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Elective   /ɪlˈɛktɪv/   Listen
Elective

adjective
1.
Subject to popular election.  Synonym: elected.
2.
Not compulsory.  "An elective course of study"



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"Elective" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the young woman of love, explaining it according to his beliefs. Goethe had defined it as an "elective affinity," speaking as a man of science and not as a poet, using the term that chemistry gives to the tendency of two substances to unite and form a distinct product. Two beings between whom no affinity existed could meet through false laws of life in perpetual ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... and princely aggression. Her story is the usual Italian story of a people jealous of each other, and, in their fear of a native tyrant, impatiently calling in one foreign tyrant after another and then furiously expelling him. When she would govern herself, she first made her elective chief magistrate Doge for life, and then for two years; under both forms she submitted and rebelled at will from 1359 till 1802, when, after having accepted the French notion of freedom from Bonaparte, she enjoyed a lion's share of his vicissitudes. For a hundred years before ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... written incomparably the best work that has ever appeared on the United States, makes the following judicious remarks on this subject: "Where a nation modifies the elective qualification, it may easily be foreseen, that sooner or later that qualification will be abolished. There is no more invariable rule in the history of society. The further electoral rights are extended, the more is felt the need of extending ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... place, garrisoned it with a Roman colony. The strangers thus brought to Rome were not admitted to a participation of civic rights; they were like the inhabitants of a corporate town who are excluded from the elective franchise: by successive immigrations, the number of persons thus disqualified became more numerous than that of the first inhabitants or old freemen, and they naturally sought a share in the government, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... democrats, especially European democrats and revolutionists, and by French and Germans settled in our own country, it is essentially barbaric and anti-republican. The characteristic principle of barbarism is, that power is a private or personal right, and when democrats assert that the elective franchise is a natural right of man, or that it is held by virtue of the fact that the elector is a man, they assert the fundamental principle of barbarism and despotism. This says nothing in favor of restricted suffrage, or against what is called universal ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... dependant. So great is the number of the working-classes in every old and opulent community, compared to those who possess the advantages of property and superior education, that nothing is more certain than that, if the elective franchise be widely diffused, and no mode of classifying the votes, as at Rome, has been discovered, the sway of a numerical majority of incompetent electors will, erelong, become irresistible. Certain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... that our critics so uniformly accuse us of subjectivism, of denying the reality's existence? It comes, I think, from the necessary predominance of subjective language in our analysis. However independent and elective realities may be, we can talk about them, in framing our accounts of truth, only as so many objects believed-in. But the process of experience leads men so continually to supersede their older ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... you, as to the propriety of the negro speedily becoming possessed of the elective franchise. In Antigua there is very little more land than is in cultivation for the estates, but here it is widely different; and they are beginning to settle themselves by purchasing small lots very fast. At Sligoville there are nearly fifty new freeholders. The negroes ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... ascribed to it an undisputed superiority, they either had no rule, or none that was steadily observed, in filling the vacant throne; and present convenience, in that emergency, was more attended to than general principles. We are not, however, to suppose that the crown was considered as altogether elective; and that a regular plan was traced by the constitution for supplying, by the suffrages of the people, every vacancy made by the demise of the first magistrate. If any king left a son of an age and capacity fit for ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... re-elected to the Presidency for December 1, 1884. From that period until the present day he has held the office continuously—seven Presidential terms—a regime which has partaken more of the nature of a hereditary sovereignty than of an elective post. It is to be recollected, however, that in all Spanish-American countries—and Mexico has been no exception—intimidation and bribery at the polls and breaches of constitutional law have been potent factors in election matters. It would not be correct, however, to ascribe these ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... have the voice of the king himself for your succession in Denmark?] Though the crown was elective, yet regard was paid to the recommendation of the preceding prince, and preference given to royal blood, which, by degrees, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... themselves to inquire how far this preponderance is a reasonable thing, and what have been its real and practical effects—are indignant; their blood is roused; 'and they are determined to address their Brother Freeholders, and call upon them to recover the exercise of the elective Franchise, which has been withheld from them for half a century.'—Withheld from them! Suppose these Champions, in this their first declaration of hostility, had said, 'to recover the elective Franchise which we have suffered to lie dormant.' But ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... harsh these might appear. Had they been kept in vigour for another half-century, it was his conviction that Popery would have been all but extinguished in Ireland. But he thought that after admitting Romanists to the elective franchise, it was a vain notion that they could be permanently or advantageously deterred from using that franchise in favour of those of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... 23rd of September, the Ulster Unionist Council, the body representing the whole loyalist community on an elective and thoroughly democratic basis, held its annual meeting in the Ulster Hall, the chief business being the ratification of the Covenant prior to its being presented for general signature throughout the province on Ulster Day. ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... half-century bears analyzing. These associations have almost invariably centered about a service to be rendered. Even the first petition for political enfranchisement urged it as the "duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves the elective franchise." Unselfishness draws numbers as a magnet draws steel filings. The spirit of service lying at the heart of the great national organizations made possible quick response to new duties immediately upon our entrance ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... is the vital factor in our government, but there are many evidences that it is not fully exercised for the political welfare of the country. It frequently occurs that men are sent to Congress on a small percentage of voters. Other elective offices meet the same fate. Certainly, more interest must be taken in selecting the right kind of men to rule over them or the people will barter away their liberties by indifference. Officials should be brought to realize that they are to serve the public ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... read eagerly the various books and pamphlets declaring that a monarchy should not continue if it {109} proved incapable of maintaining order even by despotic powers. More and more a new idea gained ground that the sovereignty of France was not hereditary but elective. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... them to have political privileges, and to be admitted to the elective franchise, still worse results may be expected.[251] It is hardly necessary to add any thing to what has been said by Mr. Paulding on this subject who has treated it fully. It is already known, that if there be a class unfavorably distinguished by any peculiarity from the rest of society, this ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... not favourites. He was, in fact, in the first instance, one of our members for Port Phillip, and it was chiefly to his efforts and abilities that separation from New South Wales was eventually conceded from Home. In the elective contests we saw some of the peculiar talent with which Lang fought his many political foes, when, with an inimitable blandness of address, and the softest of mellifluous language, he would build up a many-sided argument, patiently and leisurely, and at last, as with the ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... ratiocination really occurs in the annelid; its intelligence goes no farther, probably, than conscious determination. In the beetle, however, conscious determination is merged into intelligent ideation, for its actions in the premises are self-elective and selective. ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... to be drawn into the devouring vortex of strife. Strange to say the first to suffer from the outbreak of hostilities was Poland. That Republic entered on a new lease of life in the spring of the year 1791. The constitution adopted with enthusiasm on 3rd May substituted an hereditary for an elective monarchy, and otherwise strengthened the fabric of that almost anarchic State. Social and civic reforms promised also to call its burghers and serfs to a life of activity or comfort. But the change at once aroused keen dislike at St. Petersburg and Berlin. Prussian ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the weapon perhaps counted for as much as the man who wielded it, and as its nature depended largely upon circumstances and surroundings, the range of choice was generally wide enough to please the most elective taste. Pressing consequently introduced the gangsman to some ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... common with the "law of mass-action" developed at a much later date by the Swedish chemists Guldberg and Waage, and the American, Willard Gibbs (see CHEMICAL ACTION). In his classical thesis Berthollet vigorously attacked the results deduced by Bergman, who had followed in his table of elective attractions the path traversed by Stahl and S. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... would come to an end. This shifting of personal responsibility by the great majority is the bane of our system. The truth is, no one, in a republican government, can lead an absolutely private career. As one who exercises the elective franchise, or one who influences the same, be it man or woman, there is no dodging the responsibility of citizenship. A better State of information on public affairs, also, will induce a correct conception of a certain class of ideas which, more than any others, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... In the absence of any contrary provision, all officers of this State, whether heretofore elected or appointed by the Governor, shall hold their positions only until other appointments are made by the Governor, or if the officers are elective, until their successors shall have been chosen and duly qualified according to ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... Emperor at Bologna, this national independence had been irretrievably lost by the Italians. This confederation of evenly-balanced Powers was now exchanged for servitude beneath a foreign monarchy, and for subjection to a cosmopolitan elective priesthood. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... the same terms as other citizens of the United States, is plainly declared and firmly fixed by the Constitution. No such person is called upon to present reasons why he should possess this right: that question is foreclosed by the Constitution. The object of the elective franchise is to give representation. So long as the Constitution retains its present form, any State Constitution, or statute, which seeks, by juggling the ballot, to deny the colored race fair representation, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... utilised the special affinities that certain cells and parts of cells have for basic, acid and neutral stains, was simply a foreshadowing of his work on the affinity that certain cells and tissues have for specific drugs and toxins; the study of these special elective affinities now forms a very wide field of investigation in which numerous workers are already engaged in determining the position and nature of these seats of election for special ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... concerned the revolution, but in a modified way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "Military District No. 1," governed by a Federal general, who appointed the local officers in the several counties. The affairs of the State were managed by carpetbaggers in close agreement with despicable scalawags and ignorant negroes. The elective franchise was granted to the emancipated slaves regardless of character or intelligence, while it was denied to many white men. In Lancaster county the negroes had a registered majority of a hundred ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway

... vegetation, these metals and animals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are means and methods only, are words of God, and as fugitive as other words. Has the naturalist or chemist learned his craft, who has explored the gravity of atoms and the elective affinities, who has not yet discerned the deeper law whereof this is only a partial or approximate statement, namely that like draws to like, and that the goods which belong to you gravitate to ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... uninformed; but the ecclesiastics, having a career of emulation open before them, are much more enlightened and cultivated than the nobles, and as the papal government admits of no distinction of birth, and is purely elective in the clerical body, it begets a sort of liberality, not in ideas, but in habits, which renders Rome a most agreeable abode for those who have neither the prospect, nor ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... Association. I think perhaps the first thing we should do might be to proceed with the election of a Nominating Committee and the Auditing Committee. I believe both, if I am not misinformed, are elective and not appointive. The chair will entertain nominations ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... on in private and in public. It was soon indicated that Sinn Fein would take no part, on the double ground, first, that the Convention was not elective in any democratic sense, for all the representatives of local bodies had been elected before the war, before the rebellion, before the new movement took hold in Ireland; and secondly, that it was committed in advance to a settlement within the Empire. On the other ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... the beginning. There was then no generally received doctrine as to the succession to kingdoms and duchies. Everywhere a single kingly or princely house supplied, as a rule, candidates for the succession. Everywhere, even where the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son was always likely to succeed his father. The growth of feudal notions too had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle. Still no rule had anywhere been laid down for ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... the demands of the principle of Popular Sovereignty! Their other questions are all "political"; the questions as to the organization of their executive, legislative, and judicial departments, as to their elective franchise, their distribution of districts, their banks, their rates and modes of taxation, etc., etc., are not domestic questions, but political; and provided the people are suffered to vote on the future (not the existing) condition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... physiology of its life and strength, and language of its beauty and meaning. I am as much offended in taste by the turgid mystical bombast of Geoffroy as I am disgusted by his cold and irrational materialism. When men of his school talk of the elective affinity of organic types, I hear a jargon I cannot comprehend, and I turn from it in disgust; and when they talk of spontaneous generation and transmutation of species, they seem to me to try nature by an hypothesis, and not to try their hypothesis by nature. Where are their facts ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... British Constitution, quoting Monsieur Necker as saying that "it was the only government in the world which unites government strength with individual security." He analysed and explained your Constitution as it then was and advocated an elective monarchy in form though not in name. It is true that he called the executive a "governor" and not a king, but the governor, so-called, was to serve for life and was given not only "a negative on all laws about to be passed," but even the execution of all duly enacted laws was in his discretion. ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... cases it proclaimed the right of Negroes to be tried only in those courts where Negroes could serve on juries and outlawed the all-white primary system, which in some one-party states had effectively barred Negroes from the elective process. The latter decision partly explains the rise in the number of qualified black voters in twelve southern states from 645,000 in 1947 to some 1.2 million by 1952. However, many difficulties remained in the way of full enfranchisement. The ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... all the old men in the ato, no matter how wise or foolish, rich or poor — no matter what the man's social standing may be. Again, it is democratic — the simplest democracy — in that is has no elective organization, no headmen, no superiors or inferiors whose status in the in-tug-tu'-kan is determined by the members of the group. The feature of self-perpetuation displays itself in that it decides when the various men of the ato become am-a'-ma, "old men," and therefore members of the in-tug-tu'-kan. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... conduct. They had been falsely charged as being Republicans, but they had always repudiated this charge as a calumny. Nor would they be found among those who, like Messrs. Peter Perry and W. L. Mackenzie, had recently avowed their intention to establish republican elective ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... produced. In this state of things, and with such prospects, many sighed for a change. They lost faith in the republican form of government, as they saw it in its practical workings under the Articles of Confederation, and they earnestly desired something stronger—perhaps an elective or constitutional monarchy. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... much truth in what you say. But would not the Romans have done better if, after the expulsion of Tarquin, they had vested the regal power in a limited monarch, instead of placing it in two annual elective magistrates with the title of consuls? This was a great deviation from your plan of government, and, I think, an unwise one. For a divided royalty is a solecism—an absurdity in politics. Nor was the regal power committed to the administration of consuls continued ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... and of the Congress with its representatives from all the States of 'an indestructible union' find their historical beginning. The words of Bancroft in this connection are worthy of remembrance: 'A perpetual interest attaches to this first elective body that ever assembled in the Western world, representing the people of Virginia and making laws for their government more than a year before the Mayflower with the Pilgrims left the harbor of Southampton, and while Virginia was still the only British ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... his living by comic sketches, and all but lost it again by tragic poems. So he was just the man to be chosen king of the fairies, for in Fairyland the sovereignty is elective. ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald

... Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments; if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration; if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity, convenience, and defense; if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... theologian professor at Berlin who made an attack upon Goethe's "Elective Affinities," which then had not yet become a classic, and was thus still liable to the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine

... marshal of Jacksonville. This was an elective office. The position made him head of police force ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... British dominions, so long as the civil constitution is not scripturally reformed, the use of the "Elective Franchise," or the office ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... relate not to appointive places like the Judiciary, Commissionerships, clerical positions and like places, but to the more important elective offices. Another reason why political life of this nature is not chosen as a career is that it does not pay. Nearly all offices of this class are held at a financial sacrifice, not merely that the holder could earn more at some other occupation, ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... or not. Mr. Masson has certainly offered a new and striking subject to the historical school of British art. A little further on, speaking of Mary Powell, he says, "We have no portrait of her, nor any account of her appearance; but on the usual rule of the elective affinities of opposites, Milton being fair, we will vote her to have been dark-haired." I need say nothing of the good taste of this sentence, but its absurdity is heightened by the fact that Mr. Masson himself had left us in doubt whether the match was one ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... of a number of provinces, each with the usual corps of elective officers. A governor-general appointed by the Crown of Great Britain is the chief ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... the case of Corsica, the sister island! In reviewing her industrial position we quoted rather largely from a Procès-Verbal of the deliberations of the Council-General, also an elective body, which canvasses, but not regulates, the internal administration of the island. It arrives at certain conclusions, but without any power to give them effect. “Le Conseil-Général émet le vœu,” “appelle l'attention,” ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... gave the private soldier the right to discard his uniform when not actually on service and to leave barracks freely during "off-duty" hours. Finally, it placed all matters pertaining to the management in the hands of elective committees in the composition of which the men were to have four-fifths of the elective ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair, as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... says the Norse proverb, "without brother behind it"; and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the inexhaustible resources of prestige, of sentiment, of superstition, of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Art may not be born in a land so young? Shall we say that Art may not deal with things uncatalogued, and dare not treat of unaccepted things? Nay, rather let us say that Art, being thought, has this divine right of elective birth. For out of tortures Art had ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... Turgot, then only in his twenty-fourth year, was appointed to the honorary office of Prior of the Sorbonne, an elective distinction conferred annually, as it appears, on some meritorious or highly connected student. It was held in the following year by Lomenie de Brienne. In this capacity Turgot read two Latin dissertations, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... his own heart, he did hold the shocking dogma attributed to him by more than one calumniator; and that, had the time been ripe, had there been aught to gain by it, instead of all to lose, he would have been the first to assert that Scotland was elective instead of hereditary - "elective as in the days of paganism," as one Thevet says in holy horror. (1) And yet, because the time was not ripe, I find no hint of such an idea in his collected works. Now, the regiment of women was another matter that he should ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... country of the ancient Vandals; it was made a duchy about the end of the seventh century; in the tenth, Christianity was introduced, and Boleslaus erected it into a monarchy in 999. The form of government was here very singular: it was the only elective monarchy in Europe, and the Poles, in the choice of a king, did not always confine themselves to a countryman; at one time all nations were eligible. The king was elected by the whole body of the nobility and gentry in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various

... which accounted for a great number of facts, and would have kept its place as a law of nature, had it not been disproved by the discovery of cases in which though A detached B from C in some circumstances, C detached it from A in others, showing the law of elective chemical combination to be a less simple one than had at first been supposed. In this case, therefore, M. Comte made a mistake: and he will be found to have made many similar ones. But in the science next after chemistry, biology, the empty mode ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... this state evinced an intelligent and active interest in governmental issues, but in several instances important offices have been conferred upon that element of the electorate which recently acquired the elective franchise. Kindly assure your co-workers in Pennsylvania of my best wishes for ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber

... gymnastic exercises over the fence of the sty, and marauding in the garden. I wonder that Fourier never conceived the idea of having his garden land ploughed by pigs; for certainly they manifest quite a decided elective attraction for ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... class of society. The same was true of the Mayor of Albany. At the present time, the rule has been so far enlarged, as to admit a selection from all of the more reputable classes, without any rigid adherence to the highest. The elective principle has produced the change. During the writer's boyhood, Philip Van Rensselaer, the brother of the late Patroon, was so long Mayor of Albany, as to be universally known by the sobriquet ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... mysterious elective affinity between the grisette and the chocolate bon-bon. He who can skilfully exhibit the latter, is almost certain to win the heart of the former. Where the chocolate fails, however, the marron glace is an infallible specific. I recommend that we lay ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... Egmont (Teutonic), etc. Then came Hermann and Dorothea, which was absolutely classic in the simplicity of its plan and purity of lyric verse, but essentially modern in its picture of German customs; The Roman Elegies, The Elective Affinities, Poetry and Truth (autobiography mingled with romance), The Western Eastern Divan, lyrical poems, and finally, the two parts of Faust. In the first part of Faust, Goethe was, and desired to be, entirely German; in the second, through many reveries more or less relative ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... government a sort of elective monarchy. The grand khan was to be chosen by the votes of all the other khans, who were to be assembled in a general convocation for this purpose whenever a new khan was to be installed. Any person who should cause himself to be proclaimed grand khan, or who should in ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... of their members. The distinction most sought for by ambitious students, the marshalship of the "commencement" ceremonies,—i.e. the conferring of degrees, speech-making, etc., of the graduating class,—was an elective office and voted for by all the members of the class, so that, for this position of a day, scholarship was only of secondary importance, the personal popularity of the candidates determining the election. The societies grouped themselves in two parties, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... Elective sovereign by origin, the moment the Pope ascends the throne, he becomes absolute. Authority and honors proceed from him as from their legitimate source. Money bears his image and superscription. Monuments are inscribed with his name. Laws ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Casimir raised to the elective throne of Poland, he considered himself as the issue of royal blood, and it seemed to him that his position with the Queen, Maria Theresa, was a great injustice of fortune; he thought, nevertheless, that he ought to remain some time longer in this post of inferiority, in order to use it as a ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... industrial and commercial city. They are politics of the same sort as those upon which the Palazzo Vecchio looked down in Florence. That ancient Rome was a republic there can be no doubt. Even the so-called monarchy appears clearly to have been elective; and republicanism may be described broadly with reference to its origin, as the government of the city and of the artisan, while monarchy and aristocracy are the governments of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... the neighbouring countries? At some time or other, to be sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europe were, at a remote period, elective, with more or fewer limitations in the objects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here or elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties of England or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is, at this ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... successful) on these critical occasions. But as a wise general not only prepares his attack, but carefully secures a retreat in case his men push too far in the heat of conflict, Jefferson suggested the plan of an elective judiciary, which he foresaw might prove of great advantage to those whose zeal should outrun the law. He even recommended rebellion in popular governments as a political safety valve; and talked about Shay's War and the Whiskey Insurrection in the same vein and almost the same language ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... in their dealings from scoundrels, and have ample scope for industrial enterprise, and are free to choose their private pleasures, they resign themselves to the loss of electing their rulers without great unhappiness. There are greater evils in the world than the deprivation of the elective franchise, great and glorious as is this privilege. The arbitrary rule of the emperors was fatal to political aspirations and rights, but the evils of political slavery were qualified and set off by the excellence of the civil code, and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... dbris of metamorphic rocks in many countries, and is probably one of the evolved products of the distillation of organic matter they once contained. Under peculiar circumstances it has apparently been formed by precipitation from sulphide of carbon or some other volatile carbon compound by elective affinity. Laboratory experiments have proved the possibility of producing it by such a process, but the artificial crystals are microscopic, perhaps only because a long time is required to build up ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... column, in front of which rode Eliab Hill in the carryall belonging to Nimbus. With them went a crowd of women and children, numbering as many more, all anxious to witness the first exercise of elective power by their race, only just delivered from the bonds of slavery. The fife screeched, the drum rattled; laughter and jests and high cheer prevailed among them all. As they marched on, now and then a white man rode past them, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... unknown to him. On the 10th of July, a numerous and respectable meeting of the freemen, freeholders, and inhabitants of the city of Bristol, was held in the large room at the Lamb and Lark, in Thomas Street, for the express purpose of inquiring into the state of the elective franchise, Henry Hunt, Esq. in the chair. It was unanimously resolved, "1st. That the elective franchise is an object of the highest importance, as it is the basis of our laws and liberties. That in the free and unbiassed exercise of this great and yet undisputed privilege, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... check, too, was retained upon the crown owing to a series of disputed successions to the throne. The Anglo-Saxon monarchy had always been in theory elective, and William had been careful to observe the form. His son, William II, had to obtain election in order to secure the throne against the claims of his elder brother Robert, and Henry I followed his example ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... that electoral law, but the electoral power itself, should, if possible, be abolished. For in whatever hands this formidable lever was placed, it was impossible that royalty could long resist its action. To shift the elective power was only to give the monarchy other enemies, not to save it. * * * The aim of the new ministry was to preserve the electoral law; which amounted to this—the monarchy chose ministers whose programme was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... succession, a certain Ian Moidart, or John of Moidart, who took the title of Captain of Clanranald, with all the powers of Chief, and even Glengarry's ancestor recognised them as chiefs de facto if not de jure. The fact is, that this elective power was, in cases of insanity, imbecility, or the like, exercised by the Celtic tribes; and though Ian Moidart was no chief by birth, yet by election he became so, and transmitted his power to his descendants, as would King ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... 1719, Charles's maternal grandfather had declined a Russian proposal to make a dash for the crown, so the chivalrous Wogan narrates. In 1747 (June 6), Chambrier had reported to Frederick the Great that Cardinal Tencin was opposed to the ambition of the Saxon family, which desired to make the elective crown of Poland hereditary in its house. The Cardinal said that, in his opinion, there was a Prince who would figure well in Poland, le jeune Edouard (Prince Charles), who had just made himself known, and in whom ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... Constitution, had already unanimously decided that these bonds were valid, and that the State Legislature, instead of paying the money, had repealed the appropriation. But there came a new court, all chosen by the people, under the wretched system, in many of the States, of an elective judiciary, but unknown to the independent Federal judicial system. A suit was brought in 1851, under the act of 1833, on one of the Union Bank State bonds and coupons before the Chancellor. After elaborate argument, the Chancellor decided against the State, and entered a decree ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... said better than it could be said again, except perhaps to point out that there is little relaxation in the battle of life for children who do their best at books indoors and at games out of doors—so that in self-defence a good many choose an "elective course" between the two lines of advantages that school offers, and do not attempt to serve two masters; they will do well at books or games, but not at both. If the interest in games is keen, they require a great deal ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... impartial, to say the least, in their discrimination as to the person, property, and parental claims of the two sexes. If the elective fran- 63:21 chise for women will remedy the evil with- out encouraging difficulties of greater magnitude, let us hope it will be granted. A feasible as well as rational 63:24 means of improvement at present is the elevation ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... German. Antiq.) rightly concludes that the crown was hereditary, and not elective, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... with grave misgivings a ruler who had already shown in Norway that he was not afraid of enforcing his authority to the uttermost. The Rigsraads of Denmark and Norway insisted, in the haandfaestning or charter extorted from the king, that the crowns of both kingdoms were elective and not hereditary, providing explicitly against any transgression of the charter by the king, and expressly reserving to themselves a free choice of Christian's successor after his death. But the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... Jenkins were in many of their features unpopular. He was always opposed to universal suffrage, and made no secret of his sentiments. He was opposed to an elective judiciary, and to mob-rule in every shape. He despised alike the arts and the humiliation of party politicians, and was never a man to accept for public trust any man whose only recommendation to public favor was his availability, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... Then retrenchment was the cry; universal suffrage elected a parliament which literally cut off the royal princes with a shilling; and the Premier Bradlaugh swamped the House of Lords by the creation of a battalion of life peers, who abolished the hereditary House and established an elective Senate. It was easy then to call a constitutional convention, declare the sovereign but the servant and figure-head of the people, confiscate the royal estates and vote King Albert a salary of L10,000 ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... not an induction from or corollary to the preceding? If it is not Kantian philosophy, it is certainly Goethean. Margaret Fuller was the first American critic, if not the first of all critics, to point out that Goethe in writing "Elective Affinities" designed to show that an evil thought may have consequences as serious and irremediable as an evil action—in addition to the well-known homily that evil thoughts lead to evil actions. In his "Hall of Fantasy" Hawthorne mentions Goethe ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... the history of an artistic talent than the moment at which its "elective affinity" declares itself, and the interest is great in proportion as the declaration is unmistakable. I mean by the elective affinity of a talent its climate and period of preference, the spot on the globe or in the annals of mankind to which it most fondly attaches itself, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... a majority of the legal voters, the white citizens of this State, may decide whether or not colored men of good moral character, WHO ARE ABLE TO READ, and who possess all the qualifications of white voters, shall be entitled to the elective franchise. The opposition may have their own ideas, or may be in doubt upon this subject; but surely no true Democrat will dare to refuse permission to our fellow-citizens to ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... generally crowned some hill, or stood in the midst of a grove where spacious grounds could be obtained. The school was usually under charge of a gentleman teacher—some college graduate—and a lady assistant. The course of study, aside from a course designed to fit young men for college, was largely elective. These schools were as perfect educational republics as can be imagined. The young men and the young women met in their classes, on terms of entire equality and respect for each other. There were ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... falls in with the vogue of that novel of the artistic life which has of late been cultivated in somewhat routine fashion and to which—to mention only a few names—Goethe, Schiller, Grillparzer, Lenau, Wagner, and Heine in his last years, succumbed. Bartsch was indeed led to this theme by an elective affinity; for he is inspired in equal measure by love of music and love for Old Vienna, and he is capable of entering with entire sympathy into the spirit of former times. To this capacity his short stories entitled The Last Days of Rococo (1909) bear eloquent testimony, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... all public functions yet worthy of royalty; that in France a woman has been able to be regent, and yet that up to 1776 she could not be a milliner or dressmaker ("marchande des modes") in Paris, except under cover of her husband's name;[2] and that, lastly, in our elective assemblies they have accorded to rights of property what they have refused to natural right. Many of our noble deputies owe to ladies the honour of sitting among the representatives of the nation. Why, instead of depriving of this right women who were owners ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet

... and skill in war; but his singular piety perfectly eclipsed all his other endowments. He scoured the seas of pirates, and subdued several neighboring provinces which infested Denmark with their incursions. The kingdom of Denmark was elective till the year 1660; wherefore, when Swein died, many pitched upon our saint, whose eminent virtues best qualified him for the throne; but the majority, fearing his martial spirit, preferred his eldest natural brother ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... been written on all sides of this subject, there now remains no doubt that, from the earliest to the latest age of Rome, the Senate was strictly, although an aristocratical, still an elective ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... might make up, in a measure, for lack of discipline, when that dollar, like the proverbial charity, must cover a multitude of wants. Mrs. Travers had attended a school where embroidery was the chief number in the curriculum, and mathematics (after decimal fractions) made elective. Hence it was that the burden of responsibility came so early to Tavia, who was scarcely better able to ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... resolutions of 1834 there is not a single paragraph or even phrase which can be tortured into showing that the French Canadian agitator and his friends were in favour of responsible government. The key-note of the whole document is an elective legislative council, which would inevitably increase the power of the French Canadians and place the British in a hopeless minority. Mr. Roebuck, the paid agent of the assembly in England, is said to have suggested ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... their tendencies and always difficult to blend, the Netherland people has ever been compounded. A certain fatality of history has perpetually helped to separate still more widely these constituents, instead of detecting and stimulating the elective affinities which existed. Religion, too, upon all great historical occasions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents. Otherwise, had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early fused into a whole, it would be difficult to show a race more richly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... The elective franchise is confined entirely to men. A married woman can not sue for her services, as all she earns legally belongs to the husband, whereas his earnings belong to himself, and the wife legally has no interest in them. Where children have property and both parents are living, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road. This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form a wall of fire ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... their mutual attractions and repulsions, and thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion of the sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and the aqueous vapour of the air. The bud appropriates those constituents of both for which it has an elective attraction, and permits the other constituent to return to the atmosphere. Thus the architecture is carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade, the matter of the air and the matter of the atmosphere ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... without having accomplished anything. The voice of Konarski and of his honorable friends is heard in vain; they preach in a desert; the vile passions of the wicked weigh heavily in the balance of our destinies. However, all means of safety are not yet lost: the throne of Poland is elective; the reigning monarch is aged; if his successor should be endowed with a great character, if his virtues accord with the elevation of his station, he may yet save the republic and restore it to its ancient preponderance among nations. Our frontiers are still unbroken, and I place all my hope ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... is evident, that though preference was naturally and properly given to hereditary claims, the monarchy of Scotland, as well as of England, was in principle "elective". The doctrine of hereditary, of divine, of indefeasible "right", ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... general consent of Mussulmans; he must be a protector of the person and property of his subjects; a right of resistance is directly established by law against him, and even the duty of resistance is insisted upon. Am I, in praising this Mahometan law, applauding the principle of elective sovereignty? No, my Lords, I know the mischiefs which have attended it; I know that it has shaken the thrones of most of the sovereigns of the Mussulman religion; but I produce the law as the clearest proof that such a sovereign cannot be supposed to have an arbitrary ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... possible now, or at any time henceforward, whence came the dross? If nature be bullion that can be melted and thus purified by the conjoint action of heat and elective attraction, I pray Mr. Noble to tell me to what name or 'genus' he refers the dross? Will he tell me, to the Devil? Whence came the Devil? And how was the pure bullion so thoughtlessly made as to have an elective affinity for ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the man nor the woman, is the unit of the state. The civil law assumes the existence of the family relation, and its unity where it exists; hence taxation of the woman brings no revenue to the state that might not have been secured by the taxation of the man; and hence the exercise of the elective franchise by the woman brings no additional political power; for, in the theory of the relation to which there are, in fact, but few exceptions, there is in the household but one political idea, and but one agent is ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... conveyance within miles, and time was precious. Salemina wrapped herself in Francesca's long black cloak, and climbed into the cart. Dinnis hauls turf in it, takes a sack of potatoes or a pig to market in it, and the stubborn little ass, blind of one eye, has never in his wholly elective course of existence taken ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Crete, as Zaleucus was of that of the Locrians. Theseus first, and after him Draco and Solon, instituted the government of Athens. Lycurgus was the lawgiver of Sparta. The foundation of the original government of Rome was laid by Romulus, and the work completed by two of his elective successors, Numa and Tullius Hostilius. On the abolition of royalty the consular administration was substituted by Brutus, who stepped forward with a project for such a reform, which, he alleged, had been prepared by Tullius Hostilius, and to which his ...
— The Federalist Papers

... come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." In 1857 he avowed himself "not in favor of" what he improperly called "negro citizenship," for the Constitution discriminates between citizens and electors. Three days before his death he declared his preference that "the elective franchise were now conferred on the very intelligent of the colored men, and on those of them who served our cause as soldiers"; but he wished it done by the States themselves, and he never harbored the thought of exacting it from ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various



Words linked to "Elective" :   course of instruction, elect, nonappointive, course of study, optional, course, electoral, elective course, class, appointive



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