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Misrule   Listen
verb
Misrule  v. t. & v. i.  To rule badly; to misgovern.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Misrule" Quotes from Famous Books



... of misrule reigned at the end of each sentence, as the members sprang again upon the chairs and desks, roaring, waving, purple with laughter. The Speaker leaned back exhausted in his chair and let the gavel rest. Spectators, pages, galleries ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... very acceptable to the great patriot in whose honour it was organised, were he but permitted to gaze from the great Unknown upon this practical demonstration of the perpetuation of the spirit which animated him and his time, in the struggle against English misrule, and the love and veneration in which he is still held, after the lapse of the century and more that has passed since he made the final sacrifice of his life in the cause of freedom. Tone done to ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... in point of capital. Mr. Hume denied this hypothesis, and maintained that the true causes of the distress were to be found in the pressure of taxation, and the lavish expenditure of government. The whole empire, he said, presented one scene of extravagant misrule, from the gold lace and absurd paraphernalia of military decoration of the guards up to the mismanagement of the Burmese war: it was a farce, he added, to attribute the distress to the banking system. Other members defended the country banks from the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... against the claimant, was among the Unfinished Business. The gifted Gashwiler, uneasy in his soul over certain other Unfinished Business in the shape of his missing letters, but dropping oil and honey as he mingled with his brothers, was King of Misrule and Lord of the Unfinished Business. Pretty Mrs. Hopkinson, prudently escorted by her husband, but imprudently ogled by admiring Congressmen, lent the charm of her presence to the finishing of Unfinished Business. One or two editors, who had dreams of a finished ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... States declared war against Spain for the purpose of freeing Cuba from Spanish misrule under which she had suffered for so long, and also with the desire to avenge the dastardly blowing up of the Maine, but little or no thought was given to Porto Rico. That island was an unknown quantity, ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... The childish struggle against misrule had come to a childish end. The little toy loyalists had been broken all to pieces. A few thousand Frenchmen, with a vague patriotism, had shied some harmless stones at the British flag-staff on the citadel: that was all. Obeying the instincts ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... heart! but you have well divin'd The source of these disorders. Who can wonder If riot and misrule o'erturn the realm, When the crown sits upon a baby brow? Plainly to speak, hence comes the gen'ral cry, And sum of all complaint: 'twill ne'er be well With England (thus ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... himself, in despite of his opposition to John Effingham's sarcasms, that his native country had undergone many changes since he last resided in it, and that some of these changes were quite sensibly for the worse. The spirit of misrule was abroad, and the lawless and unprincipled held bold language, when it suited their purpose to intimidate. As he ran over in his mind, however, the facts of the case, and the nature of his right, he smiled to think that ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... extremes of despotism on the one hand, and anarchy on the other, and granting its subjects the exercise of their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," shall endure through ages to come. But the people of France, shut up in darkness during centuries of misrule, passed at a step from abject servitude to unlimited freedom. They were unprepared for this violent transition. Their conceptions of liberty were of the most extravagant description. What wonder that they became dizzy at their sudden elevation! What ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... wars broke out, he was in his prime, a stout, sturdy Englishman, suffering, as did his fellows, from the misrule of the Stuarts, and ready for any desperate step that might better his fortunes. Volunteering, therefore, under the man of blood and iron, tradition has it that from the first battle to the last his drum was heard inspiring ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... Charles's reign bring any quiet to Fleet Street, for then the Templars began to lug out their swords. On the 12th of January, 1627, the Templars, having chosen a Mr. Palmer as their Lord of Misrule, went out late at night into Fleet Street to collect his rents. At every door the jovial collectors winded the Temple horn, and if at the second blast the door was not courteously opened, my lord ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the missionaries, to their exertions and to their representations, that what good has been done is to be attributed. They are entitled to the greatest credit and the warmest praise; and great as has been the misrule of this colony for many years, it would have been much greater and much more disgraceful, if it had not been for their efforts. Another very important alteration has been taking place in the colony, which will eventually ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... courted alike by the thief and his victim, for fifty years she lived a life brilliant as sunlight, many-coloured as a rainbow. And she is remembered, after the lapse of centuries, not only as the Queen-Regent of Misrule, the benevolent tyrant of cly-filers and heavers, of hacks and blades, but as the incomparable Roaring Girl, free of the playhouse, who perchance presided with Ben Jonson over the Parliament ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... of Genl. Schofield's misrule that Missouri is in a worse condition than at any time since the rebellion; that he has failed to use the troops at his disposal to put down the rebellion. This charge is false, unless it be admitted that the radicals are rebels. It is true ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... of the present state to which the Royal Society is reduced, may be traced to years of misrule to which it has been submitted. In order to understand this, it will be necessary to explain the nature of that misrule, and the means employed in ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage

... extortion; and who was, moreover, (for Ptolemy was a prudent man) a dangerous partisan of his great enemy, Perdiccas. We do not read that he refunded the treasures: but the Egyptians surnamed him Soter, the Saviour; and on the whole he deserved the title. Instead of the wretched misrule and slavery of the conquering Persian dynasty, they had at least law and order, reviving commerce, and a system of administration, we are told (I confess to speaking here quite at second-hand), especially adapted to the peculiar caste-society, and the religious prejudices of ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... certainly his school has been of the worst. Would not, perhaps, the reflections applied to the case of the French peasants of a century ago apply also to them?" It is not under oppression that we learn how to use freedom. The ordinary sophism by which misrule is defended is, when truly stilted, this: The people must continue in slavery, because slavery has generated in them all the vices of slaves; because they are ignorant, they must remain under a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... ago, when special honor was done to entertain the King wherever he was lodged," went on Charlotte, "there was a Lord of Misrule, who gathered together a company of ladies and gentlemen, who rummaged the old castles for grotesque costumes and furbelows. And then masked, they all came in and marched before the King, and danced, oh—everything—we might have ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... however unreasonable. The English people, moreover, had not forgotten that Russia ruthlessly crippled Poland in 1831, and lent her aid to the subjugation of Hungary in 1849. If the Sultan was the Lord of Misrule to English imagination in 1853, the Czar was the embodiment of despotism, and even less amenable to the modern ideas of liberty and toleration. The Manchester School, on the other hand, had provoked a reaction. The Great Exhibition had set a large section ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... and could not help stealing out of the drawing-room on hearing one of their peals of laughter. I found them at the game of blindman's-buff. Master Simon, who was the leader of their revels, and seemed on all occasions to fulfill the office of that ancient potentate, the Lord of Misrule,* was blinded in the midst of the hall. The little beings were as busy about him as the mock fairies about Falstaff, pinching him, plucking at the skirts of his coat, and tickling him with straws. One fine blue-eyed girl of about thirteen, with her flaxen hair all ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... was invited to interrogate Kit and Stephen, and her grief and anxiety found vent in fierce scolding at the misrule which had permitted such a villain as Fulford to be haunting and tempting poor fatherless lads. Master Headley had reproached poor Kit for the same thing, but he could only represent that Giles, being a freeman, was no longer under his authority. However, she stormed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Transparent, Elemental Air, diffus'd In circuit to the uttermost convex Of this great Round: partition firm and sure, The Waters underneath from those above Dividing: for as Earth, so hee the World Built on circumfluous Waters calme, in wide 270 Crystallin Ocean, and the loud misrule Of Chaos farr remov'd, least fierce extreames Contiguous might distemper the whole frame: And Heav'n he nam'd the Firmament: So Eev'n And Morning Chorus sung the second Day. The Earth was form'd, but in the Womb as yet Of Waters, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... been conferring together to prevent any further misrule in Turkey, and to efface this monarchy, which is a disgrace to Europe, and they find that, by their too hasty interference, they have put themselves in the position of having to uphold the Turkish misrule against ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... the very mood to resort to desperate measures of delivering herself therefrom. Her being in this particular mood at that particular time (for it is only now and then that she has shown herself so unamiable) was owing chiefly to the fact, that she was just then under the rule, or rather misrule, of that narrow-minded, short-sighted, hard-fisted, wrong-headed man, who commonly goes in history by the name of King George the Third. Had he been the superintendent of a town workhouse, he might ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... service on the part of Fate in providing her with Henry for a brother, Francesca could well set the plaguy malice of the destiny that had given her Comus for a son. The boy was one of those untameable young lords of misrule that frolic and chafe themselves through nursery and preparatory and public-school days with the utmost allowance of storm and dust and dislocation and the least possible amount of collar-work, and come somehow with a laugh through a series of catastrophes that ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... battle-sword and pistols hung under it. It made me feel quite at home, and we tried to make the children enter into the meaning of the point. At least Meg did, and I think she succeeded with her son, who had a good deal of the true Ribaumont in him, and whom they could not spoil even by all the misrule that went on at Court whenever the Queen was out of sight. He stood thoughtful by the picture while the little d'Aubepines were dancing in and out of the balcony, shrieking about every figure they saw ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... eh? You taught them something, though; and the present conversation reminds me of it. In your second term, when every other man is still quizzed and kept down as a freshman, you, were already a leader; a chief of misrule. You founded a whist-club in Trinity, the primmest college of all. The Dons rooted you out in college; but you did not succumb; you fulfilled the saying of Sydney Smith, that 'Cribbage should be played in caverns, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... The Jacksonians do not contest that seat,—this year,—and Isaiah Prescott, fourteenth child of Timothy, the Stark hero, father of a young Ephraim whom we shall hear from later, is elected. And now! Now for a sensation, now for disorder and misrule! ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... which should come from their midst, I said to myself that strong, hulking lads like our Minute Boys ought to be ashamed to do other than remain in the service, doing their part in showing the king that we would have no more of his misrule. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis

... of social ignorance, and misery, and frantic misrule. It is a faithful exhibition of the degree of personal security which a man of honourable sentiments, and humane and noble intentions, could promise himself in such a time. It shows what chance there was of any ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... resources of Spain, and the sterling character of her population, than the fact that, at the present day, she is still a powerful and unexhausted country, and her children still, to a certain extent, a high-minded and great people. Yes, notwithstanding the misrule of the brutal and sensual Austrian, the doting Bourbon, and, above all, the spiritual tyranny of the court of Rome, Spain can still maintain her own, fight her own combat, and Spaniards are not yet fanatic slaves and crouching beggars. This is saying much, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the slaughter of cows; and that under former Governments this practice had been strictly prohibited, and the returns of the harvest had, in consequence, been always abundant, and subsistence cheap, in spite of invasion from without, insurrection within, and a good deal of misrule and oppression on the part of the local government. The holy man was enjoined by the vision to make this revelation known to the constituted authorities, and to persuade the people generally throughout the district to join in the petition for the prohibition of beef-eating ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... subjects by his cruelty and injustice that they had rebelled against him and driven him from the country. Tostig sent to ask Harold to restore him to his earldom, but Harold refused either to aid him or to allow him to return to a country where his misrule had caused him to be hated ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae

... the use of bhang, which does more than anything else to dull the faculties and deaden the conscience of the unfortunate who surrenders himself to its seductive spells. The inevitable results were for him the premature loss of health and strength, and for his people misrule, extortion and ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... of Hell! I call on thee, Thou wild misrule of thine own anarchy! From thy prison-house set free The spirits of voluptuous death, That with their mighty breath 5 They may destroy a world of virgin thoughts; Let her chaste mind with fancies thick as motes Be peopled from thy shadowy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the revolution, commenced by the sound middle classes, we regarded the scum of aristocracy as the smaller of the two evils. As soon as the true element had ceased to assert itself in France, I fled forever from a land of bloodshed and misrule, and took shelter under the broad wing ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... their religious training so extraordinary, the clothes in which they were allowed to disport themselves so scandalous to the sober taste of the rector's wife, that Catherine involuntarily regarded the little cottage on the hill as a spot of misrule in the general order of the parish. She would go in, say, at eleven o'clock in the morning, find her mother-in-law in bed, half-dressed, with all her handmaidens about her, giving her orders, reading her letters and the newspaper, cutting ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... no other end in his actions than private interest.' Mill points this by referring to the 'organs of aristocratical opinion' for the last fifty years. The incessant appeal has been for 'confidence in public men,' and confidence is another name for scope for misrule.[113] This, he explains, was what he meant by the statement (which Mackintosh considered to have been exploded by Macaulay) that every man pursued his own interest.[114] It referred to the class legislation of the great aristocratic ring: ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... the deposits; he had antagonised the Chenango canal for reasons presented by Comptroller Marcy, and he gave generously of his time in the Court of Errors. He had grown into a statesman of acknowledged genius and popularity, placing himself in sympathy with the masses, denouncing misrule and supporting measures of reform. Of all the old and experienced members of the Senate, it was freely admitted that none surpassed him in a knowledge of the affairs of the State, or in a readiness to debate leading questions. But, well fitted as he was, he did not solicit the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... Wilkes, and the town had been harassed by disorder. Of the fierce brutality of the crowd of that age, we may form a vivid idea from the unflinching pencil of Hogarth. Barbarous laws were cruelly administered. The common people were turbulent, because misrule made them miserable. Wilkes had written filthy verses, but the crowd cared no more for this than their betters cared about the vices of Lord Sandwich. They made common cause with one who was accidentally a more conspicuous sufferer. Wilkes ...
— Burke • John Morley

... the Queen's train, eclipsing all in splendor, and all but her royal mistress in beauty. He subjoined to these complaints of the unsatisfactoriness of a life of pleasure, lamentable statements of the misrule of the King, and the oppression of his government, the arbitrary punishments of the Star-chamber, the illegal fines, loans and projects, by which the royal coffers were filled, and concluded with affirming, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... a hurried review of the war the downfall of Turkey, the release of ancient Mesopotamia, Palestine, and large parts of Asia Minor, and freeing the ancient Christian nation of Armenia from the dreadful despotism of Turkish misrule. It is impossible to go into the details of the successive movements leading to this happy result. The forces of Great Britain, under command of General Maud, later General Allenby, must be given the credit. We must not forget that ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... everywhere the ignorant and malignant masses and their no less malignant and hardly less ignorant leaders and spokesmen, having sown the wind of reasonless obstruction and partisan vilification, are reaping the whirlwind of misrule. So far as concerns the public service, gentlemen are mostly on a strike against introduction of the mud-machine. This high-minded political workman, Casimir-Perier, never showed to so noble advantage as in gathering up his ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... thine Can stretch in dust that heaven-defended line? In vain allies may swarm from distant lands, And demons aid in formidable bands, Great as thou art, thou shun'st the field of fame, Disgrace to Britain and the British name! When offer'd combat by the noble foe, (Foe to misrule) why did the sword forego The easy conquest of the rebel-land? Perhaps TOO easy for thy ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... there is no science in statesmanship, and our politics are but a ruthless trampling on the simple maxims of political economy. These were the forces that secretly working through the patient years of misrule and folly caused to bloom and fruit in a night, this stalwart tribe of rural statesmen who so remorselessly struck down the Republican party in its State of largest majority, and so disfigured the fortunes of the master polytechnic orator. A hayseed sprouted and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... for Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a Burthen to their Parents." Nothing comparable to this piece of writing is to be found in any literature; while the mere fact that it came into being must stand as one of the deadliest indictments against England's misrule. Governments and rulers have been satirized time and again, but no similar condition of things has existed with a Swift living at the time, to observe and comment on them. The tract itself must be read with a knowledge of the Irish conditions then prevailing; its temper is so calm ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... French colony of Ubangi-Shari became the Central African Republic upon independence in 1960. After three tumultuous decades of misrule - mostly by military governments - a civilian government ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... land, and willing (at least, after affliction had sharpened his reflecting conscience), had that choice been allowed him, to have redeemed them by any personal sacrifice. But that was not possible. Centuries of misrule are not ransomed by an individual ruin; and had it been possible that the dark genius of his family, the same who once tolled funeral knells in the ears of the first Bourbon, and called him out as a martyr hurrying to meet his own sacrifice—could ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... their curses are loud and long. But the bean-growers, dependent chiefly on wind and weather, only speak of God's will. They have the same forgiveness for the shortcomings of nature as for a wayward child. And no wonder they are distrustful. Ages of oppression and misrule have passed over their heads; sun and rain, with all their caprice, have been kinder friends to them than their earthly masters. Some day, presumably, the government will wake up to the fact that Italy is not an industrial country, and that its farmers ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... sought to compose the dissensions and misrule which had arisen out of the Lysandrian Dekarchies, or governments of ten, in the Greco-Asiatic cities, avoiding as much as possible the infliction of death or exile.—Grote, part ii. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... His countenance, withdrawing the assistance and protection which they so gratefully accepted in distress, but deceitfully rejected when prosperity returned. The relapse threw them suddenly into direful conditions of misrule, oppression, and profuse bloodshed, which continued nearly half ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... I should ask as Lord of Misrule, and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of Unreason. I would suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany Mrs. Fry; Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia, Ninon de l'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a table ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... of this picturesque figure of early English times is that given by Sir Walter Scott in "Ivanhoe," concerning the archery contest during the rule or misrule of Prince John, in the absence of Richard from the kingdom. Robin Hood, under the assumed name of Locksley, boldly presents himself at a royal tournament at Ashby, as competitor for the prize in shooting with the long-bow. From the eight or ten archers who enter the contest, the number ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... his power to keep before the people "the supreme issue" raised by the events of that year. Now, however, he felt unequal to "a new engagement which involves four years of ceaseless toil. Such a work of renovation after many years of misrule, such a reform of systems and policies, to which I would cheerfully have sacrificed all that remained to me of health and life, is now, I fear, beyond ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... the social conditions in the midst of which Luther appeared. It was on this turbulent flood of social unrest that the Reformation was launched. When the great reformer's voice was heard, denouncing priestly misrule and hierarchical tyranny, these were the people who listened, and they interpreted his words by their own experience. If his quarrel was largely with theological or ecclesiastical abuses, theirs was mainly with industrial ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... governmental system which long had been notoriously disjointed and inefficient was replaced by a system which, if despotic, was at least much superior to that which theretofore had been in operation. The nobles, discredited by the calamities which their misrule had brought upon the nation, were compelled to give way, and the estates represented in the Danehof surrendered, in a measure voluntarily, a considerable portion of the privileges to which they had been accustomed to lay claim. The monarchy was put once more upon an hereditary basis and its ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... the kingdom. Had a severe law been severely and consistently enforced, slander, heresy, and political thought might have been stamped out together. Such was in some measure the case in the reign of Louis XIV. But under the misrule of the courtiers of his feeble successors, no strict law was adhered to. There was a common tendency to wink at illegal writings of which half the public approved. Malesherbes, for instance, was at one time at the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... they hilariously wasted their scanty store of Indian corn by making an image with the sheaves, and wreathing it with the painted garlands of autumn foliage. They crowned the King of Christmas and bent the knee to the Lord of Misrule! Such fantastic foolery is inconceivable in a Puritan community, and the Maypole which was its emblem was the most inconceivable of all. This "flower-decked abomination," ornamented with white birch bark, banners, and blossoms, was the center of the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... while, increased, and a burdened people lamented in vain their misfortune and decline. The reign of Philip IV. was the most disastrous in the annals of the country. The Catalan insurrection, the loss of Jamaica, the Low Countries, and Portugal, were the results of his misrule and imbecility. So rapidly did Spain degenerate, that, upon the close of the Austrian dynasty, with all the natural advantages of the country, the best harbors and sea-coast in Europe, the richest soil, and the finest ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... up my pen. That, even when he has studied them most, the temporal interests of his people must suffer in his hands, has been proved by the sufferings of millions through centuries of oppression and misrule. And must it not always be so, when the interests of husbands and fathers are intrusted to men cut off by education and profession from the domestic sympathies wherein these interests have birth, and that domestic ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Quevedo Mary passes to Calderon, whom she justly considers the master of Spanish poetry. She deplores the little that is known of his life, and that after him the fine period of Spanish literature declines, owing to the tyranny and misrule which were crushing and destroying the spirit and intellect of Spain; for, unfortunately, art and poetry require not only the artist and the poet, but congenial atmosphere ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time; and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and unprincipled, and obey no law." And for me, I was ready enough to fall in with the fellow's humour; was not this a whole holiday? So we sheered off together, arm-in-arm, so to speak; and with fullest confidence I took the jigging, thwartwise course my chainless ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... buffoonery describe? Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit—sophist—songster—Yorick of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day—but all night long Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, pensive, solemn strain, As if thou didst in this, thy moonlight song, Like to the melancholy Jaques, complain, Musing on falsehood, violence, and wrong, And sighing for ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... as Henry entered. "Here I am in a vortex of crime and misrule," he said, "and I should have been out of my wits if it had not been for that wine. There's another glass over there, Henry; ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... 1841. This has been the usual rallying site of the Democratic party for centuries. Here occurred the tragedy of St. Bartholomew in 1572; here mob-posts, gallows, and guillotines did the work of a despotic misrule until 1789. (As we left for Brussels on the evening of the 13th of July, all Paris was gayly decorated with red, white, and blue bunting, ready to celebrate the event of July 14, 1789, the fall of the Bastile.) On this ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... Caribbean Sea. Where these states are stable and prosperous, they stand on a footing of absolute equality with all other communities. But some of them have been a prey to such continuous revolutionary misrule as to have grown impotent either to do their duties to outsiders or to enforce their rights against outsiders. The United States has not the slightest desire to make aggressions on any one of these states. On the contrary, it ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... the lower classes can scarcely understand that he can have any part or parcel in the government of his country. Long ages of misrule have made him hate all governments alike: he imagines that all the evils he finds in the world of his own experience are the work of whoever happens to be the ruler for the time being; that it is possible ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... most destructive canker of the Roman State. It was this social evil, more than political misrule, which undermined the empire. Slavery proved at Rome a monstrous curse, destroying all manliness of character, creating contempt of honest labor, making men timorous yet cruel, idle, frivolous, weak, dependent, powerless. The empire might have lasted centuries longer but for this incubus, the standing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... planning that Henry Sydney should be appointed Lord of Misrule, or ordained Abbot of Unreason at the least, so successful had been his revival of the Mummers, the Hobby-horse not forgotten. Their host had entrusted to Lord Henry the restoration of many old observances; and the joyous feeling which this celebration of Christmas had diffused throughout an extensive ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... in the campe, let him be a Lord of misrule, if you wil, for he kept a plaine alehouse without welt or gard of anie Iuibush, and solde syder and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came (at that verie name of syder, I can but sigh, there ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... happened, Dinant had not been very ready to open hostilities against the House of Burgundy though she was equally critical of Louis of Bourbon in his episcopal misrule. It was undoubtedly her rivalry with Bouvignes of Namur that brought her into the strife. That neighbour had taunted her rival to exasperation, and the fact that it was safe under the Duke of Burgundy and backed by him as Count of Namur, had brought a Burgundian ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... to a man for the sake of gaining an ally. But he could not bring himself to the point of telling her the story of graft and misrule in which the MacMorroghs were the principals, and North—and her uncle, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... self-exculpates, lend to foulest deeds! Thy trusting lord didst thou, his servant, slay; Kinsman, thou slew'st thy kinsman; friend, thy friend— This were enough; but let me tell thee, too, Thou hadst no cause, as feign'd, in his misrule. For ask at Argos, asked in Lacedaemon, Whose people, when the Heracleidae came, Were hunted out, and to Achaia fled, Whether is better, to abide alone, A wolfish band, in a dispeopled realm, Or conquerors with conquer'd to unite Into one puissant folk, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... the territory had been ceded to the United States, but that a state of things and population had grown up during the war, and after the treaty of peace, which made some other authority necessary to maintain the rights of the ceded inhabitants and of immigrants, from misrule and violence. He may not have comprehended fully the principle applicable to what he might rightly do in such a case, but he felt rightly and acted accordingly. He determined, in the absence of all ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis

... the sentiment which leads it to fight against absorption or subjugation is none the less admirable. And when the foreign domination is reckless and inhuman, standing for nothing but vindictive malice and the greed of empire; and when the victims of the misrule are strong in the simple virtues of the poor, we have the case in its most ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... mode of living, and exemplary in its conduct; but it would seem that it gradually lapsed into those abuses which disgraced too many of the wealthy monastic establishments; for there are documents among its archives which intimate the prevalence of gross misrule and dissolute sensuality among its members. At the time of the dissolution of the convents during the reign of Henry VIII., Newstead underwent a sudden reverse, being given, with the neighboring manor and rectory ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... formed a consolidated and united state, in which the intelligent statecraft of the first Lagidae, skilfully availing itself of ancient national and religious precedent, had established a completely absolute cabinet government, and in which even the worst misrule failed to provoke any attempt either at emancipation or disruption. Very different from the Macedonians, whose national attachment to royalty was based upon their personal dignity and was its political expression, the rural population in Egypt was wholly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... that event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures were those which participated the most extensively in these sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realise. If the Revolution had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into the soul. The revulsion ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... rose into an uproar, Misrule for a time was king; The clown with a foolish chuckle, Bolted into the ring. But as, with a squeak and flourish, The fiddles closed their tune, "You hold him as if he was made of glass!" Said the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... questions Shelley devoted much of his time, and took up his residence in Dublin, to aid the independence of Ireland, which might, under proper treatment, have been made one of the brightest spots in the British Dominions; but the inhabitants of which, owing to centuries of English misrule and oppression, had, in certain parts, fallen into a condition not much superior to that of those of Central Africa. When we contemplate what Ireland was before the Norman and Saxon had set their ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... all the graces of voice and language, and yet each failed conspicuously in practical effect whenever he ran counter to the predilections and passions of his countrymen. Gladstone succeeded when he attacked the Irish Church, and denounced the abominations of Turkish misrule: he failed when he tried to palliate his blunders in Egypt, and to force Home Rule down the throat of the "Predominant Partner." Bright succeeded when he pleaded for the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the extension of the Suffrage: he failed when he opposed the Crimean War, and lost his ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... suffer him to come no more amongst them, but forct him to seeke bread to eate, and other releefe from his neigbours, till he could gett passages for England. After this they fell to great licenciousnes, and led a dissolute life, powering out them selves into all profanenes. And Morton became lord of misrule, and maintained (as it were) a schoole of Athisme. And after they had gott some good into their hands, and gott much by trading with y^e Indeans, they spent it as vainly, in quaffing & drinking both wine & strong waters in great exsess, and, as some reported, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... of feeling. So Job sat himself upon the ground seven days and seven nights, speechless. Not in this case, as is said of Schiller's Robbers, did the pent volcano find vent in power-words; not in strong and terrible accents was uttered the hoarded wrath of long centuries of misrule and oppression. The volcano, raging, aching, threw itself in silence into the arms of one who could soothe and allay it. The thunder is noisy and harmless. The lightning is silent,—and the lightning splits, kills, consumes. Humanity had muttered its thunder ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... not enter into a very lengthy account of the celebrated Papal decree which has made so many martyrs, depopulated our schools, introduced ignorance, fanaticism, and misrule, rewarded vice, thrown the whole community into the greatest confusion, caused disorder everywhere, and established the most arbitrary and the most barbarous inquisition; evils which have doubled within the last thirty years. I will content myself with a word or two, and will ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... while on board ship had conducted themselves with the greatest propriety, and appeared the most quiet, orderly set of people in the world, no sooner set foot upon the island than they became infected by the same spirit of insubordination and misrule, and were just as insolent and noisy as ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the hospitals and abbeys, the lawless violence of each petty baron, the weakness of the royal authority in restraining oppression, its terrible power in aiding the oppressor. He accumulated instance on instance of misrule; he showed the insecurity of property, the adulteration of the coin, the burden of the imposts; he spoke of wives and maidens violated, of industry defrauded, of houses forcibly entered, of barns and granaries despoiled, of the impunity of all offenders, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... acting also without authority, and their laws are void—then you are already in the midst of anarchy and wild misrule —then has no man a title to an inch of land, and you are ready for an equal of division of property—all protection of life and liberty is at an end, and the will of a ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... work, was due in great measure to certain conditions then existing in Japan. When Xavier and his successors reached Japan, it was to find the people of that country in a state of the greatest misery, the result of a long era of anarchy and misrule. Of the native religions, Shintoism had in great measure vanished, while Buddhism, though affecting the imaginations of the people by the gorgeousness of its service, had little with which to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... The second is a very plain, and greatly precious one: namely,—that whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled in this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems possible to the nature of man. In all other paths by which that happiness is pursued there is disappointment, or destruction: for ambition and for passion there is ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... advent of morn, And relish the odor fresh from the thorn, She was far too pamper'd a madam— Or to joy in the daylight waxing strong, While, after ages of sorrow and wrong, The scorn of the proud, the misrule of the strong, And all the woes that to man belong, The Lark still carols the selfsame song That he ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... and will understand that it would be imprudent in me to appear openly, even on my own estate. I have a written covenant authorizing me to visit every farm near us, to look after my own interests; yet, it may be questioned if it would be safe to visit one among them all, now that the spirits of misrule and covetousness are up ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... clergyman, caught the fever and died while they were piously attending on the sick. They were acting like righteous men doing their duty at their posts; but God's laws could not turn aside for them. Improvidence, and misrule, which had been working and growing for hundreds of years, had at last brought the famine fever, and even the righteous must perish by it. They had their sins, no doubt, as we all have; but then they were doing God's work bravely and honestly enough, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... which the Burgundian dukes had ruled were prevented by natural causes, from being united. Arras, Ghent, Liege instead of forming a solidarity, were separate units of interest. This made the subjugation of one or the other an easy matter to the tyrant who oppressed. As Arras declined under the misrule of Charles le Temeraire (whose possessions at one time outlined the whole northern and eastern border of France) Brussels came into the highest prominence as a source ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... in the king's house," says Stow, "wheresoever he lodged, at the feast of Christmas, a 'Lord of Misrule, or Master of Merry Disports;' and the like also was there in the house of every nobleman of honour or good worship, whether spiritual or temporal. Among these, the Mayor and Sheriffs of London had their several Lords of Misrule, ever contending, without quarrel ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various

... of woman through the ages of misrule and violence that corrupted the spirit of chivalry, would be useless. It is sufficiently evident, that in proportion as the vices of barbarism renewed their dominion, the condition of women would be more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... fresh courage and inspiration from the waning powers of the mother-country in the early years of the century just closed, organized that federation which, after long years of almost hopeless struggle, lifted the yoke of Spanish misrule from New Granada and proclaimed the Republic of Colombia. Cartagena was the first city of Colombia to declare its independence from Spain. And in the great war which followed the "Heroic City" passed through terrible vicissitudes, emerging from it still ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... gratify his towering ambition, is now regarded as a political reformer of the very highest and best class,—as the man who alone thoroughly understood his age and his country, and who was Heaven's own instrument to rescue unnumbered millions from the misrule of an oligarchy whose members looked upon mankind as their proper prey. He did not overthrow the freedom of Rome, but he took from Romans the power to destroy the personal freedom of all the races by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... that Sturla does not understand his subject. The tragedy of Duke Skule does not escape him; he recognises the contradiction in the life of Hacon's greatest rival, between Skule's own nobility and generosity of temper, and the hopelessness of the old scrambling misrule of which he is the representative. But the tragedy of the Rival Kings (Kongsemnerne) is left for Ibsen to work out in full; the portraits of Skule and Hacon are only given in outline. In the part describing Hacon's childhood among the veterans ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... miscellaneous and most disorderly collection of cows, horses, pigs, and oxen, to say nothing of his own five boys, (for Jem was a widower,) each of whom, in striving to remedy, was apt to enhance the confusion, and an admirable lord of misrule at the drovers' dinners and tradesmen's suppers over which he presided. There was a mixture of command and good-humour, of decision and fun, in the gruff, bluff, weather-beaten countenance, surmounted with its rough shock of coal-black hair, and in the voice loud as a stentor, with which he now ...
— Miss Philly Firkin, The China-Woman • Mary Russell Mitford

... States imposes upon the authorities of the Union in this emergency, it can not be overlooked that there is no sufficient cause for the acts of South Carolina, or for her thus placing in jeopardy the happiness of so many millions of people. Misrule and oppression, to warrant the disruption of the free institutions of the Union of these States, should be great and lasting, defying all other remedy. For causes of minor character the Government could not submit to such a catastrophe without a violation of its most sacred obligations to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... Gordon, the Sudan was abandoned to the dervishes. The Egyptian frontier was withdrawn to Wadi Haifa, and the vast provinces of Kordofan, Darfur and the Bahr-el-Ghazal were given over to dervish tyranny and misrule. It was obvious that Egypt would sooner or later seek to recover her position in the Sudan, as the command of the upper Nile was recognized as essential to her continued prosperity. But the international position ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the Moors could not subdue. Anarchy reigned in Songhay. The Moors tried to put down disorder with a high hand, drove out and murdered the distinguished men of Timbuktu, and as a result let loose a riot of robbery and decadence throughout the Sudan. Pasha now succeeded pasha with revolt and misrule until in 1612 the soldiers elected their own pasha and deliberately shut themselves up in the Sudan by cutting off approach ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... hearts seemed the signal for annihilation; and then, indeed, it appeared that the prophecy of Mary Ballard's old grandfather had been fulfilled and the curse of slavery had not only been wiped out with blood, but that the greater curse of anarchy and misrule had taken its place to still ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... people was like a captive, who, continually visited by his jailer, rattles at his fetters with the strength of despair, till he wrenches them asunder." It was not only the freedom of the Jew, but the safety of Judaism that was imperiled by the misrule of a Claudius and a Nero. The war against the Romans was then not merely a struggle for national liberty, but, equally with the wars of the Maccabees against the Seleucids, an episode in the more vital conflict between Hebraism ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... temperament, to talk so coolly, Or act so carelessly, in that which is 350 The bloom or blight of all men's happiness, (For Glory's pillow is but restless, if Love lay not down his cheek there): some strong bias, Some master fiend is in thy service, to Misrule the mortal who believes him slave, And makes his every thought subservient; else Thou'dst say at once—"I love young Ida, and Will wed her;" or, "I love her not, and all The powers on earth shall never make me."—So Would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... beseeching, half-discontented look, which is their wont to have on such occasions, as much as to say, "What shall we do next?" Grown people who have been much with children, know full well that there is no peace when such symptoms appear, under such circumstances, unless, before the king of misrule begins his reign, something is proposed of a composing tendency for turbulent spirits. Accordingly, Mrs. Chilton asked the children if they had ever heard of the Mayday ball which is given every year to the children in Washington. "No," ...
— Two Festivals • Eliza Lee Follen

... integral part of the Scandinavian as of the Saxon character, renders them contented and unrepining under such repeated disappointments. There is the stuff here for a noble people, although nature and a long course of neglect and misrule have done their ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... with oute stoppe or barre. Their Phisicque is abstinence, which is able not only to cure the maladie already crepte in: but also to holde oute suche as otherwise mighte entre. Thei couette no sightes, nor shewes of misrule: no disguisinges nor entreludes. But when thei be disposed to haue the pleasure of the stage, thei entre into the regestre of their stories, and what thei finde theremoste fit to belaughed at, that do thei lamente and bewaile. They delight not as many ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... scattered through the forests of Yucatan and southward are so many monuments of Spanish misrule, oppression, and rapacity. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... continued to adhere to the cause of Union. In the Confederacy itself nearly all dissent was silenced by war. Men who had been bitter opponents joined hands in defense of their homes; when the armed conflict was over they remained side by side working against "Republican misrule and negro domination." By 1890, after Northern supremacy was definitely broken, they boasted that there were at least twelve Southern states in which no Republican candidate for President could win a ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... journey to Toulouse, seemingly upon an errand of charity, to settle some law affairs for his relations. The sanitary state of the southern cities is bad enough still. It must have been horrible in those days of barbarism and misrule. Dysentery was epidemic at Toulouse then, and Rondelet took it. He knew from the first that he should die. He was worn out, it is said, by over-exertion; by sorrow for the miseries of the land; by fruitless struggles to keep the peace, and to strive for moderation ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley



Words linked to "Misrule" :   government activity, misgovernment, governing, administration, governance, government



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