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Elective   Listen
adjective
Elective  adj.  
1.
Exerting the power of choice; selecting; as, an elective act.
2.
Pertaining to, or consisting in, choice, or right of choosing; electoral. "The independent use of their elective franchise."
3.
Bestowed or passing by election; as, an elective office. "Kings of Rome were at first elective;... for such are the conditions of an elective kingdom."
4.
Dependent on choice; that can be refused; as, an elective college course. Opposite of required or mandatory.
Elective affinity or Elective attraction (Chem.), a tendency to unite with certain things; chemism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Elective" Quotes from Famous Books



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

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

... had ever been owned by the people, each tribe, as representing a single family, holding a certain area by communal tenure, and electing a chief to protect its territory from aggression. For this elective chieftainship the English law-courts substituted something wholly different: a tenure modeled on the feudal servitude of England. This new principle made the land of the country the property not of the whole people but of a limited and privileged class: ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... who had made a vehement speech against the bill, in which he had declared that no respectable woman in his county desired the elective franchise, became particularly incensed, as was natural, upon my exhibiting a woman suffrage petition signed by the women he had misrepresented, and headed, mirabile dictu, by the name of his own wife! The so-called representative of women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of July 1, 1902, the Legislature was to consist of two houses, the Commission acting as an upper house and an elective assembly constituting a lower house. The Legislature at its first session was to elect two delegates who were to sit, without the right to vote, in the House of Representatives at Washington. An Act of August 29, 1916, substituted an elective Senate for the Philippine ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... system of the Indians made it as difficult to secure a permanent peace with them as it was to negotiate the purchase of the lands. The sachem, or hereditary peace chief, and the elective war chief, who wielded only the influence that he could secure by his personal prowess and his tact, were equally unable to control all of their tribesmen, and were powerless with their confederated nations. If peace was made with the Shawnees, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

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

... singled out Fulke Greville, and also—if our memory is correct—Sir Thomas Browne. He thought, very sensibly, that any reasonable human being, if permitted to summon spirits from the vasty deep, would base his choice upon personal qualities, and not on mere general reputation. There would be an elective affinity, a principle of natural selection, (not Darwinian,) by which each would aim to draw forth a spirit to his liking. One would not summon the author of such and such a book, but this or that man. Milton wrote an admirable epic, but he would be awful in society. Shakspeare was a splendid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... crimes like forgery, perjury, theft, arson, etc., I'd resort to the rope. I would abolish fines in misdemeanor cases, thereby putting the rich and poor on a parity, and set the offenders in the stocks. I'd get rid of the costly delays which are the chief cause of lynchings, by elective jurors and the majority rule, by appointing one man well learned in the law to see that all the evidence was properly placed before the court, and advise the rest of the legal fraternity now making heaven and earth resound with their eloquence and weeping crocodile tears ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... seasons, inhabiting different stations, and naturally living under the most opposite climates, can often be crossed with ease. The difficulty or facility apparently depends exclusively on the sexual constitution of the species which are crossed; or on their sexual elective affinity, i. e. Wahlverwandtschaft of Gaertner. As species rarely or never become modified in one character, without being at the same time modified in many, and as systematic affinity includes all visible resemblances and dissimilarities, any difference in sexual constitution between ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on the Republic of Venice. As little will it avail us that they are chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... servant who has stolen or lied, If called on, may resign with honest pride: As unjust favor put him in, why doubt Disfavor as unjust has turned him out? Even it indicted, what is that but fudge To him who counted-in the elective judge? Whitewashed, he quits the politician's strife At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life; His 'lady' glares with gems whose vulgar blaze 60 The poor man through his heightened taxes pays, Himself content if one huge Kohinoor Bulge from a shirt-front ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

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

... intrigues are mingling themselves, with increasing heat and violence. This government is assuming daily, more and more, a character of cabal and preparation, not for the next presidential election, but for the one after, that is working and counterworking, with many of the worst features of elective monarchies. Jackson has made for himself a multitude of friends, and ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... was published in 1621; but amongst the ideas on religion, carefully elaborated or obscurely suggested, which throng its pages, we find curious anticipations of the position of Locke and even of Hume, just as in politics, in the remarks on elective monarchy put in the lips of the Cardinal Ubaldini, or in the conceptions of justice and law, Barclay reveals a sympathy with principles which appealed to Algernon Sidney or were long afterwards developed by Beccaria. In the motion of the stars Barclay ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... [Footnote: The division into "quarters" is everywhere represented as resulting from common consent. But nowhere is it stated that the tribal government or authority assigned locations to any of its fractions. This is only attributed to the chiefs, on the supposition that they, although elective, were still ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a scheme to thwart political aspiration in the Antilles. That project is sought to be realized by deterring the home authorities from granting an elective local legislature, however restricted in character, to any of the Colonies not yet enjoying such an advantage. An argument based on the composition of the inhabitants of those Colonies is confidently relied upon to confirm the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

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

... culture under the general term of "Music," but gave voice and instrument a vital place in education. Three of our most prominent composers fill the chairs at three of the most important universities. In all these cases, however, music is an elective study, while the rudiments of the art should, I am convinced, be a required study in every college curriculum, and in the common ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... the Constitution provides for its own amendment; and we ought to use the elective franchise to effect this object. True, there is such a proviso; but, until the amendment be made, that instrument is binding as it stands. Is it not to violate every moral instinct, and to sacrifice principle to expediency, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... that attempts to rid itself of the evils of the state legislature by these heroic methods assumes a heavy responsibility. When the burden of direct legislation is added to the task of choosing from the long list of elective officers which is placed before the voter at every local and state election, it is not surprising that there should set in a reaction in favor of simplified government. The mere separation of state and local elections does not solve the problem. It somewhat minimizes the chances of partizan ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... when, upon the death of Louis III, the last prince of the Carlovingian race, Conrad, Duke of Franconia, was elected Emperor and the Empire, which had till then been hereditary in the descendants of Charlemagne, became elective and remained ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... opportunity which has set William among the foremost statesmen of the world. The struggle which ended in the fens of Ely had wholly changed his position. He no longer held the land merely as its national and elected King. To his elective right he added the right of conquest. It is the way in which William grasped and employed this double power that marks the originality of his political genius, for the system of government which he devised was in fact the result of this double origin of his ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

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

... no further. They did not imagine, that he who had been the instrument of recovering the independence of their country, could be the very man who was to effect the ruin of their liberties. By the Constitution of Sweden their kings were elective, and the powers of the crown were exceedingly limited. The unsuspecting people even voluntarily gave up their right of election, and suffered Gustavus to enlarge the powers of the crown, and entail it in his own family! This is the account which ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... loved—and his mother and Lothair. They had all vanished from his mind; he lived for Olimpia alone. He sat beside her every day for hours together, rhapsodising about his love and sympathy enkindled into life, and about psychic elective affinity[10]—all of which Olimpia listened to with great reverence. He fished up from the very bottom of his desk all the things that he had ever written—poems, fancy sketches, visions, romances, tales, and the heap was increased daily with all kinds of aimless sonnets, stanzas, canzonets. All ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

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

... striking subject to the historical school of British art. A little further on, speaking of Mary Powell, he says, "We have no portrait of her, nor any account of her appearance; but on the usual rule of the elective affinities of opposites, Milton being fair, we will vote her to have been dark-haired." I need say nothing of the good taste of this sentence, but its absurdity is heightened by the fact that Mr. Masson himself had left us in doubt whether the match was one of convenience or inclination. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... house in the West had been searched for its marriageable females. At one time a daughter of the Doge of Venice was nearly chosen. Unfortunately there were influential Greeks of greater pride than judgment to object to the Doge. He was merely an elective chief. He might die the very day after celebrating the espousals, and then—not even the ducal robes were inheritable. No, the flower to deck the Byzantine throne was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... boast mightily of their being the only Nation in the World which enjoys Liberty, and therefore, upon all Occasions, they talk of, and treat the rest of the World as Slaves. They pretend to maintain, that their Monarchy being elective, their Emperors are no more than their Servants, and that they can exercise no longer a Power, than they are pleas'd to give it them, which is just as much as will serve to put the Laws in Execution, and keep the great Machine of Government ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... made. Within a few months a serious insurrection broke out among those who hoped to make Robert king, but no one alleged that William's title was imperfect because he had not been elected. If the English crown was held by the people of the time to be elective in any sense, it was not in the sense which we at present understand by the ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... matters, and it is in this way that Aristotle assigns the reason for their connection (Ethic. vi, 13). Because, as stated above (Q. 58, A. 4), no moral virtue can be without prudence; since it is proper to moral virtue to make a right choice, for it is an elective habit. Now right choice requires not only the inclination to a due end, which inclination is the direct outcome of moral virtue, but also correct choice of things conducive to the end, which choice is made ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... and to make the executive responsible to the representatives of the people. Office-holders were made ineligible to seats in the Legislature. The Ministers were henceforth to be removable only upon a vote of want of confidence passed by a majority of all the elective members of the Legislature. The Nobles, instead of being appointed by the King, were to be elected for terms of six years, by electors who should be possessed of taxable property worth $3,000, or in receipt of an annual ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs

... been urged that, as plants have no volition, natural selection is not applicable to them! In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a false term; but who ever objected to chemists speaking of the elective affinities of the various elements?—and yet an acid cannot strictly be said to elect the base with which it in preference combines. It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... to constitutional monarchy and to republicanism is an obvious historical law; in the present phase of civilization the only difference between the two latter is in the elective or hereditary character of the head of the State. In the various countries of Europe, the bourgeoisie themselves Hill demand the transition from monarchy to republicanism, in order to put off as long as possible the triumph of socialism. In Italy ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... strong impulse itself towards union with thy nature and to the return into thy home goes astray. Know that the exalted and majestic Originator of things, is himself the noblest of all things. Take then the noble things as a model, in order by that means to get nearer thy Creator on the path of elective affinity. And know that the noble attaches itself to the noble and the vulgar to the common." (Fleischer, Herm. a. d. Seele, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... provide for annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States" the President of the United States hereby directs that the General Election provided for by the constitution of the Republic of Hawaii to be held on the last Wednesday in September next shall not be held. All elective officers whose terms of office shall expire before appropriate legislation shall have been enacted by the Congress of the United States shall be continued in their offices at the pleasure of the ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... your opportunities will have broadened, and you begin to have something similar to the elective system. You can choose more freely how to spend your time. Your development to this point, I have already said, may be called the rounding of the handle; and your education will be normal if you have average application, intelligence, ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"

... themselves from the rest, and entered into that place of the Campus Martius, called septa or ovilia. Going into this, they had to cross over a little bridge (pons;) hence the phrase de ponte dejici—to be deprived of the elective franchise. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... temporal chiefs of the nation, the Sophi, or "Wise Men," and the Magi, or "Priests." Together these two bodies constituted the Megistanes, the "Nobles" or "Great Men"—the privileged class which to a considerable extent checked and controlled the monarch. The monarchy was elective, but only in the house of the Arsacidae; and the concurrent vote of both councils was necessary in the appointment of a new king. Practically, the ordinary law of hereditary descent appears to have been followed, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... vigor of character. At the age of fifteen he had been placed in the command of armies, and in several combats had defeated the veteran generals of the Protestant forces. His renown had extended through Europe, and had contributed much in placing him on the elective throne of Poland. Catharine, by the will of the king, was appointed regent until the return of Henry. She immediately dispatched messengers to recall the King of Poland. In the mean time, she kept Henry of Navarre and her youngest son, the Duke of ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

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

... and deserving, is undoubtedly a serious evil. But when an aristocracy is subject to the common law, when it is occupied, especially when its occupation is in conformity with its aptitudes, and more particularly when it is available for the formation of an upper elective chamber or an hereditary peerage, it is a vast service.—In any case it cannot be irreversibly suppressed; for, although it may be abolished by law, it is reconstituted by facts. The legislator must necessarily choose between two systems, that which lets it lie fallow, or that which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... done, but much more remains to be done by women. If they had possessed the elective franchise, the reforms which have cost them a quarter of a century of labor would have been accomplished in a year. They are still subject to taxation upon their property, without any voice as to the levying or destination of the tax; and are still subject ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... was the Bastard from the beginning. There was then no generally received doctrine as to the succession to kingdoms and duchies. Everywhere a single kingly or princely house supplied, as a rule, candidates for the succession. Everywhere, even where the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son was always likely to succeed his father. The growth of feudal notions too had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle. Still no rule had anywhere been laid down for cases where the late prince had not left a full-grown son. The ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... Paris, 1828), ii. 303.] Sardinia, Spain, declare alliance with Fleury; and not Lorraine only, and the Swabian Provinces, but Italy itself lies at his discretion,—owing to your treatment of the Grandfather of France, and these Polish Elective methods. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Prerogative ought, according to the Whigs, to be reduced to such powers as are in their exercise beneficial to the people; and of the benefit of these they will not rashly suffer the people to be deprived, whether the executive power be in the hands of an hereditary or of an elective King, of a Regent, or of any other denomination of magistrate; while, on the other hand, they who consider Prerogative with reference only to Royalty will, with equal readiness, consent either to the extension or the suspension of its exercise, as the occasional interests ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... Bachelor of Philosophy. The latter course has received many modifications, and in the autumn of 1875 it was determined to make it a four years course, the same in all respects as the regular course, except that it omits Greek and substitutes instead of it the modern languages and some elective work in science. Previous to 1875 the work of the College was mainly prescribed, with but little opportunity for optional or elective studies. At that time the scope of electives was greatly broadened. There are now eleven full courses of electives open to students. From the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... surveyed in the introductory chapter the character and organization of this ferocious people; their confederacy of five nations, bound together by a peculiar tie of clanship; their chiefs, half hereditary, half elective; their government, an oligarchy in form and a democracy in spirit; their minds, thoroughly savage, yet marked here and there with traits of a vigorous development. The war which they had long waged with the Hurons was carried ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... characters of their own; the first newspaper, and the first book printed among themselves; the first editor; and the first well organized system for securing a general diffusion of knowledge among the people. Among the Cherokees, also, we see established the first regularly elective government, with the legislative, judicial, and executive branches distinct; with the safeguards of a written constitution and trial by jury. Here, also, we see first the Christian religion recognised and protected ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... the government of the islands as have their colleagues who are Americans, while in the lower ranks, of course, the great majority of the public servants are Filipinos. Within two years we shall be trying the experiment of an elective lower house in the Philippine legislature. It may be that the Filipinos will misuse this legislature, and they certainly will misuse it if they are misled by foolish persons here at home into starting an ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

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

... society, far from giving a man position, wasted his time and required an immense deal of money. The name of Portenduere, which his mother considered all-powerful, had no power at all in Paris. His cousin the deputy, Comte de Portenduere, cut a very poor figure in the Elective Chamber in presence of the peerage and the court; and had none too much credit personally. Admiral Kergarouet existed only as the husband of his wife. Savinien admitted to himself that he had seen orators, men from the middle classes, or lesser noblemen, become influential personages. ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... Murray had mildly artistic leanings, and because he liked to draw and to sing, Keith, too, had to join in those studies, although both were elective, and although the singing classes twice a week consumed one of the two precious lunch hours that otherwise could be used so profitably for play or study. Keith had neither aptitude nor interest for draftsmanship, being curiously set toward the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... have ample scope for industrial enterprise, and are free to choose their private pleasures, they resign themselves to the loss of electing their rulers without great unhappiness. There are greater evils in the world than the deprivation of the elective franchise, lofty and glorious as is this privilege. The arbitrary rule of the emperors was fatal to political aspirations and rights and the growth of a genuine manhood; yet it is but fair to note that the evils of political slavery were qualified ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... Ministry endeavoured to weaken the means of corrupt influence which the king had unscrupulously used by disqualifying persons holding government contracts from sitting in Parliament, by depriving revenue officers of the elective franchise (a measure which diminished the weight of the Crown in seventy boroughs), and above all by a bill for the reduction of the civil establishment, of the pension list, and of the secret service fund, which was brought ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... to which the senate had often resorted of late, as the best means of restoring their own republican aristocracy, was now adopted by Dioclesian as the simplest engine for overthrowing finally the power of either senate or army to interfere with the elective privilege. This he endeavored to centre in the existing emperors; and, at the same moment, to discourage treason or usurpation generally, whether in the party choosing or the party chosen, by securing to each emperor, in the case of his own assassination, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... re-allotments occur at irregular intervals averaging something like fifteen years. In India the local government is carried on in some places by a Council of Village Elders, and in other places by a Headman whose office is sometimes described as hereditary, but is more probably elective, the choice being confined, as in the case of the old Teutonic kingship, to the members of a particular family. In the Russian village, on the other hand, the government is conducted by an assembly at which every head of a household is expected ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

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

... brother Conrad, Duke of the Franks, grandsons of Henry IV, were the hereditary and dynastic successors to the throne of Germany, when with the death of Henry V in 1125 the male line of the Franconian dynasty ended. The brothers demanded the assertion of the elective right in the imperial office, and Lothair, Duke of Saxony, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... under the gentleman's governorship immediately on being the second time surrendered to England. Such had been the political disorder in the province, that Andros's headship, stern as it was, proved beneficial. He even, for a time, 1683-86, reluctantly permitted an elective legislature, though discontinuing it when the legislatures of New England were suppressed. This taste of ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... way or other"; is not this the general case and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? Goethe's doctrine of "elective affinities" ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... our plan, two sets of constituencies. You have the 103 constituencies that return the popular branch of the legislative body, and you have those other constituencies up to seventy-five which return the elective members of the other branch of the legislative body. You have, therefore, got already on our plan two sets of constituencies. Now, if you are going to send members to Westminster for Imperial purposes to the number of forty-five or to the number of ninety-five, you must mark ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... come under the control of the Church. The commissioners appoint the teachers in the schools and keep up the school buildings, but their outlay is also very small, for the salaries of teachers, usually women, are appallingly low. The really important elective office in the parish is that of churchwarden (marguiller). In the church the churchwardens have a special seat of honour assigned to them. They control the temporalities and may beard even the cure himself. Large sums of money pass through their hands. They ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... College of some fifty years ago offers some striking exceptions. It was not the large and fashionable university that it has lately grown to be, with its multiplied elective courses, its numerous faculty, and its somewhat motley collection of undergraduates; but a small school of the classics and mathematics, with something of ethics, natural science, and the modern languages added to its old-fashioned, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... battle of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been made and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the quality of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

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

... never before experienced. He hastened through his morning duties with an elasticity of spirit and hope that was altogether new to him. Though, as yet, his feeling was not defined into a thought, it was a faint perception, a dim consciousness that the elective affinities of his heart had all awakened. And while he thought he was in an excessive anxiety to see after his feeble patient, he was borne on rather by the attractions of his heart's love. He paused in a thrilling excitement of hope and doubt before the door of the poor chamber—he ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... conflict was carried on to the bitter end. It does not appear, however, that the majority in the assembly at all understood the crucial difficulty. They devoted their whole strength to attacks on the legislative council, and to demands for an elective body. The famous ninety-two resolutions of 1834, in which Papineau's party set forth their real or fancied grievances, did not contain a single paragraph laying down the principles of parliamentary or responsible government as worked out in England, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... I had once matriculated, the elective system left me free to choose my own subjects and to pursue them faithfully or not, so long as I could manage to squeak through my examinations. My friends were not necessarily among those who elected the same courses, and whether I did well or ill was nobody's business ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... or other, to be sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europe were at a remote period elective, with more or fewer limitations in the objects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here or elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties of England or France may have begun, the king of Great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... phraseology used was twofold. In the first place, many of my supporters were insisting that, as I had served only three and a half years of my first term, coming in from the Vice-Presidency when President McKinley was killed, I had really had only one elective term, so that the third term custom did not apply to me; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion. I believed then (and I believe now) the third term custom or tradition to be wholesome, and, therefore, I was determined to regard its substance, refusing ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... cohere very firmly. The sense of homogeneousness is lost. Furthermore, the class is divided into sections and sub-sections. The occasions on which the student can see his entire class together are becoming comparatively few. The so-called elective studies will also help to keep down the class spirit. In many colleges the curriculum is no longer an inflexible routine. On reaching a certain standing the student, although not entirely free to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... vote in town meeting, can strike out any names inserted by the authorities, and insert others; thus making jurors elective by the people, and, of course, representatives only of a majority of ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the hidden or averted side of the golden arras, known but not felt; or is seen but dimly in the rear, crowding into indistinct proportions. The effect of the music is, to place the mind in a state of elective attraction for every thing in harmony with its own ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

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

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

... this vote placed the President was peculiarly delicate. In an elective government, the difficulty of resisting the popular branch of the Legislature is at all times great, but is particularly so when the passions of the public have been strongly and generally excited. The popularity of a demand for information, the large majority ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... closes a session in an assembly which does not meet more frequently than once a year, or when the assembly is an elective body, and this ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert

... number four hundred and thirty-one. A certain number of equal electoral districts of fifty thousand inhabitants elect one member each; and twenty-six large districts, having several representatives, send eighty-eight members to the Cortes. Every province has its provincial elective Council, managing its local affairs, and each commune its separate District Council, with control over local taxation. Yet, though ostensibly free, these local bodies are practically in the power of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

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

... interesting fact about the Judge is that he won a thousand dollar cash prize offered by the "National Magazine" of Boston, for the best article in support of Colonel Roosevelt for a second elective term. But then, he was a great friend and admirer of the Colonel's and it evidently came ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... time, it seems, in Calcutta, a wicked, skeptical set of people, who somehow or other believed that human agency was concerned in this elective flash, which came so very opportunely, and which was a favor so thankfully acknowledged. These wicked, ill-natured skeptics disseminated reports (which I am sure I do not mean to charge or prove, leaving the ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... addressed to the President, urging him to recognize the freedmen as equal in all respects to the whites. He was the first man, of any authority or station, who ever informed me that the Government of the United States would insist on extending to the former slaves of the South the elective franchise, and he gave as a reason the fact that the slaves, grateful for their freedom, for which they were indebted to the armies and Government of the North, would, by their votes, offset the disaffected and rebel element of the white population of the South. At that time quite a storm was ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... king and country, drive them into exile, and make them despised by those who formerly feared and respected them. But these warnings remained unheeded, and the prophecies were fulfilled to the letter. Elective kingship, pacta conventa, [Footnote: Terms which a candidate for the throne had to subscribe on his election. They were of course dictated by the electors—i.e., by the selfish interest of one class, the szlachta (nobility), or rather the most powerful ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... Goethe: the horrified squealing of prudes is not yet silent over pages of Wilhelm Meister: that high and chaste book, the Elective Affinities, still pumps up oaths from clergymen. Walpurgis has hardly ceased its uproar ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... each other which was the forerunner of the present system of local government in the Western States. In New York each town chose a member of the county board of supervisors; in Pennsylvania the county officers as well as the town officers became elective. Whatever the variations, the effect of local government throughout the colonies was the same. The people carried on or neglected their town and county business under a system defined by colonial laws; but no colonial officer was charged with ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... should, will it not be obliged to support its claims by military force? And how long will such a force be under its control? How long before it follows the usual course of all armies, and ranges itself under a single master? If such a master should arise, will he establish an hereditary or an elective government? If the first, what will be gained but a change of dynasty? If the second, will not the military force, as it chose the first king or protector (the name is of no importance), choose in effect all ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... famous day when the struggle openly began between the most august, grandest, and only true power, /royalty/, and the most false, most changeful, most oppressive of all powers,—the power called /parliamentary/, which elective assemblies exercise. The salon du Ronceret, secretly allied to the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... institution which is technically known as nepotism, the selection of a Prime Minister, not from the College of the ecclesiastical aristocracy, but from the family of the reigning sovereign, the tonsured statesmen introduced a dynastic infusion into the fluctuations of elective monarchy. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... operated. Not only have the women of this state evinced an intelligent and active interest in governmental issues, but in several instances important offices have been conferred upon that element of the electorate which recently acquired the elective franchise. Kindly assure your co-workers in Pennsylvania of my best wishes ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber

... numbers during four years in his garden, and they kept true by seed; but when he crossed them, they produced flowers of an intermediate tint. Hence it might have thought that both varieties must have a stronger elective affinity for the pollen of their own variety than for that of the other; this elective affinity, I may add, of each species for its own pollen (Koelreuter, 'Dritte Forts.,' s. 39, and Gaertner, 'Bastarderz.,' passim) ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

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

... categorically, because the law is unconditioned; the relation of such a will to this law is dependence under the name of obligation, which implies a constraint to an action, though only by reason and its objective law; and this action is called duty, because an elective will, subject to pathological affections (though not determined by them, and, therefore, still free), implies a wish that arises from subjective causes and, therefore, may often be opposed to the pure objective determining ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant

... we to know what an individual is? First of all by his acts; but by something else too—something which is only perceived by intuition. Soul judges soul by elective affinity, reaching through and beyond both words ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Circassians, since the time of the Moguls; and of these for the most part this Egyptian force, Mamlouks, as they are called, has consisted. After a time, these Mamlouks took matters into their own hands, and became a self-elective body, or sort of large corporation. They were masters of the country, and of its nominal ruler, and they recruited their ranks continually, and perpetuated their power, by means of the natives of the Caucasus, slaves like themselves, and of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

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

... the royal authority was extremely eclipsed in all the European states; and, instead of dreading the growth of monarchical power, we might rather expect, that the community would every where crumble into so many independent baronies, and lose the political union by which they were cemented. In elective monarchies, the event was commonly answerable to this expectation; and the barons, gaining ground on every vacancy of the throne, raised themselves almost to a state of sovereignty, and sacrificed to their power both the rights of the crown and the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... still have been sitting for Bevisham (or politely at this elective moment bowing to resume the seat) had not those Manchester jugglers caught up his cry, appropriated his colours, displaced and impersonated him, acting beneficent Whig on a scale approaching treason to the Constitution; leaning ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to recognise the force which germinates and vegetates in the plant, and indeed the force through which the crystal is formed, that by which the magnet turns to the North Pole, the force whose shock he experiences from the contact of two different kinds of metal, the force which appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, decomposition and combination, and, lastly, even gravitation, which acts so powerfully throughout matter, draws the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun—all these, I say, he will recognise as different only ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... of her primary hopes, and she is also well aware that the differences between man and man, once mere money is put aside, are so slight as to be practically almost negligible. Thus the average woman is under none of the common masculine illusions about elective affinities, soul mates, love at first sight, and such phantasms. She is quite ready to fall in love, as the phrase is, with any man who is plainly eligible, and she usually knows a good many more such men ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... the infallible acuteness of feminine judgment which are doing more and more, every day, to establish the positive necessity of woman's superior insight, and natural dispassionate fairness of mind, for the future wisest exercise of the elective franchise and most just administration of the highest judicial office. It may be said that the mother-in-law is the highest development of the supernaturally perceptive and positive woman, since she usually has superior opportunities to study man in all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... he, "a mysterious elective affinity between the grisette and the chocolate bon-bon. He who can skilfully exhibit the latter, is almost certain to win the heart of the former. Where the chocolate fails, however, the marron glace is ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... bill of the whig ministry, drawn on broad and simple lines, struck at the root of this system. Its twofold basis was a liberal extension of the suffrage with a very large redistribution of seats. The elective franchise in counties, hitherto confined to freeholders, was to be conferred on L10 copyholders and L50 leaseholders; the borough franchise was to exclude "scot and lot" voters, "potwallopers" and most other survivals ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... is, that when all my experimenting is done I find some particular color scheme fits a certain rug as no other does. It seems to clothe or to fulfill the pattern as if it belonged personally to it. When I once discover this elective affinity of a pattern for its special coloring, I never make it again ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... work of the poor voters is to try to create a "poor man's paradise," as poor men are apt to fancy that Paradise, and as they are apt to think they can create it, the great political trial now beginning will simply fail. The wide gift of the elective franchise will be a great calamity to the whole nation, and to those who gain it as great a calamity as ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

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

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

... private thinking. That is not the profit. The profit is in the exercise, and above all in the experience; for when we reason at large on any subject, we review our state and history in life. From time to time, however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes elective, conquering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like an exploration. A point arises; the question takes a problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel lively presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this they strive with emulous ardour, each ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for this movement. They reject the idea of all subordination, even in the mildest form, with utter scorn. They claim for woman absolute social and political equality with man. And they seek to secure these points by conferring on the whole sex the right of the elective franchise, female suffrage being the first step in the unwieldy revolutions they aim at bringing about. These views are no longer confined to a small sect. They challenge our attention at every ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... succeeded in obtaining from a conference of the Powers at Paris, in 1858, a kind of agreement, which, whilst it insisted upon the retention in each Principality of a separate prince or hospodar, gave to each an elective parliament, and admitted of a partial fusion, under a kind of central commission, for the 'united Principalities.' This was a species of compromise which was no doubt satisfactory to the guaranteeing Powers, with their conflicting ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

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

... of government. This object cannot be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil. It is such, and so great an evil, that though there are few nations whose monarchs were not originally elective, very few are now elected. They are the distempers of elections, that have destroyed all free states. To cure these distempers is difficult, if not impossible; the only thing therefore left to save the commonwealth is to prevent their return too frequently. The objects ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... battle is already won. The principle of natural selection between pupils and subjects is recognised in the elective system, but we have barely commenced to conceive as yet the principle of natural selection in its more important application—mutual attraction between teacher and pupil—natural selection in its deeper and ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... according to their analogy, have usually a passive import, and denote susceptibility of receiving action. 2. By the adding of ive or ory: (sometimes with a change of some of the final letters:) as, elect, elective; interrogate, interrogative, interrogatory; defend, defensive; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Conrad of Franconia (911-918) was chosen king by the clerical and secular nobles of the five duchies, in which the counts elevated themselves to the rank of dukes,—Franconia, Saxony, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria. Germany thus became an elective kingdom; but since, as a rule, the sovereignty was continued in one family, the electoral principle was qualified by an hereditary element. Conrad began the struggle against the great feudatories, which went on through ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... seen in the political statistics of the times. When the Utah Commission entered on their duties in August, 1882, almost every office in the territory was held by a polygamist. By April, 1884, about 12,000 voters, male and female, had been disfranchised by the act, and of the 1351 elective officers in the territory not one was a polygamist, and not one of the municipal officers of Salt Lake City then in office ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... inevitable that you would have gradually, in Lord Salisbury's own phrase, to popularise them, so as to bring them into harmony with the dominant sentiments of the people in India. The Bill of 1892 admittedly contained the elective principle, and our Bill to-day extends that principle. The noble Lord (Viscount Cross) will remember the Bill of 1892, of which he had charge in the House of Commons. I want the House to be good enough to follow the line taken by Mr. Gladstone, because I base ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... The reform of very great evils will be cheaply accomplished if women by voting can right themselves. It must be confessed, to our shame, that we have failed to right them; though it may at the same time be doubted whether the elective franchise, which is claimed as the means of justice, would not now belong to women, if it had been even generally demanded. So far the responsibility is partly with woman herself, who must also help to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... the Protestant faith: she wrote to her that the supreme power was of divine right, and raised high above all these considerations, and warned her against opinions of that kind which were avowed by some near her, and which might lead to the elective principle and become dangerous to herself. This could not fail to have an exactly opposite effect on Elizabeth. She was again threatened through the strict dynastic right that she also enjoyed: she needed some other additional support. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

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

... Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards earl of Shaftesbury, acted at various times as sheriffs of their respective counties. They were direct successors of Chaucer's Franklyn, of whom we are told, "A schirreeve had he been." With some exceptions, such as those cities which had their own elective sheriffs, and those pairs of counties which were conjoined under one sheriff, each shire had one sheriff, appointed in the following manner: every year, on November 1, a special meeting of the Privy Council was held at the ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... in most Colonies little distinction between upper and middle classes. The popular Assemblies, elected on the broadest possible franchise, were truly representative. Some of the Legislative Councils, or Upper Chambers, were elective also. Most of them, although nominated, and therefore inclined to be hostile to the popular body, were nevertheless of identical social composition; so that there was often an official, but never ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... at first elective, because—at a time when man produced but little and possessed nothing—property was too weak to establish the principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father; but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function was, like every thing else, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

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

... state, were rather like hostile powers, in perpetual conflict. With us, an attempt has been made, and so far not without success, to divide representation into chambers, and, by difference of age, character, qualification, or mode of election, to establish salutary checks, in governments altogether elective. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... own eyes and ears. The British constitution, according to Mr Mill's classification, is a mixture of monarchy and aristocracy; one House of Parliament being composed of hereditary nobles, and the other almost entirely chosen by a privileged class who possess the elective franchise on account of their property, or their connection with certain corporations. Mr Mill's argument proves that, from the time that these two powers were mingled in our government, that is, from the very first dawn of our history, one or ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Melanchthon Synod.—In 1857, on the principle of "elective affinity," and for the purpose of resisting the confessional trend in the General Synod, and encouraging and strengthening the Platform men, the Melanchthon Synod was organized in the territory of ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... nothing of the kind, but explains the evolution of each individual by purely mechanical conceptions. In fact, however, it is not so. Each gemmule, according to Mr. Darwin, is really the seat of powers, elective affinities, and special tendencies as marked and mysterious as those possessed by the physiological unit of Mr. Spencer, with the single exception that the former has no tendency to build up the whole living, complex organism of which it forms a part. Some may think this an ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart



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



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