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More "Despotism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... despotism which by the aid of French money has developed a "militarism" by land so portentous in numbers, dimension, and efficiency that its movements are comparable to those of Attila's Huns. Escaped Russians in Western lands are denouncing German "militarism" ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the unreflecting exhilaration of youth, Gerald went forth to the war, as light of heart as if he had been joining a boat-race or a hunting excursion; so little did he comprehend that ferocious system of despotism which was fastening its fangs on free institutions with ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... access of his morbid and changeful humour have uttered reproachful words against his Minister in the favourite's ear—even expressed a wish to be rid of him, as did our first Plantagenet when tired of the despotism of Thomas a Becket—and had perhaps listened to strange proposals for effecting such object. But the Cardinal knew right well also to what extent Louis was a king and a Frenchman, and devoted by self-interest ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... their being able to ferret out, detect, nor even surmise the lover, the love-affair, or the smoke of the fire? At any rate it was certainly not the result of a struggle between the jailers and the prisoner, between the despotism of a dungeon and the liberty of a victim,—it was simply the never-ending repetition of the first scene played by man when the curtain of the Creation rose; it ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... countrymen by the rare combination it displayed of learning and genius of the highest order. From that time forward, he held an undisputed position among the foremost of the distinguished men by whose talents and energy the Church of Scotland was delivered from prelatic despotism. Yet, although greatly admired by all his compeers during his brilliant career, so very little has been recorded respecting him, that we can but glean a scanty supply of materials, from a variety of sources, out of which to construct a ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... Xerxes, with its battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, forms one of the most dramatic events in history. Had Athens and Sparta succumbed to this attack of Oriental superstition and despotism, the Parthenon, the Attic Theatre, the Dialogues of Plato, would have been almost as impossible as if Phidias, Sophocles, and the philosophers had never lived. Because this contest and its heroes—Leonidas and Themistocles—cast their abiding shadows across our world of to-day, I have attempted ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... blind obstinacy of the authorities, who went on tightening the screw, and the foolhardiness of the men. But—well, he could not get his eye to shirk one of the screaming banners and placards: "Down with Despotism!" "Who so base as be a Slave!" by means of which the diggers sought to inflame popular indignation. "If only honest rebels could get on without melodramatic exaggeration! As it is, those good fellows yonder are rendering a just ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... repletion, while others groan with hunger. One could die of laughing when one hears of the equality and the democratic spirit of the Church. It is all a lie; in no other institution does so cruel a despotism reign. In early days Popes and bishops were elected by the faithful, and were deposed from power if they used it badly. The aristocracy of the Church exists still; it may be a canon upwards, or one who succeeds in crowning himself ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in France, Bonaparte, with his grenadiers, entered the palace of St. Cloud, and, dispersing with the bayonet the deputies of the people deliberating on the affairs of the State, laid the foundation of that vast fabric of despotism which overshadowed all Europe. I hope not to be misunderstood; I am far from intimating that General Jackson cherishes any designs inimical to the liberties of the country. I believe his intentions to be pure and patriotic. I thank God that ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... a century this man had been the curse of the young Republic—its direst, deadliest bane. For although his rule was not continuous, its evil effects were. Unfortunately, the demoralisation brought about by despotism extends beyond the reign or life of the despot; and Santa Anna had so debased the Mexican people, both socially and politically, as to render them unfitted for almost any form of constitutional government. They had become incapable of distinguishing between the friends ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... succeeded in large measure in destroying the value of the measure. One can understand the attitude of Lord Clanricarde, who roundly denounced the whole proposal as "tainted with the callous levity of despotism," but it is difficult to speak charitably of the members of the Opposition, who, while repeatedly protesting their anxiety to see the evicted tenants restored, took care, through the agency of the House ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... a sincere man, not foreseeing its tendency. When an aggressive power looks for an opening for aggression it first looks for a pretext, and our danger lies in men's readiness to give it the pretext. Such a sentiment as this from Mill—on "Liberty"—gives the required opening: "Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with Barbarians, provided the end be their improvement"; or this from Shaw's preface to the Home Rule edition of "John Bull's Other Island": "I am prepared to Steam-roll Tibet if Tibet persist in refusing ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... Plantagenet, with fiery face, bull-neck, bowed legs, keen, rough, obstinate, passionate, left England greater and freer, and yet with more of a personal despotism than he had found her. The trouble with such triumphs is that they presuppose the wisdom and goodness of ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... troublesome. But for all that men of intelligence find that they can live in America, as long as they are not too exacting. Noli me tangere is the most one can ask for from democracy. We shall pass through several alternatives of anarchy and despotism before we find repose in this happy medium. But liberty is like truth; scarcely any one loves it on its own account, and yet, owing to the impossibility of extremes, one always comes ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of his health, attended by his wife or his son, or both, and dies with effects in the house to the amount of a thousand guineas, the king seizes the whole, the family is left destitute, and the body of the deceased is denied christian burial. The Swiss, by capitulation, are exempted from this despotism, and so are the Scots, in consequence of an ancient alliance between the two nations. The same droit d'aubaine is exacted by some of the princes in Germany: but it is a great discouragement to commerce, and prejudices every country where it is exercised, to ten times the value of what it ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... to me, and such I think he must appear to everyone who conscientiously studies the extraordinary manner in which this apostle of liberty came to preach in favour of despotism. But in his own eyes, and in the eyes of the Countess of Albany, Alfieri doubtless found abundant arguments to prove himself perfectly logical and magnanimous. This French Revolution was merely ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... populated with teeming millions the vast extent of a continent, but in no portion of it has he ever emerged from barbarism, and in no age or country has he ever established any other stable government than a despotism. But he is the most ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... country, therefore, but one form of government could succeed—an efficient military despotism. The people could be wholesomely controlled only by an English deputy, sustained by an English army, and armed with arbitrary power, till the inveterate turbulence of their tempers had died away under repression, and they had learnt in their improved condition the value of order ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... hope then from petitioning, when they tell us, that now or never is the time to fix the matter? Shall we after this, whine and cry for relief, when we have already tried it in vain? Or shall we supinely sit and see one province after another fall a prey to despotism?[2] ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... ages of despotism, and self-seeking, kings and emperors have maintained their vested rights bequeathing to their progeny the same desires; the same covetousness of worldly power; the same consideration for the lesser self; the same hypnotism that takes account ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... that he should refuse to interfere upon a point of cookery was more than I had dreamed of; and I gathered (rightly or wrongly) that he was scrupulous of touching in the least degree the private life and habits of his slaves. So that even here, in full despotism, public opinion has weight; even here, in the midst of slavery, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their shrewdness and success. The one phase of the contemplated operation which occurred to neither of us as worth discussing was the possibility of not securing the property. This transaction demonstrates the despotism of the "System," the extent of its rapacity, and its arrogant disregard of all laws and rights, human or divine, in the enforcement of its exactions. And it was but one of a ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... energetic and popular king would get no answer but Yea to whatever he chose to ask. A king who often got the answer of Nay, Nay, was in great danger of losing his kingdom. The statesmanship of William knew how to turn this constitutional system, without making any change in the letter, into a despotism like that of Constantinople or Cordova. But the letter lived, to come to light again on occasion. The Revolution of 1399 was a falling back on the doctrines of 1066, and the Revolution of 1688 was a falling back on the doctrines of ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... avenger of his ill-used uncle, and the crusher of the Junii and the Crassi, and all the rest of the aristocrats, who overthrew him, and caused his early death. It is not necessary to point out the utter absurdity of this attempt to justify modern despotism by referring to the action of men who lived and acted in the greatest of ancient revolutions; and those men who admire Julius Caesar, but who are not disposed to see in his conduct a justification of the conduct of living men, object to the French Imperial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... numerous neighbours, with whom intellect was ever at work—with whom experiment knew no rest. Greece, taken collectively, was the only free country (with the exception of Phoenician states and colonies perhaps equally civilized) in the midst of enlightened despotisms; and in the ancient world, despotism invented and sheltered the arts which liberty refined and perfected [99]: Thus considered, her greatness ceases to be a marvel—the very narrowness of her dominions was a principal cause of it—and to the most ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a preservative from putrefaction, salt may be pronounced one of the most generally useful and necessary of all the minerals; and it is truly lamentable, that in almost all ages and countries, particularly in those where despotism prevails, this should be one of those necessaries of life, on which the most heavy taxes are imposed. Bay salt is a kind of brownish impure salt, obtained in France, Italy, and other countries, by evaporating sea water in pits. The principal part of bay salt sold in this country ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. So far, good. It cannot be denied, on the other hand, that his successful perversion of the force (committed to him for vindicating the rights and liberties of his country) to usurp its government, and to enchain it under an hereditary despotism, is of baneful effect in encouraging future usurpations, and deterring those under oppression from rising to redress themselves. His restless spirit leaves no hope of peace to the world; and his hatred of us is only a little less than that he bears to England, and England to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... CIVILIZATION.—The government of China is "a patriarchal despotism." As father of his people, the king has absolute authority. The power of life and death is in his hand. Yet the right of revolution was taught by Confucius and Mencius, and the Chinese have not been slow to exercise it. The powers of the emperor are limited by ceremonial regulations, and by a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... resembled the beak of a bird of prey, the black and crinkled lids of the yellow eyes, the prominent bones of a hollow face, the rigidity of the wrinkles, the disdain expressed in the lower lip, were all expressive of ambition, despotism, and power, the more to be feared because the narrowness of the skull betrayed an almost total absence of intelligence, and a mere brute courage devoid of generosity. The face was horribly disfigured by a large transversal ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... neighbourhood; still individual passion will be inflamed, and individual responsibility lost amidst multitudes; still strikes will spread their compulsory idleness amidst tens of thousands, and periodically array the whole working classes under the banners of sedition, despotism, and murder; still precocious female labour will at once tempt parents into idleness in middle life, and disqualify children, in youth, for household or domestic duties. We wish well to the philanthropists: we are far from undervaluing either the importance or the utility of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... be no suspicion that the question is not properly stated. Doubtless the assertion will excite surprise, if heeded at all, that in fact the great struggle here and now is not between aristocracy or despotism on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Most people in the United States have come to entertain the fixed idea that the only natural political antagonisms are democratic as opposed to despotic in any and all shapes. And this idea has become so ingrained in the American mind ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... consuming licentiousness. The examples of other times, when the learning of universities all had respect to the future political and ecclesiastical relations of the student, and these institutions became little better than panders to allied despotism and superstition, may teach us to cultivate our youth in the elements of general knowledge, and impart vigor and force and freeness to their minds, in the course of sound fundamental study, before they are permitted to engage in any merely professional acquisitions; to practice ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... them the common man was an untrustworthy brute of low instincts, and their revolution would have meant the displacement of an aristocracy of the sword by an aristocracy of the intellect. Rousseau stood for the opposite view. To him it was only despotism that degraded man. Remove the evil conditions and the common man would quickly display his inherent goodness and amiability; tenderness to our fellows, or fraternity, was therefore the distinctive trait of manhood. The irrepressible exuberance of Rousseau's ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... has been some exaggeration in describing the extent to which Tobacco is King, so there has doubtless been some overstatement as to the cruelty of his despotism. Enough, however, remains to condemn him. The present writer, at least, has the firmest conviction, from personal observation and experience, that the imagined benefits of tobacco-using (which have never, perhaps, been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... to let France 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 ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... of Central America go back to a period but little before the Christian era. Beyond that epoch, we behold through the mists of legends, and in the defaced pictures and sculptures, a hierarchical despotism sustained by the successors of the mysterious Votan. The empire of the Votanides is at length ruined by its own vices and by the attacks of a vigorous race, whose records and language have come down even to our day,—the only race on the American continent whose name has been preserved in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... 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
... equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equals, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to that, I should prefer emigrating to some other country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... have already said that I do not cherish any hopes of the preservation of Austria, especially since the Germans and Magyars made it the home of their racial despotism; the question therefore as to what will happen to the Slavs hitherto living in Austria is not without significance. Without attempting to prophesy future events which for a mortal man it is difficult to foreshadow, I may say from my inner conviction that the Czechs as a nation, if ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... minister. It is not denied that there may be cases in which a respect to the general principles of liberty, the essential rights of the people, or the overruling sentiments of humanity, might require a government, whether new or old, to be treated as an illegitimate despotism. Such are in fact discussed and admitted by the most approved authorities. But they are great and extraordinary cases, by no means submitted to so limited an organ of the national will as the executive of the United States; and certainly not to be brought by any torture of words, within ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... had a right to vote; but neither did anybody else, since the Roman government had become an absolute despotism. The first woman on the throne was Pulcheria, who, in 450 A.D., was proclaimed Empress of the East, succeeding her brother, Theodosius II. But she soon took a husband and made him Emperor. She had been practically sole ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... it with Lily were the old unanswerable ones of the personal situation: the sense of injury, the sense of failure, the passionate craving for a fair chance against the selfish despotism of society. She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... answer. 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 ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... which, founded in reason, or the faculties common to all men, must therefore apply to each,—than an astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without taking his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend to produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the critic. He will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance of a work, something true in human nature itself, and independent of all circumstances; but in the mode of applying it, he will estimate ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... was made for to-day," the girl said softly. "And by a higher power than any of us. Mr. Ames is the type of man who is slowly turning our Republican form of government into a despotism of wealth. He boasts that his power is already greater than a czar's. You bow before it; and so the awful monster of privilege goes on unhampered, coiling its slimy tentacles about our national resources, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 of the change in public taste. In 1890, Cesar Franck died in ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... beneficent supremacy. Bereft of its dignity and independence, from that time forth it ceased to be the defender of national unity against baronial anarchy, of popular rights against monarchical usurpation, and became a formidable instrument of despotism and oppression. Through the vicissitudes of the great schism in the fourteenth century, and the refractory councils in the fifteenth, its position became rapidly more and more retrograde and demoralized. And when, in 1530, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... 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; ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... rid of, but the evil that he did lived after him. His presence had provoked an outbreak, to some degree, of the phenomena of the French Revolution, which, however significant they might be in the upheaval of an old monarchical despotism, were an unwholesome growth among a simple people, where one man was as good as another before the law; where, from the first settlement of the country, all had largely possessed the advantages of a popular government; and where any other than a republican government ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... the 'Almannagja' by a steep rocky causeway made between cloven rocks, and reached the narrow islet where, in times gone by, when feudal despotism was the only government acknowledged, the chiefs of the Island met to regulate the affairs of state. Whenever it might have been that the volcanic eruption which had shivered the rocks into their ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... dear mamma,' said Lady Harriet, kissing the stern uplifted face very fondly, 'I like a despotism better than a republic, and I must be very despotic over my ponies, for it is already getting very late for my drive round by Ash-holt.' But when she arrived at the Gibsons', she was detained so long there by the state of the family, that ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Their duties require unflagging attention and never-ceasing vigilance, which must be a heavy tax on the brain, and the twelve hours must be passed in standing or walking about. In fact, they are subjected to military discipline, or rather despotism, and any known infraction of the rules subjects them to penalties according to the nature of the offense. Leaning against a wall, sitting down, etc., for a first offense, they are mulcted in a small sum—12 to 60 cents, usually—and are put back ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse order,—that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold in the despotism of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the soul room To search into itself,—and long commune With this eternal silence;—more a god, In my long-suffering and strength to meet With equal front the direst shafts of fate, Than thou in thy faint-hearted despotism ... Therefore, great heart, bear up! thou art but type Of what all lofty spirits endure that fain Would win men back to strength and peace through love: Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart Envy, or scorn or hatred tears ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... of "The Seven" in exchange for a guarantee that I would not attack his interests. I do not know what his motive in this treachery was—probably a desire to curb the power of his associates in industrial despotism. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... less irresponsible opposition, and would be able to show itself far more tolerant than any government can hope to be in Russia if it is to escape assassination. This, however, is a matter of degree. A great part of the despotism which characterizes the Bolsheviks belongs to the essence of their social philosophy, and would have to be reproduced, even if in a milder form, ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... colonies to the powder of desolation and poverty, are not worthy the sacred name. Rebellion pollutes all that it touches, madam. Although it often commences under the sanction of holy liberty, it ever terminates in despotism. The annals of the world, from the time of the Greeks and Romans down to the present day, abundantly prove it. There was that Julius Caesar—he was one of your people's men, and he ended a tyrant. Oliver Cromwell was another—a rebel, a demagogue, and a tyrant. The gradations, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Treatment given to our own Petitions the last May, when they were discountenancd for no other Reason but because the Rights of our Charter were therein pleaded as a Reason against a measure which if a little while persisted in, will infallibly establish a Despotism in the End? Surely this is not a time for us to testify the least Confidence in the Spirit of the British Government, or from flattering Hopes that their designs are to alter measures, to trust to their Discretion or ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... affirmation—This is my wife—neither the institution nor the claim can in such a state, or indeed in justice exist. Of all the regulations which were ever suggested to the mistaken tyranny of selfishness, none perhaps to this day have surpassed the despotism of those which undertake to bind not only body to body but soul to soul, to all futurity, in despite of every possible change which our vices and our virtues might effect, or however numerous the secret corporal or mental ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... in all these cases was the same. It was the vindication of human freedom against royal and sacerdotal despotism. It could only have been the direst necessity that drove a poor, scattered, unarmed peasantry, such as the people of the Cevennes, to take up arms against so powerful a sovereign as Louis XIV. Their passive resistance had lasted for fifteen long years, during which ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... the world" was impending. If Egypt conquered, Oriental civilisation would take the heavy immovable Egyptian type; change, advance, progress would be hindered; sacerdotalism in religion, conventionalism in art, pure unmitigated despotism in government would generally prevail; all the throbbing life of Asia would receive a sudden and violent check; Semitism would be thrust back; Aryanism, just pushing itself to the front, would shrink away; the monotonous Egyptian tone of thought and life would spread, like a lava stream, over ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... ruler could do with his subjects; yet he saw in such passions as these a fixed limit to the power of the Prince. "It makes him hated above all things to be rapacious, and to be violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain." And if Machiavelli's despotism meets its master in the undercurrents of human instinct, governments of less determined stripe, whether of states or of persons, would hardly do well to treat these ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... profound admiration for England. His own country he half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and levity of his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions. He could not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two grand experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain. He sympathised neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a republic, without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs upon which that fabric, if designed for permanence, should be built—nor with the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... radically different from the old one. However, I will not discuss the matter with you. A mind occupied with the prejudices of the old coercive despotism can naturally only see in the new a modification of the old, instead of, as my system is, an entire reversal or abandonment ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... but six months and altered the life of the people but little. For "Governor and Company" was substituted "President and Council," a more modish name, as some one said, but not necessarily one that savored of despotism. But however conciliatory Dudley might wish to be, his acceptance of a royal commission rankled in the minds of his countrymen; and his ability, his friendly policy, his desire to leave things pretty much as they had been, counted for nothing because ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... functions of citizenship. Thus it is better to be the free citizen of a democracy, with all the waste and temporary inefficiency democracy involves, than to be the inert slave of the most perfect paternal despotism ever devised by man. Thus the movement away from democratic city government is gravely to be questioned, no matter ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... typical French community of the New World. The village consisted of some poor houses made of logs or planks, a wooden church, and, lying apart, a fort defended by earthworks. The Governor, Subercase, was a brave French officer. He ruled the little community with a despotism tempered only by indignant protests to the King from those whom he ruled when his views and theirs did not coincide. The peasants in the village counted for nothing. Connected with the small garrison there were ladies and gentlemen ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... word to the Athenians. Have you no memory left of how, in the days when ye wore the tunic of slaves, the Laconians came, spear in hand, and slew a host of Thessalians and partisans of Hippias the Tyrant? They, and they only, fought on your side on that eventful day; they delivered you from despotism, and thanks to them our Nation could change the short tunic of the slave for the long cloak of the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... brought into relation with his own, but also to make allowance for fundamental differences of taste and temperament. The golden rule of judging others by ourselves can easily become a dull and leaden despotism if we insist that what we should think and feel on a given occasion ought also to be the thoughts and actions of the Frenchman, the German, or the American. There are, perhaps, no more pregnant ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy," and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I wonder if they want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have somebody do for them what they ought to do for themselves. I am for the kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his ability. I think if we give more attention to serving our fellows we shall have less concern with the empty forms of government ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... lions, civil despotism and ecclesiastical tyranny, terrified many young converts, when desirous of joining a Christian church, here represented by the Beautiful Palace. In the reign of the Tudors they committed sad havoc. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... But it's a benevolent despotism. Well, mother wants Adela to accept him. In fact, she asked me if I didn't think you'd help us. Of course I ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... enemies. During the few 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
... deplorable consequence of the position of the clergy in Spain and Portugal is, that they have no sooner confounded the cause of religion with that of despotism, than this error, producing its consequences, leads to a monstrous abuse of the word of God. Political fury has invaded the pulpit and stained it with abject and sacrilegious adulation.... The lips, whose mission ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... Rome had left good effects on some parts of Africa, how much greater blessing might not come from Protestant missions, with the Bible instead of the Syllabus as their basis, and animated with the spirit of freedom instead of despotism! ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... might, with equal propriety, be called 'The Just,' for this old Indian is a rare example of chivalrous honor and proud independence. He might, like so many other poor princes of this country, have humbled himself before the execrable despotism of the English, bargained for the relinquishment of sovereign power, and submitted to brute force—but it was not in his nature. 'My whole rights, or a grave in my native mountains!'—such is his motto. And this is no empty boast; ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red moment, to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy night of despotism. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... gentleman. To a hump-backed lady who declared that she had "come straight from London," Nash replied, "Then you must have picked up a d—d crook by. the way." But polite society was not squeamish, and took him at his own valuation. His assemblies became the rage, his social despotism was eagerly acquiesced in, and the improvements he demanded were ungrudgingly supplied. The social labours of Nash were admirably seconded by the work of two architects called Wood (father and son). Terraces, squares and crescents ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... The irregular interference of the Irish delegation in the formation of the British Cabinet, and other matters which indirectly concern England, is to be regularised (if I may use the term) by allowing to Irish members permanent despotism over England in matters which, on a system of Home Rule, concern England alone. Irish members may disestablish the Church of England, though England is to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish affairs. Irish members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... but retained the right of execution for the tribe; who followed his chief, but would have scorned to obey him. In Germany to-day one hears a good deal concerning Socialism, but it is a Socialism that would only be despotism under another name. Individualism makes no appeal to the German voter. He is willing, nay, anxious, to be controlled and regulated in all things. He disputes, not government, but the form of it. The policeman is to him a religion, and, one feels, will always ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... of that light-hearted crew, Mac had really not embarked upon these adventures on account of the "ruthless violation of the rights of small nations," with the desire "to crush once and for all the Prussian military despotism," and so forth. Had he given the question deep thought he might possibly have welcomed these reasons as additional charms; though the fact was that he had never worried much concerning why he had come. War, bloody war, romantic, glorious war raging in the Old World, and he obeyed ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Church, the internal resemblance is to Protestantism. Buddhism in Asia, like Protestantism in Europe, is a revolt of nature against spirit, of humanity against caste, of individual freedom against the despotism of an order, of salvation by faith against salvation by sacraments. And as all revolts are apt to go too far, so it has been with Buddhism. In asserting the rights of nature against the tyranny of spirit, Buddhism has lost God. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... starts out with the captivating doctrine, the rule of the people, but his end will be the dangerous despotism of one man rule—the rule of himself. Could you or any reasoning man who has followed the demagogues of this country, for a moment doubt that any one of them, on the slightest pretext or opportunity would make a despot that would shade those of the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... since England organized a regular navy (1512) the encircling arms of the ocean have been her closest and surest friend. They have exempted her from keeping up a large standing army and so preserved her from the danger of military despotism at home. They too have made her the greatest sea power,[1] and, at the same time, the greatest colonizing power[2] the world has yet seen. They have also made her the greatest commercial power on ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... remembers what accumulated miseries these provinces have undergone. Memories of refinement were starved out of the inhabitants by centuries of misrule, when nothing was of interest or of value save what helped to fill the belly. The work of bestialization was carried on by the despotism of Spanish Viceroys and Bourbons. They, the Spaniards, fostered and perhaps imported the Camorra, that monster of many heads which has established itself in nearly every town of the south. Of the deterioration in taste coincident with ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... that the assumed superiority of Freeland troops over opponents of any kind was a fact. The Abyssinians had fought as bravely against us as they had formerly fought against European troops. Their equipment, discipline, and training, upon which despotism had brought all its resources to bear for many years, left, according to European ideas, nothing to be desired; and these dark-skinned soldiers had repeatedly shown themselves to be a match for equal numbers of European ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... equally in the discretion of your friend. Pardon me,—my confidence is not so elastic. A word may give the clew to my retreat. But, if discovered, what harm can ensue? An English roof protects me from Austrian despotism: true; but not the brazen tower of Danae could protect me from Italian craft. And, were there nothing worse, it would be intolerable to me to live under the eyes of a relentless spy. Truly saith our proverb, 'He sleeps ill for ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... existence of anything like American liberty. For fifteen years the pen and voice of Franklin were influential in this controversy. He probably did more than any other man to prepare the colonists to resist the despotism of the British court, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... You wouldn't be a real true woman if you weren't!" she accused. A reluctant dimple tugged at Nina's pouting mouth. She did not dislike the idea of potential despotism, of the travelled, experienced woman of the world, confident of ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... here nowadays are more barbarous. Not the city-building monarchs, but the nomadic chiefs who force themselves to the height of power with their horrible religious despotism—your Mahdis. It is a wonder that they find so ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... "Soldiers! The despotism of the Mexican government, the innumerable evils which the nation suffers, the unceasing remonstrances which have been made against these evils, and which have met with no attention, have forced us to take a step this ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... example of authority overriding law, and an evidence of the danger to the liberties of the people from a practically irresponsible judiciary. Men need to feel their indebtedness and their responsibility to those who place them in position; first, in order to preserve them from despotism; and, second, that they may be removed when infirmity demands the substitution of a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... New Testament it is impossible to find a trace of either the primacy of Peter or the supremacy of the Pope; but the facts already stated throw some light on the history of that great spiritual despotism whose seat of government has been so long established in the city of the Caesars. It is obvious that at a very early period various circumstances contributed to give prominence to the Church of Rome. The epistle addressed to it contains a more complete exhibition ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... of the empire under the guise of a description of the primitive virtues of a Utopian Germany; and modern theorists have found in his Germania an armoury of democratic weapons against aristocracy and despotism. From this golden age the Angles and Saxons are supposed to have derived a political system in which most men were free and equal, owning their land in common, debating and deciding in folkmoots the issues of peace and war, electing their ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Scotch-Irish opponents of slavery marched side by side with the Cavaliers, to whom slavery was the very corner-stone of a feudal aristocracy. The fact is, the whole South was animated by a passion for war. To young men like Lanier the Southern cause was one of liberty, of resistance to despotism and fanaticism, of the protection of homes. He who would understand their point of view must read such war lyrics as "Maryland, My Maryland" and Timrod's "Ethnogenesis", or enter sympathetically into the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... advance beyond a certain point; and here we are, retrograding, to the dull, stupid old system,—balance of Europe—poising straws upon kings' noses, instead of wringing them off! Give me a republic, or a despotism of one, rather than the mixed government of one, two, three. A republic!—look in the history of the Earth—Rome, Greece, Venice, France, Holland, America, our short (eheu!) Commonwealth, and compare it with what they did under masters. The Asiatics are not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... be not under the superintendence and restraint of public freedom and morality, soon falls into monstrous abuses, which itself is either ignorant of or wittingly suffers. Examples of this evil, inherent in despotism, abound even under the intelligent and watchful sway of Augustus. Here is a case in point. He had appointed as procurator, that is, financial commissioner, in "long-haired" Gaul, a native who, having been originally a slave and afterwards set free by Julius Caesar, had ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... highest type of that despotism so common among Pagan nations. The Czar is the successor of the Gentile Caesar; he unites in himself the civil and spiritual power; the inevitable result is social oppression, denial of the rights of conscience, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... suggested by the history of the Persian kings; and to them I will now return. The ruin of their empire was caused by the loss of freedom and the growth of despotism; all community of feeling disappeared. Hatred and spoliation took the place of friendship; the people no longer fought heartily for their masters; the rulers, finding their myriads useless on the field of battle, resorted to mercenaries as their ...
— Laws • Plato
... Some of the periods of progress have been typical for different nations or for the whole race; for example, the stone age, the age of barbarism, the age of primitive industries, the age of nomads, the heroic age, the age of chivalry, the age of despotism, the age of conquest, wars of freedom, the age of revolution, the commercial age, the age of democracy, the age of discovery, etc. What relation the leading epochs of progress in the race bear to the ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... 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 ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... liberals, and was, indeed, the cause of my ruin: for as I admired their opinions, I gave my customers whatever credit they required, both with regard to coffee and liqueurs, so that by the time the constitution was put down and despotism re-established, I had trusted them with all I had. It is possible that many of them would have paid me, for I believe they harboured no evil intention; but the persecution came, the liberals took to flight, and, as was natural enough, thought more of providing for their own safety than of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... policy, and has been the postulate of every theory. Her history is that of a nationality eager to attain the distinction of the first of powers. This fact, and this alone, can reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of her record. At one time the bold accuser of Despotism, she has with marvellous celerity turned to the inthralment of oppressed races. Maxim has superseded maxim, until her code of international law is a bewildering complication of anomaly and contradiction. To humble her rivals by every means, and to encourage the efforts of a people ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... off their steam, with mighty roar, but without moving the engine a single yard, then they are but too likely to give place to the worst of all aristocracies, the aristocracy of mere "order," which means organised brute force and military despotism. And, after that, what can come, save anarchy, and decay, ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... with an act of pure kindness. It's a thing to weep over. Look at these grinning wretches! What a fiendish effect their smiles have, through their cinders and sweat! O, it's the terrible weather; the despotism of the dust and heat; the wickedness of the infernal air. What a squalid ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... struck me as being much less peculiar in the streets of C—— than they had been, a few months before, in the streets of London. All this must be explained by the activity of the intercourse between France and America, and by the greater facility of the Americans in submitting to the despotism of foreign fashions. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... keep all that is vital in the old one of prayer and communion, and it will add to it all the great power of its own awakened consciousness. We are awake now—wide awake to the despotism of the outside world and its laws—and we are equally awake to the law of the inner side of life and the dominion of the world of ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... whole; but it would be very Philistine to pour wholesale contempt on a creed held by so many large minds and souls. It was of course produced by the experience of what the reverse tenets had brought on,—a long civil war, years of military despotism, and immense social and moral disorganization. In 'John Bull,' the fidelity of a subject to a king is made exactly correspondent, both in theory and practice, with the fidelity of a wife to her husband and her marriage vows; and an elaborate parallel is ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and it dates only from the end of the fourteenth century.[FN180] In Sindbad the Seaman, there is an allusion (vol. vi. 67) to the great Hindu Kingdom, Vijayanagar of the Narasimha,[FN181] the great power of the Deccan; but this may be due to editors or scribes as the despotism was founded only in the fourteenth century(A.D. 1320). The Ebony Horse (vol. v. 1) apparently dates before Chaucer; and "The Sleeper and The Waker" (Bresl. Edit. iv. 134-189) may precede Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew": ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... her spirit, and she grew conscious that she had feigned a boldness which she did not possess. He loomed up now in different guise, not as a jealous suitor, but embodying the mysterious despotism she had known from childhood—the ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... has held out, however, upon these heads, has not been entirely confident. He has appeared the enthusiastical partizan of the aristocracy, a kind of government, which, carried to its height, is perhaps, of all the different species of despotism, the most intolerable. He has talked in a very particular stile of his fears of reducing the regal power to a shadow, of his desire that the extension of prerogative should keep pace with the confirmation of popular rights, and his resolution, that, if it were in his power to prevent ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... 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? ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... arose the Papacy. The Church, as a powerful institution, became ambitious to rule the state and the world. A spiritual despotism appeared, surrounding itself with earthly splendor, grasping the sword of earthly power, and the farthest removed from the humble and gentle spirit of its Master. It would tolerate no opposition to its will, in high places or low. It hurled its thunders at the head of kings, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... into the world, nurtured in infancy, trained in childhood and matured into manhood, for one express purpose—to be hers alone. Her ownership ranged from absolute despotism to humble slavery, and he was happy through ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... the acts and monuments in the records of peculation, the consolidated corruption of ages, the patterns of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolent prodigality of despotism, deal out to his praetorian guards a donation fit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of our Chancellor of the Exchequer on the faithful band ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this well-intentioned despotism not through any lack of spirit, but partly because it was well-intentioned, and mostly because his immediate present seemed of little consequence to him. He felt himself to be an embryo prophet who awaited his hour; when that should strike, he would concentrate. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... vicarious office, led the existence of a pea on a frying-pan. They went up to him with difficulties in Greek prose, knowing that he comprehended not a word of that language; they asked his permission for what they knew he could not grant, and on his refusal got up cries of tyranny and despotism wherewith to raise the lower school; they whistled German war songs outside his door, and asked him the date of the Battle of Waterloo. When he demanded their names they told him "Ainger," "Barnworth," "Wake"; and when he ordered them to stay in an hour after school, they coolly ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Prussia, in his correspondence with Voltaire, relates the following anecdote of the Czar Peter, as illustrative of Russian despotism:—"I knew Printz, the great marshal of the court of Prussia, who had been ambassador to the Czar Peter, in the reign of the late king. The commission with which he was charged proving very acceptable, the prince was desirous of giving him conspicuous marks of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... and the servile submission to episcopal authority which they so strenuously inculcate was first most offensively challenged by the chief pastor of the great Western bishopric. These Epistles tended much to promote the progress of ecclesiastical despotism. ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... overthrow his own enemies and to aggrandize his own house goes almost without saying. The titular sovereignty of the king could hope to count for little beside the real sovereignty of the earl, and the house of Kildare naturally loomed far larger and more imposingly in Ireland than the house of Tudor. Despotism in some form was the only practical and possible government, and Earl Gerald was all but despotic within the Pale, and even outside it was at any rate stronger than any other single individual. The Desmond Geraldines lived remote, the Butlers, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... surrounded by hostile Indians, with no servants but Siberian convicts, hold his own single-handed in American wilds? Simply by the power of his fitness, by vigilance that never relaxed, by despotism that was by turns savage and gentle, but always paternal, by the fact that his brain and his brawn were always more than a match for the brain and brawn of all the men under him. To be sure, the liberal measure of seventy-nine lashes ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... standing at all intermediate stages from the early village community to the despotic barbarian monarchies that I must abandon the idea of giving here even the chief results of a comparative study of their institutions.(38) Suffice it to say, that, even under the most horrid despotism of kings, the folkmotes of the village communities and their customary law remain sovereign in a wide circle of affairs. The law of the State allows the king to take any one's life for a simple caprice, or even for simply satisfying his gluttony; but the customary law of the people continues ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... the greater part of the Arabic nation, however, had remained true to its old customs, and no despotism could get hold of them. The extent of the Asiatic and African deserts, their fiery sky and parched soil, and the poverty of the inhabitants have ever been the protection of the Arabs. The rule of the Persians, the Romans, and the Greeks ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... essentially democratic in spirit and government, the monks sharing in the control of the monastic property and participating in the election of superiors, the Jesuitical system is intensely monarchical, a despotism pure and simple. In the older orders, the welfare of the individual was jealously guarded and his sanctification was sought. Among the Jesuits the individual is nothing, the corporate body everything. Admission to the monastic orders was encouraged and easily obtained. ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... that which was in progress during the years in which Canada was struggling into existence—that is to say, the reigns of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., from 1589 to 1643. By the latter date, that of the accession of Louis XIV., the work was accomplished. France was, in theory and in practice, a despotism. It was so in theory, for Louis himself could declare, "All power, all authority, are in the hand of the king, and there can be none other in the kingdom than those which be established there." The epigram attributed to that monarch, "L'etat, c'est moi," was not an exaggerated description ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... fate, determined to take the bull by the horns, and to use every means to induce the king to anticipate the blow by boldly accusing the parliamentary leaders of treasonable designs. His efforts were futile. Rightly or wrongly, it was generally believed that he intended to establish a military despotism in England, and that London was to be brought into subjection. The way in which it was all to be effected was even described by Cradock, one of the city members, in a speech he made to the House. It is certain that the citizens ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... in Europe know what the yoke of the Nazis is like. And the people of Korea and of Manchuria know in their flesh the harsh despotism of Japan. All of the people of Asia know that if there is to be an honorable and decent future for any of them or any of us, that future depends on victory by the United Nations over ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... strongest hopes, we have probably seen the last of the typical Frenchman of the Anglo-Saxon imagination—a being capable of the most frantic actions and incapable of a serious thought, a compound of frivolity and ferocity, the fit subject and facile instrument of a despotism that knew how to gratify his vanity while restraining his mad ebullitions. Among the excuses that might be offered for such misconceptions is the dearth of information in the literature of France itself in regard to the life and habits of the general ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... as a sack of charcoal and slow as Justice. Years have made her so. The worst is that she thinks she can hear well and move about well; and, proud of her sixty years of upright domesticity, she serves her old master with the most vigilant despotism. ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... those same boys learned, to their great disgust and rage, that the Confederate Congress had passed a sweeping conscription law, and that their one year's enlistment had been arbitrarily lengthened to three. Then they began to see what despotism meant. ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... that the police of Paris are supposed to be acquainted with the names of all visitors residing in the city. The rule may be occasionally relaxed, as now, but under the despotism of Napoleon III. it was enforced with a ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... master, or lord. It has nearly the same meaning as tyrant, which also is from the Greek, and signifies king. These words at first meant simply a single ruler. They are now applied, for the most part, to rulers who exercise authority over their subjects with severity. In an absolute despotism, the monarch has entire control over his subjects. They have no law but the will of the ruler, who has at command a large force of armed men to keep his people in subjection. The governments of Russia and Turkey are ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... went comments on the Presidential election campaign in America, with prophecies of Lincoln's defeat. This was indeed but a reflection of the American press but the citations made in British papers emphasized especially Northern weariness of Lincoln's despotism and inefficiency. Thus, first printed in The Index, an extract from a New York paper, The New ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... inherited from his mother, mixed but ill in his veins with that of Florentine citizens and bankers. Following the proud and insolent traditions of his maternal ancestors, he began to discard the mask of civil urbanity with which Cosimo and Lorenzo had concealed their despotism. He treated the republic as though it were his own property, and prepared for the coming disasters of his race by the overbearing arrogance of his behaviour. Physically, he was powerful, tall, and active; fond of field-sports, and one of the best pallone-players ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... yielded by treaty to the Dutch West Indian Company. It came to us by convention at the Hague; and, marked 'ruined' in the chart, it was repaired in 1873 before the Ashanti war. It can now act harbour of refuge, and is safe from the whole power of the little black despotism. Bosman [Footnote: Eerste Brief, 1737: the original Dutch edition was lent to me by M. Paulus Dahse.] shows 'Fort St. Antonio' protected by two landward bastions and an old doorway opening upon a loopholed courtyard. Barbot (1700) ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... pieces for the amusement of the Roman people; and noble ladies feasted their eyes on the spectacle. In the Augustan age, when the invincible armies of Rome gave law to half the world, fathers were in the habit of mutilating their sons rather than see them subjected to the slavery and terrible despotism of their officers. What, then, must the state of the people of the vanquished countries have been? Whole provinces were frequently given over to fire and sword by generals not reputed inhuman; and such was the progress of war and anarchy, and their never-failing ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... whims, and scruples, and hair-splitting difficulties,—ever straining at gnats and swallowing camels; of the few there inclined to bear a manly part, one was overpowered by the club of a bully, and the others by the despotism of numbers and of party drill. As for the Executive, it was bound hand and foot to the Slave Power, and had no option but to let loose its minions, its judges, its sheriffs, its vagabonds, and its dragoons upon the poor Free-State men, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Narel about six in the evening, this course was not very tempting. Civilization has done much with inanimate nature, but, in spite of all its despotism, it has not yet been able to conquer tigers and snakes. Tigers, no doubt, are banished to the more remote jungles, but all hinds of snakes, especially cobras and coralillos, which last by preference inhabit trees, still abound in the forests of Mataran ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... civil and religious liberty, where there is as little despotism exercised over the minds, as over the persons of women, they have every liberty of choice, and every opportunity of improvement; and how greatly does this increase their obligation to be exemplary in their general conduct, attentive to the government of their families, and instrumental ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... players attached themselves wholly to Betterton, and desired him to turn his thoughts on some method of procuring himself and them justice. Thus theatrical despotism produced its own definition, and the very steps taken to render Betterton desperate, pointed out the way for his deliverance. Mr. Betterton, who had a general acquaintance with people of fashion, represented his case ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... of them might often have been observed parading the streets between two consuls. Imagine an Edward II. endowed with absolute and unquestioned powers of tyranny,—imagine some pestilent Piers Gaveston, or Hugh de le Spenser exercising over nobles and people a hideous despotism of the back stairs,—and you have some faint picture of the government of Rome under some of the twelve Caesars. What the barber Olivier le Diable was under Louis XI., what Mesdames du Barri and Pompadour were under Louis ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... doctor has laid his commands on me, and my man, who has been ruling me with a rod of iron, will not permit the slightest infringement of them. He seems to consider that he is responsible for me in all respects, and if he had been master and I man he could not have behaved with grosser despotism." ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the exchange with soldiers, and confining the merchants to straw beds and naked apartments, obliged them to draw bills for very large sums on their foreign correspondents: a method of proceeding much more suitable to the despotism of a Persian sophi towards a conquered people who professed a different faith, than reconcileable to the character of a protestant prince towards a peaceable nation of brethren, with whom he was connected by the common ties of neighbourhood and religion. Even if they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... defenseless. More than that, what brought them together was that instinct which comes to humanity at critical times when the moment has arrived to cross rivers of blood in order to rescue humanity from the grip of some strangling despotism. [Cheers.] They have done nobly. That is what has brought them together, but we want more, [cheers,] and I have no doubt we will ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... wished to form a political party and overthrow the government, founding a gynecocracy on the ruins. His ebbing mind could not grasp the thought that tyranny founded on goodness is a tyranny still, and that a despotic altruism is a despotism ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... slight a degree that strict politeness would rather tolerate than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin seldom failed to present their caricature in jocose but wounding irony. If these ingredients of colloquial despotism were discernible in unworn existence, they increased as it advanced, fed by an ever growing reputation within and without the pale ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... eyes to a most splendid future, if we only act in a manner worthy of our advantages. If, however, neglecting them, we permit a low, sordid, selfish, sectional spirit to take possession of this House, this happy scene will vanish. We will divide; and, in its consequences, will follow misery and despotism." ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... for supremacy among themselves, and thus annulling their own mischievousness, as would at a first glance seem likely, soon learn the expediency of agreeing together; each keeps to his own area of despotism, cooperating, not interfering with the rest. But the system inevitably takes the form of rings within rings, each interior one possessing progressively superior dominion. At last we come to a central and small group of men who are truly absolute, and are supported and defended in ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... matured judgment as to the controversies which were tearing the world asunder. In the year 1560, his services being no longer required by his pupil, Buchanan at last decided upon returning to his native country. "The despotism of the Guises," he says, "was over, and the religious excitement had begun to calm down." It would appear that though his convictions had so long been on the side of the Reform, he had not yet publicly made himself known as a member of that party. And his return to Scotland was made with the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... exploitation, without hatred or distrust, the people will labor because then labor will cease to be a despicable thing, it will no longer be servile, imposed upon a slave. Then the Spaniard will not embitter his character with ridiculous pretensions of despotism, but with a frank look and a stout heart we shall extend our hands to one another, and commerce, industry, agriculture, the sciences, will develop under the mantle of liberty, with wise and just laws, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the Wars of the Roses, we will begin with the happy occasion of the Restoration of King Charles of merry and disreputable fame. Since he came back to his kingdoms on sufferance and as a convenient compromise between anarchy and despotism, he could hardly afford the luxury of wholesale proscription. What the returning Royalists could, they did. It was obviously unsafe, as well as ungrateful, to hang General Monk in presence of his army, many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... its absurdities to its face; and sometimes you may trace a tone of almost affectionate superiority, something like that in which a father speaks of the rogueries of a child. See the good-humoured way in which he describes Stephano passing from the most licentious freedom to absolute despotism over Trinculo and Caliban. The truth is, Shakspeare's characters are all 'genera' intensely individualized; the results of meditation, of which observation supplied the drapery and the colors necessary to combine them ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... deathlike repose even of the German universities. Precisely in those bodies, however, it was, in those as connected with tyrannical governments, each academic body being shackled to its own petty centre of local despotism, that the old spells remained unlinked; and to them, equally remarkable as firm trustees of truth, and as obstinate depositories of darkness or of superannuated prejudice, we must ascribe the slowness of the German movement on the path of reascent. Meantime the earliest torch-bearer to the murky ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... extraordinary excitement. England was in a transition state. A long chain of events brought on a crisis which involved the kingdom in tribulation. It was the struggle between the unbridled despotism of Epsicopacy, and the sturdy liberty of Puritanism. For although the immediate cause of the civil wars was gross misgovernment—arbitrary taxation without the intervention of Parliament, monopolies and patents, to the ruin ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... him as in his two intimates, Gallatin and Madison, there was a touch of that philosophy which colored the thought of reformers on the eve of the French Revolution, a naive confidence in the perfectability of man and the essential worthiness of his aspirations. Strike from man the shackles of despotism and superstition and accord to him a free government, and he would rise to unsuspected felicity. Republican government was the strongest government on earth, because it was founded on free will and imposed the fewest checks on the legitimate desires of men. Only one ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... themselves by their own act, held together, organized a simple yet sufficient government, and maintained their sturdy independence, while their brethren on every side, in the richer lands below them, were fast bound in the gyves of a priestly despotism. Individual liberty seems to be a condition inseparable from mountain life; that once attained, all other influences are conservative in their character. The Cantons of Unterwalden, Schwytz, Glarus, and Appenzell retain to-day the simple, primitive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Ariens; and it is also the policy of England to let France 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 ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... October 13th. In the old city proudly called the Queen of the Adriatic, and for centuries a republic, until ground under the heel of Austrian despotism, Carleton arrived in time to see the people almost insane with joy. The Austrian garrison was marching out and the Italian troops were moving in. The red caps and shirts of the Garibaldians brightened the throng in the streets, and the old stones of ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... formed the least idea;—she had thought of love but as an amusement, and now became its slave. If at the outset, too, less slow to be won than an Englishwoman, no sooner did she begin to understand the full despotism of the passion than her heart shrunk from it as something terrible, and she would have escaped, but that the chain ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... licentiousness of the press makes us as savage as our Saxon ancestors, who could only set their marks; and an outrageous pursuit of individual independence, grounded on selfish views, extinguishes genius as much as despotism does. The public good of our country is never thought of by men that hate half their country. Heroes confine their ambition to be leaders of the mob. Orators seek applause from their faction, not from ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... a pattern of administration a despotism such as the West has never experienced. It is inquisitorial, severe—sometimes, perhaps, wantonly cruel. But from the fearful pitfalls that encompass weakness it is certain to be sleeplessly vigilant and in the highest degree virile, forceful, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... it than formerly, had no place in the affections of the people and neglected its duty, while the catholic priests, mostly poor and ignorant men, were active, were adored by their flocks, and ruled them with benevolent despotism. The tithe was specially burdensome to the poor, both because the rich pasture-lands of the wealthy were exempt from payment, while it was levied on little plots worked by the plough or spade of the peasant, and because it was constantly farmed out to men who made their bargains profitable by oppressing ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... world; her infidelity in late years towards small peoples, like the Boers and the Persians; her neglect of treaty obligations and silence about them when they do not suit her; her most dubious alliance with a military despotism like Russia: all render it impossible for her to accuse Germany. The extraordinary thing is that in the face of such prevarications as these, which are patent to the whole world, Britain at any moment of serious crisis always comes forward ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... scale a royal representation and publicity in which every thing familiar was got rid of, and every body must do what was expected of them whatever might be their private protest—the protest (kept strictly private) adding to the piquancy of despotism. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... why that's the man that takes care of the government sheets and pillow-slips; the overseer of the chambermaids. And he's to trample on the liberties of the country and to put out the lights of the theatre, by the hoofs of military despotism!—Oh fie! fie! poor ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... vicious, worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in general. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate, careless king, nominally absolute—the heads of great houses paying court to, but in reality governing, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... tenth year up to his twenty-fifth, this gentleman had been either a president, vice-president, manager, or committee-man, of some philosophical, political, or religious expedient to fortify human wisdom, make men better, and resist error and despotism. His experience had rendered him expert in what may well enough be termed the language of association. No man of his years, in the twenty-six states, could more readily apply the terms of "taking up"—"excitement"—"unqualified ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... fight 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 our national Constitution, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... never done it, or that it is best. Dr. Flood said that they must be brought in in the light of progress. I affirm that Dr. Flood's arguments all point in that direction—they must be interpreted in the light of progress. When you do that you have got a despotism. I want to go back to my constituents and say this: I exercise all the power that our Charter gives me. But at the moment that anything is proposed, and we put in what the fathers did not have before their eyes, at that moment I stop and say, Thus far, but no farther. A ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of promotion. But common sense presently suggested to me that, professionally speaking, I was not a success, and, at the same time, that I had no cause to be ashamed of my failure. In our day, when we live under a despotism of the lower "middle class" Philister who can pardon anything but superiority, the prizes of competitive services are monopolized by certain "pets" of the Mediocratie, and prime favourites of that jealous and potent majority—the Mediocnties who know "no nonsense about merit." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... holy companionship, and how insignificant seem those barriers raised between the two sexes, in some ages and countries, by the pride, the caprice, and the despotism, of man. Are we destined to a common moral tribunal? Pitiful is his spirit, who, for any fancied or real, outward advantages, shall here and now, with the ancient philosopher, "thank God that he was born a man, and not a woman." And contracted or misjudging must she be, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... practice of cults. With respect to the right to publish ideas and opinions and to assemble for the practice of a cult, it is even stated: The necessity for enunciating these rights presupposes either the presence or the recent memory of a despotism. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... in October, 1789, that France had "gone triumphantly through the first paroxysm," he felt that she must encounter others, that more blood must be shed, that she might run from one extreme to another, and that "a higher-toned despotism" might replace "the one which existed before." Mentally prepared as he was, he met with skill the difficulties as they arose, so that the conduct of our foreign relations during the eight years of his administration was marked by discretion and furnished a good pattern ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... the city for a drachma, can get their drachma a day. (20) But not less am I, and ever have been, a pronounced opponent of those who do not think there can possibly exist a perfect oligarchy until the State is subjected to the despotism of a few. On the contrary, my own ambition has been to combine with those who are rich enough to possess a horse and shield, and to use them for the benefit of the State. (21) That was my ideal in the old days, and I hold to it without a shadow ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... successively the asylum of the oppressed of all parties, would have been too far above such a reproach. It could only be addressed, at all events, to the editor of the Ten Years' Exile; but I confess it would but very little affect me. It would certainly be assigning too fine a part to despotism, if, after having imposed the silence of terror during its triumph, it could call upon history to spare ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... an overpowering majority to the earlier Assemblies, it called the people at large to a voice, and as it turned out a decisive voice, in the administration of affairs. If its government by ministers gave it the outer look of an ecclesiastical despotism, no Church constitution has proved in practice so democratic as that of Scotland. Its influence in raising the nation at large to a consciousness of its power was shown by the change which passed from the moment of its establishment over the face ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... postage. The great crash will come, not by force of arms, but by ways of peace. The signal will be a postal system, the standard of the revolution will be a postage-stamp. All over this country there are millions waiting and burning to rise up and crush despotism, but they are held in check by the simple fact that they are far apart and they cannot write to each other. When, at last, they are brought together, there will be no fight at all, because they will overwhelm their enemies. That time, madame, has not come yet. We are only ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... ideal is more above us, and the aspiration after good has often lent a strange power to evil. And sometimes, as at the Reformation, or French Revolution, when the upper classes of a so-called Christian country have become corrupted by priestcraft, by casuistry, by licentiousness, by despotism, the lower have risen up and re-asserted the natural ...
— Philebus • Plato
... principles there contended for, involved the very existence of anything like American liberty. For fifteen years the pen and voice of Franklin were influential in this controversy. He probably did more than any other man to prepare the colonists to resist the despotism of the British court, and ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... divine, and both were generous and lenient masters. He was the embodiment of the slave power. All its brute force, pious pretenses, plausibility, chivalry, all the good and bad of the Southern character; all the weapons of the army of despotism were concentrated in this man, the friend of my friends, the man who stood ready to set me on the pinnacle of social distinction by his recognition. Across the body of the prostrate slave lay the road to wealth, and many good men had shut their ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... opposition. It represented the views of the moderate Federalists, and traced the lines which Mr. Webster consistently followed during the first years of his public life. The address concluded by pointing out the French trickery which had provoked the war, and by denouncing an alliance with French despotism ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... is not frank or confiding. I cannot blame him. I know how difficult it is to break through habits imbibed with a mother's milk, and with the air of one's native land. The barbarian despotism of Persia, which has so long oppressed Aderbidjan, has instilled the basest principles into the Tartars of the Caucasus, and has polluted their sense of honour by the most despicable subterfuge. And how could it be otherwise in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Prussia, in his correspondence with Voltaire, relates the following anecdote of the Czar Peter, as illustrative of Russian despotism:—"I knew Printz, the great marshal of the court of Prussia, who had been ambassador to the Czar Peter, in the reign of the late king. The commission with which he was charged proving very acceptable, the prince was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... not built, but I was not justified, for the empress published another ukase in which she declared it to be her gracious pleasure that the bridge should not be built till the following year. If anyone would see what a pure despotism is like, let ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Valois and the first of the Bourbons," replied Lorenzo. "But Cosmo shares my opinion. It is impossible to be an alchemist and a Catholic, to have faith in the despotism of man over matter, and also in the sovereignty of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... built it, directed it and made good any financial deficit. Instead of Socialism it was a kindly despotism. A few of the scholars did their level best to help themselves and help the place, but the rest didn't think and didn't care. They were passengers who enjoyed the cushioned seats. A few, while partaking of the privileges of the place, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... darkened by long lines of the Ethiopian guard, each of height which, beside the slight Moorish race, appeared gigantic; stolid and passionless machines, to execute, without thought, the bloodiest or the slightest caprice of despotism. There they stood; their silver breastplates and long earrings contrasting their dusky skins; and bearing, over their shoulders, immense clubs studded with ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... shown since the accession of Mary gave way the moment his final doom was announced. The moral cowardice which had displayed itself in his miserable compliance with the lust and despotism of Henry displayed itself again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. But pardon was impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weakness when he was brought into ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... are no lovers of war; military ambition or the glory of conquest is not sufficient motive to call either Great Britain or America to arms; but if the gun-drunken Germans really believed that the English and Americans would not fight to save the world from an unspeakable despotism, they made the mistake of their lives. There must be a Cause, there must be an Idea, to draw out the full fighting strength of the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred Noyes made a correct diagnosis and a correct prophecy in 1911, when he published The ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... most ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... disdained. The impetuosity and levity of his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions. He could not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two grand experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain. He sympathised neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a republic, without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs upon which that fabric, if designed for permanence, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the People"; and was intimate with Mirabeau, to whom he ventured to speak a word for the king's safety, and was told that the French would not commit the English blunder of cutting off their king's head, because that was the usual way to establish a despotism.[291] Great expectations were cherished of Lord Daer's future, but they were defeated by his premature death in 1794. The Mr. M'Gowan mentioned by Swediaur is little known now, but he was an antiquary and naturalist, a friend and correspondent of Shenstone, Pennant, and Bishop Percy. M'Gowan kept ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... speaking of some bathers at whom he had been looking, and of a Russian Prince, who lets us into some curious information respecting the leading-strings in which grown gentlemen are kept by despotism:— ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... the part of Judas, and had passed away in the fortress. Irene was found dead inside their small wooden hut, kneeling beside her bed. Her heart had broken! My little Snow Flower had been crushed under the iron heel of despotism. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome, [58] which had reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... from his mother, mixed but ill in his veins with that of Florentine citizens and bankers. Following the proud and insolent traditions of his maternal ancestors, he began to discard the mask of civil urbanity with which Cosimo and Lorenzo had concealed their despotism. He treated the republic as though it were his own property, and prepared for the coming disasters of his race by the overbearing arrogance of his behaviour. Physically, he was powerful, tall, and active; fond of field-sports, and one of the best pallone-players ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... much on the tongues of these people. Indeed their idea of independence extended only to giving one class the full and exclusive right to enslave the other. The Southern idea of independence was so shaped as to contain the very worst features of a despotism. But you must look with forgiveness on these people, my son, and seek to forget many of those acts of vindictiveness which ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... sustain this relation to him, they calling him baba or "father," and he treating them as children. And where this is not the case, it either arises from some innovation among them or those exceptional cases of despotism to be found in every country. Indeed, the term "slave" is unknown to them, only as it has been introduced among them by whites from Europe and America. So far from abject slavery, not even the old feudal system, as known to exist until comparatively recent in enlightened and ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... authorities are not only in command of the defences of our shores but of the civil authorities, and the whole population of the realm. The birthrights of British citizenship embodied in the Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus, and Bill of Rights are no longer inviolable. Martial Law—that is to say, military despotism—may be put in operation at will by the military commanders. Civilians may be seized and tried by Army officers, and even sentenced to any penalty short of death without appeal to trial by jury. Our War Lord is made virtual dictator. A military censorship has been established ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... other terms. But if you know not these things which are going on in distant countries, look to the neighbouring Gaul, which being reduced to the form of a province, stripped of its rights and laws, and subjected to Roman despotism, is oppressed ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... Updegraff would convey me secrets of "The Seven" in exchange for a guarantee that I would not attack his interests. I do not know what his motive in this treachery was—probably a desire to curb the power of his associates in industrial despotism. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... their fathers. They were very prompt to resist anything like encroachment upon their privileges or rights, and were, of course, pretty certain to consider even salutary control an attempt to assert a despotism. I believe history contains no record, whatever the annals of fiction may display, of a boy, with much spirit, submitting without a murmur to the authority of the schoolmaster: if such a prodigy of enlightened humility ever existed, he certainly did not live ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... the sports and broils of the play-ground—to refuse implicit belief in my assertions, and submission to my will—indeed, to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master mind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... barrier against the despotism of public opinion, whether it be of the many or of the few, is enlightened individual freedom and purity of personal character. Without these there can be no vigorous manhood, no true liberty in a nation. Political rights, however broadly framed, will not elevate ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... life, 1715-1778, was a continual protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, solitary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... of the matter then is, that of all the kingdoms which the era of 1848 started in the path of free government, the brave little State of Piedmont alone has persevered to this day. Amid the wide weltering sea of Italian anarchy and despotism, here, and here alone, liberty finds a spot on which to plant her foot. Again we ask, why is this? There is nothing in the past history of the country,—nothing in the present state of the nation,—which can account for it. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... century.[FN180] In Sindbad the Seaman, there is an allusion (vol. vi. 67) to the great Hindu Kingdom, Vijayanagar of the Narasimha,[FN181] the great power of the Deccan; but this may be due to editors or scribes as the despotism was founded only in the fourteenth century(A.D. 1320). The Ebony Horse (vol. v. 1) apparently dates before Chaucer; and "The Sleeper and The Waker" (Bresl. Edit. iv. 134-189) may precede Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew": no stress, however, can be laid ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... will always find that in the case of any class which has been despotically governed—and though I do not wish to use strong language, it cannot be denied that women have been despotically governed in England, although the despotism has been of a benevolent character—the great majority of that class are content with the system under ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Hopefulness should be the mark of an ardent reformer, and Jeffrey seems to be always decided by his fears. His favourite topic is the advantage of a strong middle party, for he is terribly afraid of a collision between the two extremes; he can only look forward to despotism if the Tories triumph, and a sweeping revolution if they are beaten. Meanwhile, for many years he thinks it most probable that both parties will be swallowed up by the common enemy. Never was there such a determined croaker. In 1808 he ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 Luther on the country will presently be shown, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... people were suffering from the clergy, the nobility, and their aristocratic governors that he incited them to discontent with their humble lot in life, to unrest, and to open rebellion against their magistrates. At another time he became the spokesman for the most pronounced absolutism and despotism. He turned suddenly against the very people whose cause he had so signally championed, and who hailed him as their prophet and leader. When the poor, downtrodden people needed him most, Luther cowardly deserted them, and by frenzied utterances excited ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... that I do not cherish any hopes of the preservation of Austria, especially since the Germans and Magyars made it the home of their racial despotism; the question therefore as to what will happen to the Slavs hitherto living in Austria is not without significance. Without attempting to prophesy future events which for a mortal man it is difficult ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... include the surrender, for the time being, of the essential principle of the government. Personal independence in the soldier, like personal liberty in the civilian, must be waived for the preservation of the nation. With shipwreck staring men in the face, the choice lies between despotism and anarchy, trusting to the common sense of those concerned, when the danger is over, to revert to the old safeguards. It is precisely because democracy is an advanced stage in human society, that war, which belongs to a less advanced stage, is peculiarly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... our walls. And again I ask why not, when the law of their life was to kill or to be killed? These questions I put to you because life put them to me. At the time my father died, the gentlemen of King Charles's court were already affecting that refinement of philosophy which justifies despotism. From justifying despotism, 'twas but a step to justifying the wicked acts of tyranny; and from that, but another step to thrusting God's laws aside as too obsolete for our clever courtiers. "Give your unbroken colt tether enough to pull itself up with one sharp ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... of his vigorous paragraphs is more striking than the suggestion that "if hereafter the war of races often predicted, and making itself a war of opinions also (a question of despotism and liberty coming from Eastern Europe), should menace the English civilization, these sea-kings may take once again to their floating castles and find a new home and a second millennium ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... great whole. Britain had stood outside the area of the Revolution, and yet had put forth stupendous efforts, ultimately successful, to make an end of the revolutionary era and of the Napoleonic despotism. This tended perhaps to give to Britons some natural satisfaction in the British Constitution and the established Church which flourished under it. Finally, while men on the Continent were devising holy alliances and other ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... in the North, and a revival of warlike spirit in the South. Elect General McClellan, and we shall have to choose between constant warfare, as a consequence of having approved of Secession by approving of the Chicago Platform,—which is Secession formally democratized,—and despotism, the only thing that would save us from anarchy. Anarchy is the one thing that men will not, because they cannot, long endure. Order is indeed now and forever Heaven's first law, and order society must and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... hardy pioneer of the wilderness, the Frenchman in America has rarely found his match. His civic virtues withered under the despotism of Versailles, and his mind and conscience were kept in leading-strings by an absolute Church; but the forest and the prairie offered him an unbridled liberty, which, lawless as it was, gave scope to his energies, till these savage wastes ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... were written in 1781-2. His condemnation of slavery in that work is most emphatic. "The whole commerce between master and slave," he says, "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.... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... power of the Irish chieftains. We see also the beginning of the feud between Ulster and the other provinces in Ireland, which has continued in a modified form to the present day. Strafford found that, in order to bolster up the despotism of the Stuarts, he had not only to invade England, but to expel the Scottish settlers from the Northern province. The Irish Parliament in the time of Tyrconnel again began to prepare for the invasion of England by an attempt to destroy the Ulster plantation. The ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... of these things to be? Must we give up free discussion, and again chain up the human mind under the despotism of past ages? No, this will never be. God designs that every intelligent mind shall be governed, not by coercion, but by reason, and conscience, and truth. Man must reason, and experiment, and compare past and present results, and hear and ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... a fixed limit to the power of the Prince. "It makes him hated above all things to be rapacious, and to be violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain." And if Machiavelli's despotism meets its master in the undercurrents of human instinct, governments of less determined stripe, whether of states or of persons, would hardly do well to treat these ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... and defenseless. More than that, what brought them together was that instinct which comes to humanity at critical times when the moment has arrived to cross rivers of blood in order to rescue humanity from the grip of some strangling despotism. [Cheers.] They have done nobly. That is what has brought them together, but we want more, [cheers,] and I have no ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Sultan and the tidings of his well-being should content every Eastern subject. But, as Oriental history shows, the form of government is a Despotism tempered by assassination. And under no rule is man socially freer and his condition contrasts strangely with the grinding social tyranny which characterises every mode of democracy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... be gainsaid that 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. They went farther and demanded unreasoning ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... piled in cold and silence, be the emblem of despotism, we joyfully take the ever restless ocean for ours, only pure because never still. To be as good as our fathers, we must be better. They silenced their fears and subdued their prejudices, inaugurating free ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... body probably contributed to that indolence of mind which induced him to withdraw from nearly all participation in political life. Louis XV. was one of the vilest of men, and by a portion of his subjects was thoroughly detested. Exasperated by an act of gross despotism, the deputies from Brittany offered to furnish Louis Philippe with sixty thousand men, completely armed, to overthrow the reigning dynasty, and to establish in its place the House of Orleans. The prince received the deputation courteously, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... many aberrations, is entitled to the gratitude of mankind for his efforts on behalf of education, and the elevation of the laborious classes; Proudhon, whose famous dictum, "La propriete c'est le vol," has become the watchword of a certain school of Socialists, which even the iron despotism of Russia and Germany cannot keep down; Charles Nodier, charming litterateur, who, at the age of twenty-one, was the author of the first satire ever published against the first Napoleon, "La ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... selfish ends, neutralized the energies which were required to keep up the contest against natural causes of evil; and the nation, after a longer or briefer interval of progressive decline, became either the slave of a despotism, or the prey ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... enraged minute-men, who harassed the retreating redcoats with a constant fire of musketry. The news of the battle spread far and wide; and wherever the story was told, the colonists began arming themselves, and preparing for resistance to the continually increasing despotism of the British authorities. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... light-hearted crew, Mac had really not embarked upon these adventures on account of the "ruthless violation of the rights of small nations," with the desire "to crush once and for all the Prussian military despotism," and so forth. Had he given the question deep thought he might possibly have welcomed these reasons as additional charms; though the fact was that he had never worried much concerning why he had come. War, bloody war, romantic, glorious war raging in the Old World, and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... of the cross, and a multitude of similar ceremonies, equally unauthorized by the Scriptures, were soon introduced. The church lost her simplicity and purity, her ministers became ambitious, and the darkness gradually deepened to the long and dismal night of papal despotism." ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... optional obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between the despotism whence they came and the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... of despotism adhere with reason to forms and ceremonies. If men wish to give unlimited power to their fellow-man, they must keep him separated from ordinary humanity; they must surround him with a continual worship, ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... proud humility, as if submitting to the evil circumstances in which she was placed as the daughter of a despised race, while she felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... also because Jehovah really stood for justice and righteousness as against the unrighteousness of the Baals. Elijah was not only a champion of Jehovah; he was a champion of the poor against their oppressors, a champion of the common people against the despotism of kings, as is so vividly and thrillingly illustrated in ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... was born of an aristocratic family at Torjok, in the government of Tver, in 1814. As an officer of the Imperial Guard, he saw service in Poland, but resigned his commission from a disgust of despotism aroused by witnessing the repressive methods employed against the Poles. He proceeded to Germany, studied Hegel, and soon got into touch with the leaders of the young German movement in Berlin. Thence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... brought the novel into prominence with the Byron controversy, and occasioned its republication in the present century. The author tells us that his object was "to comprehend a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man." And this was to be done "without subtracting from the interest and passion by which a performance of this sort (a novel) ought to be characterized." In ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... 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. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... difficulties in Greek prose, knowing that he comprehended not a word of that language; they asked his permission for what they knew he could not grant, and on his refusal got up cries of tyranny and despotism wherewith to raise the lower school; they whistled German war songs outside his door, and asked him the date of the Battle of Waterloo. When he demanded their names they told him "Ainger," "Barnworth," ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... they are mentioned in Scripture, almost the worst work which a soldier can do. For they were not defending their own country against foreign enemies. They were keeping down a conquered nation, by a stern military despotism, in which the soldiery acted not merely as police, but as gaolers and executioners. And yet three men who had such work as this to do, are singled out in Scripture to become famous through all time, as the first-fruits of the ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... government, and it can hardly be doubted that had the bent of the people been toward trade, the action of government would have been drawn into the same current. The great field of the colonies, also, was remote from the centre of that despotism which blighted the growth of old Spain. As it was, thousands of Spaniards, of the working as well as the upper classes, left Spain; and the occupations in which they engaged abroad sent home little but specie, or merchandise of small bulk, requiring ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... combated to subdue or to bless them. He began his career by strenuous efforts to effect the Irish Union, and rescue his native country from the incapable Legislature by which its energies had so long been repressed. His mature strength was exerted in a long and desperate conflict with the despotism of revolutionary France, which his firmness as much as the arm of Wellington brought to a triumphant issue; his latter days in a ceaseless conflict with the revolutionary spirit in his own country, and an anxious effort to uphold the dignity ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... France. But the blood of the king had annulled this oath, the Convention's reign of terror had filled his soul with horror; and, after solemnly separating himself from France, he had, in the year 1793, convoked a Consulta, to decide whether Corsica was to submit to the despotism of the French republic, or if it was to be a free and independent state. The Consulta chose the latter position, and named Paoli for president as well as ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... he had been frustrated at every turn. The summons to the King's Court was the last straw, for the defendant in this Court was entirely at the mercy of the Crown. "When, in Anglo-Norman times you speak of the King's Court, it is only a phrase for the King's despotism."[6] Anselm took no notice of the King's summons, and decided to appeal to Rome. For a time William refused permission for any departure from England, but he yielded in 1097, and Anselm set ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... the fate of any particular hero. This {178} explains its title. It is not the story of Julius Caesar the man, but of that great political upheaval of which Caesar was cause and center. That upheaval begins with his attempt at despotism and the crown; it reaches its climax in his death, which disturbs the political equilibrium of the whole nation; and at last subsides with the decline and downfall of Caesar's enemies. Shakespeare has departed from history in drawing the character of the great conqueror, making ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... friend and foe, masking a system of forces hollow and curious when probed by foreign war, but had combined the popular energy arising from a rough republican simplicity, and something even of republican freedom, with the artificial energy for war of a despotism lodged in a few hands. Of all oriental races, the Affghans had best resisted the effeminacy of oriental usages, and in some respects we may say—of Mahometan institutions. Their strength lay in their manly character; their weakness in their inveterate disunion. But this, though quite incapable of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... century; a very 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" ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... and of normal industrial conditions through the medium of a treaty of peace appeared to offer the only practical means of resisting these movements and of saving Europe from the horrors of a proletarian despotism which had brought the Russian people to so low a state. This was the common judgment of those who at that time watched with increasing impatience the slow progress of the negotiations at Paris and ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... the Bishop, the Mayor and other 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... the caprice of the sovereign would lead him to raise a man from the lowest ranks to the highest dignities of the state. The regime of Assyria may be described in the words applied to that of Russia, it was despotism tempered with assassination. "And it came to pass, as he (Sennacherib) was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... 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 ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... any Italian author, and, moreover, had taken a great dislike to the poet, from having seen him make a servile genuflexion to the Empress Maria Theresa in the Imperial Gardens at Schoenbrunn. On entering the dominions of Frederick the Great, he was made extremely indignant by the military despotism that reigned there. When presented to the king he did not appear ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... understand the reaction of the foreign character when brought into relation with his own, but also to make allowance for fundamental differences of taste and temperament. The golden rule of judging others by ourselves can easily become a dull and leaden despotism if we insist that what we should think and feel on a given occasion ought also to be the thoughts and actions of the Frenchman, the German, or the American. There are, perhaps, no more pregnant sentences in Mr. Bryce's valuable book than those in which he warns his British readers against the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... argument from Scripture is given by Dr. Channing and others. It is said that it proves too much; that it makes the Bible sanction despotism, even the despotism of Nero. Our reply to this objection shall be very brief. We have already pointed out the fallacy of confounding slaveholding itself with the particular system of slavery prevalent at the time of Christ, and shown that the recognition ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... be nothing singular in this request. The democracy of despotism levels all men outside the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in peace with Ergamenes, King of Meroe or Upper Ethiopia, who, while seeking for a knowledge of philosophy and the arts of life from his Greek neighbours, seems also to have gained a love of despotism, and a dislike of that control with which the priests of Ethiopia and Egypt had always limited the power of their kings. The King of Meroe had hitherto reigned like Amenothes or Thutmosis of old, as the head of the priesthood, supported and controlled by the priestly aristocracy ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... in scorn or bitterness that we should speak of this erring class, a large number of whom are the victims of mis-education—of the hereditary policy of the colleges, which is almost as difficult to change as a national church, or a national despotism. The young men who enter the maelstrom of college life are generally borne along as helpless as rowing boats in a whirlpool. It is impossible for even the strongest minds to be exposed for years, surrounded by the contaminating influence of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... 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 had been the internal development of social ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... not answer. 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 aunt ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... convinced that to hold to the outward forms of orthodox Judaism was to be hampered in the race for Americanization, he did not hesitate to order our family life on unorthodox lines. There was no conscious despotism in this; it was only making manly haste to realize an ideal the nobility of which there was ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Gavin Muir, not to shoot blackcocks or muirfowl, in which it abounded, but to track, and start and pistol, if necessary, poor, shivering, half-starved human beings, who had dared to think the laws of their God more binding than the empire and despotism of sinful men. The game was a merry one, and it was played by "merry men all:" forward went the hound through muirs and mosses; onward came the troop, hallooing and encouraging the animal in pursuit of its horrid instincts. As they passed the moss-hole ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... exaction of bigoted authority, the other the machinery of brute force—the church and the army, the mitre, and the sword, superstition and violence; with these, in all ages, have the multitude been subdued; and between these two representations of elemental despotism, clustered on a high wall, stood a crowd to watch the meek procession of worshippers, and the exactitude of the manual, or admire the spirited, yet controlled, evolutions of the officer on his noble charger. The ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... himself powerless, and suffered acutely from the thought that Monica was in rebellion against him. He could not understand what had brought about this sudden change. Fear of losing his wife's love restrained him from practical despotism, yet he was very near ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... dead; for no one minded the governing class governing. England was now practically a despotism, but not an hereditary one. Some one in the official class was made King. No one cared how: no one cared who. He was ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to be no suspicion that the question is not properly stated. Doubtless the assertion will excite surprise, if heeded at all, that in fact the great struggle here and now is not between aristocracy or despotism on the one hand, and democracy on the other. Most people in the United States have come to entertain the fixed idea that the only natural political antagonisms are democratic as opposed to despotic in any and all shapes. And this idea ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... a splendid recovery. And they made possible the speculative ferment which showed that England was at last awake to the meaning of Montesquieu and Rousseau. Just as the shock of the Lancastrian wars produced the Tudor despotism, so did the turmoil of civil strife produce the complacency of the eighteenth century. But the peace of the Tudors was the death-bed of the Stuarts; and it was the stagnant optimism of the early eighteenth century which made possible the birth ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... a colony well. Her whole record outre-mer was of a piece with the enslavement and extermination of the gentle Caribs, with which it began. In slavery and the slave trade Anglo-Saxon conquistadors shared Spain's dishonor, but in sheer ugliness of despotism, in wholesale, systematic, selfish exploiting, and in corrupt and clumsy administration the Iberian monarchy surpassed all other powers ever called to deal with colonies. The truth of this indictment was, if possible, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Aunt Bridget, for all her despotism within her own doors, used to tremble with dread of our neighbours taking lasting offence, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... sun. Light fogs rose reluctantly from the river's bosom and dispersed in delicate vapors of opal and violet. The tangled banks of dripping bush shone freshly green in the misty light. The wilderness, grim and trenchant, reigned in unchallenged despotism. Solitude, soul-oppressing, unbroken but for the calls of feathered life, brooded over the birth of Jose's last day on the Magdalena. About midday the steamer touched at the little village of Bodega Central; but the iron-covered ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy," and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I wonder if they want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have somebody do for them what they ought to do for themselves. I am for the kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his ability. I think if we give more ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, 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; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... Mexico. For more than a quarter of a century this man had been the curse of the young Republic—its direst, deadliest bane. For although his rule was not continuous, its evil effects were. Unfortunately, the demoralisation brought about by despotism extends beyond the reign or life of the despot; and Santa Anna had so debased the Mexican people, both socially and politically, as to render them unfitted for almost any form of constitutional government. They had become ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... equally excessive zeal. Ecclesiasticism and Constitutionalism send us one way, Protestantism and Anarchism the other; Order rescues us from confusion and lands us in Tyranny; Liberty then saves the situation and is presently found to be as great a nuisance as Despotism. A scientifically balanced application of these forces, theoretically possible, is practically incompatible with human passion. Besides, we have the same weakness in morals as in medicine: we cannot be cured of running after panaceas, or, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... against his throne; he had broken down the power of local chiefs, and tamed the refractory tribes; so that his orders were irresistible throughout the whole dominion. His government was a military despotism resting upon a well-appointed army; it was administered through officials absolutely subservient to an inflexible will and controlled by a widespread system of espionage; while the exercise of his personal authority was too often stained by acts of unnecessary cruelty. He held ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... comparatively deserted by the Mahometans. But it was easy to foresee that a people, living, as they did, under circumstances so well adapted to the development of both physical and moral energy, must ultimately prevail over a nation oppressed by despotism, and the effeminate indulgence, to which it was naturally disposed by a sensual religion and a voluptuous climate. In truth, the early Spaniard was urged by every motive that can give efficacy to human purpose. Pent up in his barren mountains, he beheld the pleasant valleys and fruitful vineyards ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Wolsey welcomed the change, for the nobles represented by Norfolk and the men of the New Learning represented by More regarded Parliament with the same favour. More indeed in significant though almost exaggerated phrases set its omnipotence face to face with the growing despotism of the Crown. The policy of Cromwell fell in with this revival of the two Houses. The daring of his temper led him not to dread and suppress national institutions, but to seize them and master them, and to turn them into means ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... motives, which convulsed England in the middle of the seventeenth century, bear so striking a resemblance to those which are now attempted to be promulgated, that surely it must be salutary to remind the inconsiderate, that reformists introduced first anarchy and then despotism, and that a multitude of new religions ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... intellectual activity and effort in material betterment, there came, as a natural and inevitable accompaniment, protest and revolt against the ecclesiastical tyranny of the age. The Albigenses in France had risen in insurrection against churchly despotism during the thirteenth century; and in the fourteenth, John Wickliffe of Oxford University had boldly denounced the corruption of the Roman church and clergy, and particularly the restrictions imposed by the papal hierarchy on ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... either) neglect it. And we others, however scornful we may profess to be, are all at heart desperately interested in the confounded thing called politics, and can all appreciate this shrewd analysis of the vices and virtues of the crowd "which lacks reason but possesses faith," whose despotism is now on trial as once was that of our kings—"unlimited crowddom being as wretched a state as unlimited monarchy." As a dose of politics without tears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... Divine right, monarchy, aristocracy, oppression, despotism, tyranny—these and all other devils of the old world order were bound for the limbo which awaits outworn, discredited social institutions. The Declaration of Independence officially proclaimed the new order,—challenging ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... at Narel about six in the evening, this course was not very tempting. Civilization has done much with inanimate nature, but, in spite of all its despotism, it has not yet been able to conquer tigers and snakes. Tigers, no doubt, are banished to the more remote jungles, but all hinds of snakes, especially cobras and coralillos, which last by preference inhabit trees, still abound in the forests of Mataran as in days ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Cockerell,—I have now finished reading Kropotkin's Life with very great interest, especially for the light it throws on the present condition of Russia. It also brings out clearly some very fine aspects of the Russian character, and the horrible despotism to which they are still subject, equivalent to that of the days of the Bastille and the system of Lettres de cachet before the great Revolution in France. It seems to me probable that under happier conditions—perhaps in the not distant future—Russia may become the most advanced instead ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... history, in which we left off with the name of Wyclif. The Norman despotism of the Crown was crumbling away, so was the Latin despotism of the Church. On both sides there was evident change at hand, and Wiclif gave form to the new movement. He was born about 1324, educated at Oxford, where he won high distinction, not only by his learning, but by his holiness ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... bring the assassins to justice has been abandoned; when I see an unfortunate prince, whose reign was a continued demonstration of the goodness and benevolence of his heart, of his attachment to the people of whom he was the monarch, who, though educated in the lap of despotism, had given repeated proofs that he was not the enemy of liberty, brought precipitately and ignominiously to the block without any substantial proof of guilt, as yet disclosed—without even an authentic exhibition of motives, in decent regard to the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
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