were in power, were anti-British to a man. So strong was this feeling among them that they continued to side with France even when she was under the military despotism of Napoleon. He was the arch-enemy of England in Europe. They were the arch-enemy of England in America. This alone was enough to overcome their natural repugnance to his autocratic ways. Their position towards the British ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... have defeated the whole movement. Ancient and modern history is replete with examples proceeding from conflicts between distinct orders, of revolutions attempted which proved abortive, of republics which have terminated in despotism. It is owing to the simplicity of the elements of which our system is composed that the attraction of all the parts has been to a common center, that every change has tended to cement the union, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... interested; and more—it is one of deep and awful import to the liberties of the world. For if France is again to revolve through years and through seas of blood and crime, and to terminate, at last, at the point from which she set out—a despotism—despair will fill the European world, and the people will be disposed rather to bear the ills they have, than to encounter the unavailing horrors of the double precedent which France will have set. Let us look, therefore, calmly, for a few moments, at the very interesting ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... notables. Thus, and thus only, should Irish martyrs be allowed to suffer for Ireland's wrongs, and in this way alone will the Irish people in their thousands consent even to the momentary incarceration of the heralds of that mighty struggle with a tyrannic despotism that they are heroically maintaining, backed by the hearty and enthusiastic support of an onlooking and applauding Universe, against the blind and blustering bullying of a blood-thirsty Government. If I write with moderation and temperately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... wrung their hands, the king sent for his confessor, the queen wept—but the nation groaned. There was but one expedient, to call on the people. In 1787 the Assembly of the Notables was summoned. It was the first time since the reign of Henry IV. France had been a direct and formal despotism for almost two hundred years. She had seen England spread from an island into an empire; she had seen America spread from a colony into an empire. What had been the worker of the miracle?—Liberty. While all the despotisms remained within the boundaries fixed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... revived by Rousseau; and though it could not be carried out by the French Revolutionists who accepted nearly all his theories, it led to the disintegration of France, and the multiplication of offices fatal to a healthy central power. Napoleon broke up all this in his centralized despotism, even if, to keep the Revolutionary sympathy, he retained the Departments which were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Union lines there were many bands of guerillas and a large population disloyal to the government, making it necessary to guard every foot of road or river used in supplying our armies. In the South, a reign of military despotism prevailed, which made every man and boy capable of bearing arms a soldier; and those who could not bear arms in the field acted as provosts for collecting deserters and returning them. This enabled the enemy to bring almost his ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... boasted, "science is everything! It's study does it! Knowledge is power! To vanquish the myrmidons of despotism, we must have science. That is why I am an engineer with the ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... commonwealth, than such as are made upon the personal liberty of the subject. To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom. But confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to gaol, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten; is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... imitators of Prussia. Every time that the Russian people of our day have attempted to revindicate their rights, the reactionaries have used the Kaiser as a threat, proclaiming that he would come to their aid. One-half of the Russian aristocracy is German; the functionaries who advise and support despotism are Germans; German, too, are the generals who have distinguished themselves by massacring the people; German are the officials who undertake to punish the laborers' strikes and the rebellion of their allies. The reactionary ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... United States has, through a mistaken policy been constantly engaged in sending to the western borders all the eastern Indian tribes that were disposed to sell their land, and also the various tribes who, having rebelled against their cowardly despotism, had been overpowered and conquered during the struggle. This gross want of ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... to accompany him, the flight did not seem shameful in his eyes. Nay, it became necessary; and under the circumstances it was, indeed, cowardice not to fly. For is it not as noble to surrender one's self to Love as to the Turks or any other earthly despotism? Gladly, heroically, he adventures forth, therefore, and philosophizes on the way about the light that flows from the wounds of persecution. But we regret that this celestial stream is not unmixed; it is accompanied by blood and pus; ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... nominating convention and make up a list of candidates—one convention offering a democratic and another a republican list of incorruptibles; and then the great meek public come forward at the proper time and make unhampered choice and bless Heaven that they live in a free land where no form of despotism can ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... favourable to the allied army. God grant that England may not enter into the contest till the Austrians are driven out of Italy! After that point has been gained, our honour would be safe. To take part with the oppressors and maintain despotism in Italy would be infamous. Tuscany is to be occupied by a large body of troops under the command of Prince Napoleon. A great many are already encamped on the meadows at the Cascine—fine, spirited, merry young men; many of them have the Victoria ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... be given summarily, for the generalisation which it requires is almost beyond the compass of the human mind. Several phenomena appear in each period, and it would be easy to give any one of these as marking its tendency: as, for instance, we might describe one period as having a tendency to despotism, and another to licentiousness: but the true answer lies deeper, and can be only given by discovering that common element in human nature which, in religion, in politics, in philosophy, and in ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... States declared war, Great Britain was straining every nerve and muscle in a death struggle with the most formidable military despotism of modern times, and was obliged to entrust the defence of her Canadian colonies to a mere handful of regulars, aided by the local fencibles. But Congress had provided even fewer trained soldiers, and relied on militia. The latter chiefly exercised their fighting abilities ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... for the catastrophe of the Arctic, now pealed forth in triumph for the victory of the Alma. Toronto knew no rest on that night. Those who rejoiced over a victory gained over the northern despot were those who had successfully resisted the despotism of a band of rebels. The streets were almost impassable from the crowds who thronged them. Hand-rockets exploded almost into people's eyes—serpents and squibs were hissing and cracking over the pavements—and ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... difference between freedom and slavery. Hence, though some of you previously through ignorance of which was better may have been deceived by the alluring announcements of the Romans, yet now that you have tried both you have learned how great a mistake you made by preferring a self-imposed despotism to your ancestral mode of life. You have come to recognize how far superior is the poverty of independence to wealth in servitude. What treatment have we met with that is not most outrageous, that is not most grievous, ever since these men insinuated themselves into Britain? Have we not ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of terror,—the spectres ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the Burman character are almost rendered nugatory by their religion, and the oppressive nature of their government. The latter is an absolute despotism. The king has a nominal council with whom he may advise, but whose advice he may, if he chooses, treat with utter contempt. It is not, however, the direct oppression of the monarch that causes most suffering among his ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... for instance, in the opening words of his first speech on the floor of the Virginia Convention, to which he had been chosen a member from Richmond: "Mr. Chairman, I conceive that the object of the discussion now before us is whether democracy or despotism be most eligible.... The supporters of the Constitution claim the title of being firm friends of liberty and the rights of man ....We prefer this system because we think it a well-regulated democracy.... What are the favorite maxims of democracy? A strict ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... He went out. He felt almost sick with humiliation, the humiliation of having to ask and the humiliation of the curt refusal. He hated the headmaster now. Philip writhed under that despotism which never vouchsafed a reason for the most tyrannous act. He was too angry to care what he did, and after dinner walked down to the station, by the back ways he knew so well, just in time to catch the train to Blackstable. He walked into the vicarage and found his uncle and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... and in the course of a generation or two their more obnoxious traits will probably disappear. Freedom of worship and the public school have a curative and humanizing influence which not even the leprosy bred of centuries of European despotism and oppression can resist. I am not of those who view with apprehension or aversion the race of Christ, of David and of the Maccabees, of Disraeli and of Gambetta. There is no better class of citizens than the better class of Jews, and ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... whose influence had been uppermost in Elizabethan literature, the Renaissance had been essentially pagan and sensuous. It had hardly touched the moral nature of man, and it brought little relief from the despotism of rulers. One can hardly read the horrible records of the Medici or the Borgias, or the political observations of Machiavelli, without marveling at the moral and political degradation of a cultured nation. In the North, especially ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of secession involves, if admitted, a greater disaster to the Federal Union than even the slow eating at its vitals of the cancer of slavery. National unity, one country, the sovereignty of the Constitution, are all sacrificed by secession. It involves in it either the worst anarchy or the worst despotism. United, the States can stand, and command the respect of the world, but secession is an enemy to the country, the most cruel. Rev. Dr. Breckinridge, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... grant a favor, but exact arguments irritate and confound her; in order to guide her you must employ the power which she herself so frequently employs and which lies in an appeal to sensibility. It is therefore in his wife, and not in himself, that a husband can find the instruments of his despotism; as diamond cuts diamond so must the woman be made to tyrannize over herself. To know how to offer the ear-rings in such a way that they will be returned, is a secret whose application embraces the slightest details of life. And now let us ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... condemning eye of a philosopher. The servility of the courtiers excited her contempt. She contrasted the boundless profusion and extravagance which filled these palaces with the absence of comfort in the dwellings of the over-taxed poor, and pondered deeply the value of that regal despotism, which starved the millions to pander to the dissolute indulgence of the few. Her personal pride was also severely stung by perceiving that her own attractions, mental and physical, were entirely overlooked by the crowds which were bowing before the shrines of rank and power. She soon became ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... it is assumed that Nietzsche gained his European reputation by a senseless glorification of selfish bullying as the rule of life, just as it is assumed, on the strength of the single word Superman (Ubermensch) borrowed by me from Nietzsche, that I look for the salvation of society to the despotism of a single Napoleonic Superman, in spite of my careful demonstration of the folly of that outworn infatuation. But even the less recklessly superficial critics seem to believe that the modern objection to Christianity as a pernicious slave-morality was ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... protect Thy holy Church!" exclaimed the missionary, crushing the paper in his excitement. "If the ministers of God become the creatures of the king, despotism and irreligion must inevitably ensue. How long will virtue be accounted a crime? Shall every faithful shepherd be supplanted, to make room for the wolf of lay investiture, the instrument of a lustful tyrant, raised by simony, and upheld by ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... stealth and carried out with rapid triumph, are among the greatest feats for which praises and deifications are due to him and which testify to his merit. I cannot forget that to his efforts we owe the ruin of Austrian despotism, and of Napoleonic Caesarism; the re-establishment of Hungarian independence; the return of Italy's long lost provinces to her bosom; the end of the Pope's temporal power, and the fortunate occasion of the new birth of the republic in France. In his schemes Bismarck forwarded a higher ideal of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... and spirit of government went, France by the middle of the seventeenth century was a despotism both in theory and in fact. Men were still living who could recall the day when France had a real parliament, the Estates-General as it was called. This body had at one time all the essentials of a representative assembly. It might have become, as the English House of ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... flowers as tribute. Siam has also at different times asserted sovereign rights and demanded tribute, but the Siamese were expelled in 1822 with the help of Rajah Ibrahim, the warlike chief of the neighboring State of Selangor. The Government was a despotism, administered during the last three centuries by Sultans who were connected with the ruling dynasties ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. With what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... also clearly from history, that this art, in its origin, (so favored by an arbitrary prince, and who also made some use of it, towards establishing his despotism, nay even primordially introduced by Bathillus, a slave) could no longer preserve its great excellence, than the spirit of liberty was not wholly worn out in the Roman breasts; and, like its other sister arts, gradually decayed and sunk under the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... victorious arms abuses were abolished, ameliorations of all kinds followed and the arts of life were improved. Our government, since the accession of George III, has never raised its arm except in favour of old abuses, to uphold despotism and unfair privileges or ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... desired to picture the type of rulers needed to meet the demands of Italy at the time he wrote. It is a picture of imperialism and, indeed, of despotism. The prince or ruler was in no way obliged to consider the feelings and rights of individuals. Machiavelli said it was not necessary that a prince should be moral, humane, religious, or just; indeed, that if he had these qualities and displayed them they would harm him, but if he were ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... from the other—that they struggled too long, that they surrendered too late, that they died too readily, could have been applied to Poland—one fearful instance of success would have been wanting to encourage the designs of despotism! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... pressure of public business, was most probably only dwelt on as a pretext for a pretended attack of illness. Anne of Austria had no cause for worry and anxiety till 1649. She did not begin to complain of the despotism of Mazarin till towards the end of 1645" (Ibid., viol. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... moreover, had not forgotten that Russia ruthlessly crippled Poland in 1831, and lent her aid to the subjugation of Hungary in 1849. If the Sultan was the Lord of Misrule to English imagination in 1853, the Czar was the embodiment of despotism, and even less amenable to the modern ideas of liberty and toleration. The Manchester School, on the other hand, had provoked a reaction. The Great Exhibition had set a large section of the community dreaming, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... social glass. But the objection taken by anticipation to popular heats and contendings in such cases is as old as the first stirrings of a free spirit among the people, and the first struggles of despotism to bind them down. We ourselves have heard it twice urged on the unpopular side,—once when the rotten burghs were nodding to their fall, and once when an unrestricted patronage was imperilled by the encroachments ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of March 1554, probably, Knox left Dieppe for Geneva, where he could consult Calvin, not yet secure in his despotism, though he had recently burned Servetus. Next he went to Zurich, and laid certain questions before Bullinger, who gave answers in ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... servants as well as in official positions in and about the palace, as well as trusting some of the positions of the highest importance to the class. From her epoch, eunuchism has become an inseparable attendant on Oriental despotism, and has so continued to the present day. Like yellow fever, phthisis, and some diseases, as well as many other social afflictions and customs, eunuchism does not seem to flourish beyond certain degrees of north and south latitudes,—a ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... tendency. But they know that when you make a step forward you keep it. They know that there is reality and honesty, strength and substance, about your proceedings. They know that you are not a monarchy to-day, a republic to-morrow, and a military despotism the day after. They know that you have been happily preserved from irrational vicissitudes that have marked the career of the greatest and noblest among the neighbouring nations. Your fathers and yourselves have earned this brilliant character for England. Do not forfeit it. Do not allow it to ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... freedom gives. It had become rich, and enervated by luxury and ease. Solomon had civilised the Jewish kingdom, till it had become one of the greatest nations of the East; but it had become also, like the other nations of the East, a vast and gaudy despotism, hollow and rotten to the core; ready to fall to pieces at Solomon's death, by selfishness, disloyalty, and civil war. Therefore it was that Solomon hated all his labour that he had wrought under the sun; for all was ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... first difference is the effect of a few thousand, the second of a few hundred years. We congratulate ourselves that slavery has become industry; that law and constitutional government have superseded despotism and violence; that an ethical religion has taken the place of Fetichism. There may yet come a time when the many may be as well off as the few; when no one will be weighed down by excessive toil; when the necessity of providing for the body will not interfere with mental improvement; ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... palace. But the revolutionary policy was born there; there the people read the pages of the holy archbishop: Versailles was destined to be, thanks to Louis XIV. and Fenelon, at once the palace of despotism and the cradle of the Revolution. Montesquieu had sounded the institutions, and analysed the laws of all people. By classing governments, he had compared them, by comparing he passed judgment on them; and this judgment brought out, in its bold relief, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... prominent laymen, and was with few exceptions readily taken. Doubtless many swallowed the oath from mere cowardice; others took it with mental reservations; and yet that the majority complied shows that the substitution of a royal for a papal despotism was acceptable to the conscience of the country at large. Many believed that they were not departing from the Catholic faith; but that others welcomed the act as a step towards the Reformation cannot be doubted. How strong was the hold of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... lawns. Ahead, a massive brownstone chapel with pointed tower rose up, and to its right, in mathematical bulk, was the abode of Greek and Latin roots, syntax and dates, of blackboards, hard seats and the despotism of the Faculty. To the right, close at hand, was a large three-storied building with wonderful dormer windows tucked under the slanted slate roof, and below was a long stone esplanade, black with the grouped figures of giants. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... ignorant of the problems of family training; they oscillate between the wishy-washy sentimentality that permits anarchy in the home and the harsh, unthinking despotism that breeds hatred and rebellion. Fathers criticize the public schools but never take the time to go and look inside one. They laugh at women's clubs because they are too lazy to make a like investment in the patient study of some of their problems. They affect indifference to the parent-teacher ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... consciousness of having incurred it through allegiance to freedom, and being destined to endure it in a consecrated asylum. In that air, when first respired, on that soil, when first trod, they were unconscious of the lot of strangers: for there the vigilant eye of despotism ceased to watch their steps; prudence checked no more the expression of honest thought or high aspiration; manhood resumed its erect port, mind its spontaneous vigor; nor did many moments pass ere friendly hands were extended, and kindly voices heard, and domestic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Hyacinthe, Buteau, and Fanny. He received seven acres of land from his father, and his wife brought him twelve acres more. This land he cultivated well, and with a passion for the soil, as such, which amounted to frenzy. It alone had his love, and his wife and children trembled before him under a rude despotism. At seventy years of age he was still healthy, but his limbs were failing, and he reluctantly decided to divide his land between his children. He retained his house and garden, which had come to him with his wife, and his family undertook to pay ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Britain may now be what the weakness of the Spanish empire once was. Her geography is against her. The day is gradually passing away when arbitrary power may hold distant regions in subjection to a central despotism; the day is at hand which demands that the bonds of union shall be natural and just, not arbitrary—bonds which forever assert their own inherent power to unite and grow stronger, not weaker, with the inevitable changes constantly being wrought out by ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Howth, what will you have? If the trodden rights of the human soul are the slime of yesterday, how shall we found our empire to last? On despotism? Civil or theocratic?" ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... whom the loss of her eyes made an object of commiseration in mine; but her manner of living so contrary to my own, that her hour of going to bed was almost mine for rising; her unbounded passion for low wit, the importance she gave to every kind of printed trash, either complimentary or abusive, the despotism and transports of her oracles, her excessive admiration or dislike of everything, which did not permit her to speak upon any subject without convulsions, her inconceivable prejudices, invincible obstinacy, and the enthusiasm of folly to which this carried her in ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... for the other. He played with remarkable skill on the flute, of which instrument he possessed a large collection, and composed original music with both science and facility. This royal connoisseur carried his despotism into his love of art, and ruled with an iron hand over those who catered for the amusement of himself and the good people of Berlin. Though the creator of that policy which, in the hands of Bismarck and the modern German nationalists, has wrought such wonderful results, ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... freedom of the press, but she also has a law of libel which is not a cipher. Our law of libel is so horribly effete that the purest woman on our continent may to-morrow be vilely slandered, and yet obtain no adequate form of redress. This is what our extolled "liberty" has brought us—a despotism in its way as frightful as anything that Russia or the Orient can parallel. Is it remarkable that such relatively minor abuses as those of plutocracy and snobbery should torment us here in New York when bullets of journalistic ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... never appeared at the dinner that he had so peremptorily ordered to be served at once, but shut himself up fasting with his dead. If his eyes were now opened to see how much he had made her suffer through his selfishness, cruelty, and despotism all her married life—if his late remorse awoke—if he grieved for her—no one ever knew it. He never gave expression ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... century was suffering from too much success, too much political liberty, too much nationalism. Having overthrown the old regime within the State quickly and easily, she began to think she could do without the State altogether: the result was anarchy, for which the only remedy is despotism. Having, again, suddenly become conscious of her power and mission as a nation, she began to send her armies across her frontiers to carry the gospel of her peculiar "culture" to other and more benighted nations: the result was occupation, which ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... the other hand, the inquiry be whether mankind are not endowed with those germs of intelligence and those susceptibilities of goodness by which, under a perfectly practicable system of cultivation and training, they are able to avoid the evils of despotism and anarchy, and also of those frequent changes in national policy which are but one remove from anarchy, and to hold steadfastly on their way in an endless career of improvement, then, in the full rapture of that joy and triumph which springs ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... was a moderate despotism, tempered by a Chamber that might or might not be elected. I never certainly could hear of its sitting in my time at Pumpernickel. The Prime Minister had lodgings in a second floor, and the Foreign Secretary occupied the comfortable lodgings over Zwieback's Conditorey. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... regret that "he had not begun to spend money upon public works ten years earlier than he did." Every costly building that bore his name, each library he opened to the public, and all the donations lavished upon scholars, served the double purpose of cementing the despotism of his house and of gratifying his personal enthusiasm for culture. . . . . Of his generosity to men of letters, the most striking details are recorded. When Niccolo de' Niccoli ruined himself, Cosimo opened for him an unlimited credit ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... glimpse of the coming glory of that new era of progress that matchless valor had won through the blood and carnage of a thousand battle-fields. He lived, through all the storm of war, to see, at last, America rejuvenated, rescued from the grasp of despotism, and rise victorious, with her garments purified and her brow radiant with the unsullied light of liberty. He lived to greet the return of "meek-eyed peace," and then he gently laid his head upon her bosom, and breathed out ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... of him. He apostrophised the statue in a voice tremulous with emotion. He addressed the great Continent, as it loves to be addressed. "America! America!" he exclaimed, "how I have longed for this day, when my foot should tread the soil where despotism cannot live!" ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Kingston; and one of them, Dr. F——, lately arrived from Scutari, gave me, when he heard my plans, a letter of introduction to Miss Nightingale, then hard at work, evoking order out of confusion, and bravely resisting the despotism of death, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... imposition. For a youth in his Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to destroy his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason cogent enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of abhorrent despotism, and Richard's blossoms withered under it. A strange man had been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his skull with sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while, in an infallible voice, declaring him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a partial veil over the vice itself and leaves the superficial observer unconscious of its existence. He was a devoted husband, a kind and affectionate father, a despot (though it was a beneficent despotism) in his own family, a courteous, cordial, and obliging host; he cared for money only as a means of enjoyment, but it formed no part of his scheme of happiness to employ it in promoting the pleasures, or relieving ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... up in these two men; the first representing military despotism, the second pure republicanism. These men were the two sole political representatives of that revolution in which Charles I. had first lost his crown, and afterwards his head. As regarded Lambert, he did not dissemble his views; he sought to establish ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Block's shipwrecked crew, and had taken the name of New Amsterdam. The inhabitants were well suited to become the ancestors of a great nation. They were mainly Dutch citizens of a European Republic, "composed of seven free, sovereign States"—made so by a struggle with despotism for forty years, and occupying a territory which their ancestors had reclaimed from the ocean and morass by indomitable labor. It was a republic where freedom of conscience, speech, and the press were complete and universal. The effect of this freedom ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Johnson and other authorities, was the first Whig. History tells us less about the first Radical—the first man who rebelled against the despotism of unintelligible customs, who asserted the rights of the individual against the claims of the tribal conscience, and who was eager to see society organized, off-hand, on what he thought a rational method. In ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of election arrived. It was no longer an individual struggle, but a party contest between the ins and outs. The question was, whether the withering influence of the overseers, the domination of the churchwardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle a form—a nullity: whether they should impose a vestry-elected beadle on the parish, to do their bidding and forward their views, or whether the parishioners, fearlessly asserting their undoubted ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... nursed with the tears and complaints of her mother at her father's brutality, she naturally disliked him and feared his scorn. This developed in her secretiveness and resentment. She rebelled against his despotism and niggardliness. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... was a mild, dull woman, whom her father's brutal despotism had early molded to passive obedience for life. She maintained the same attitude with her husband, whose constant kindness and indulgence never had succeeded in triumphing over that humiliated, taciturn nature, indifferent to everything, and, in some sense, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... the words of an old Latin historian, to be of all men the one 'most like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force till the softening influence of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman life, made the stoical ideal seem too hard and unsympathising; till the corruption and despotism of the Empire had withdrawn the best men from political life and attached a certain taint or stigma to public employment; till new religions arose in the East, bringing with them new ideals to govern the world. Gradually we may trace the ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... years with which we have to deal in this chapter, the Government was directed by two men whose character and policy were detested by the nation, and who filled up their short tenure of power with as many exasperating acts of despotism as it was possible to crowd into it. The more prominent of the two, Esme Stewart, a kinsman of the King, cousin of his father Darnley, was a foreigner and had been trained in the French Court. He had a brief and inglorious career in Scotland. He had no sooner joined the King's Council ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... on the horse-couper's success, but the knowing ones were taken in. Determined to ride the fore-horse herself, Meg would admit no helpmate who might soon assert the rights of a master; and so, in single blessedness, and with the despotism of Queen Bess herself, she ruled all matters with a high hand, not only over her men-servants and maid-servants, but over the stranger within her gates, who, if he ventured to oppose Meg's sovereign will and pleasure, or desire to have either fare or accommodation different ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... obliges him to execute the police regulations of society; a task in which good sense and integrity are of more avail than legal science. The justice introduces into the administration a certain taste for established forms and publicity, which renders him a most unserviceable instrument of despotism; and, on the other hand, he is not blinded by those superstitions which render legal officers unfit members of a government. The Americans have adopted the system of English justices of the peace, but they have deprived it of that aristocratic character which is discernible in the mother-country. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... persecuted inhabitants. It is to be hoped that its imbecile and tyrannical rulers will be for ever driven from her soil, amidst the execration of the world. How beautifully the aristocrats of England moralise on the despotism of the rulers of Italy and Dahomey—in the case of Naples with what indignation did they speak of the ruin of families by the detention of its head or some loved member in a prison. Who have not heard their condemnations of the tyranny that would ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... oppressed and the suffering of all creeds and nations, and population poured into her by the force of a natural tendency. France, like England, might have been great in two hemispheres, if she had placed herself in accord with this tendency, instead of opposing it; but despotism was consistent with itself, and a mighty opportunity ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... order, threw it into the fire before her eyes, and confined her for six hours in her bedroom; because she was not dressed in time to take a walk with him on the ramparts, one is apt to believe that military despotism has erased from his bosom all connubial affection, and that a momentary effusion of kindness and generosity can but little alleviate the frequent pangs caused by repeated insults and oppression. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of the sixteenth century, Spain was the incubus of Europe. Gloomy and portentous, she chilled the world with her baneful shadow. Her old feudal liberties were gone, absorbed in the despotism of Madrid. A tyranny of monks and inquisitors, with their swarms of spies and informers, their racks, their dungeons, and their fagots, crushed all freedom of thought or speech; and, while the Dominican held his reign of ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr. |
