"Oligarchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gray's Inn, and other similar associations, have had the fortune to witness. Our traditions and records speak of twenty revolutions within the last twelve years, in which the aforesaid state has repeatedly changed from absolute despotism to republicanism, not forgetting the intermediate stages of oligarchy, limited monarchy, and even gynocracy; for I myself remember Alsatia governed for nearly nine months by an old fish-woman. 'I hen it fell under the dominion of a broken attorney, who was dethroned by a reformado captain, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Master) shall be selected out of that body"—meaning the past Grand Stewards. This act was amazing. Already the Craft had let go its power to elect the Wardens, and now the choice of the Grand Master was narrowed to the ranks of an oligarchy in its worst form—a queer outcome of Masonic equality. Three months later the Grand Stewards presented a memorial asking that they "might form themselves into a special lodge," with special jewels, etc. Naturally ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... be ere long, a sharp contest between the friends of Freedom and the Southern oligarchy, I ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... association with the bank, a representative council was elected by the people, and the government was administered by the Doge and this council. This was gradually transformed from a government of the people to an oligarchy; and as the years passed there were no steps taken toward a return, but the authority and power was more and more centralized. The ruling class was, in a hundred years, limited to those families enrolled in the "Golden ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... political factions as there were physical types of country in Attica. The mountaineers, who were the poorest party, wanted something like a democracy; the people of the plains, comprising the greatest number of rich families, were clamorous for an oligarchy; the coast population of the south, intermediate both in social position and wealth, wanted something between the two. The same three-fold division appeared again in 564 B.C. on the usurpation of Peisistratus.[27] Here the connection between geographic condition and political opinion is clear ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... officers of their own appointing; and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy: or else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a few select men, and their heirs or successors; and then it is an oligarchy: or else into the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy: if to him and his heirs, it is an hereditary monarchy: if to him only for life, but upon his death the power only of nominating a successor to return to them; ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... existing constitutions, we find that while he regards them as imperfect approximations to the ideal, he also thinks of them as the result of the struggle between classes. Democracy, he explains, is the government not of the many but of the poor; oligarchy a government not of the few but of the rich. And each class is thought of, not as trying to express an ideal, but as struggling to acquire power or maintain its position. If ever the class existed in unredeemed ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... only worked in new ways. The pity and energy of the humane at home drove a perplexed and sluggish government to pass an act for dealing with the abominations of the prisons to which the unhappy blacks were committed in Jamaica. The assembly of that island, a planter oligarchy, resented the new law from the mother country as an invasion of their constitutional rights, and stubbornly refused in their exasperation, even after a local dissolution, to perform duties that were indispensable for working the machinery ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... opposition to Jacobinism and Bolshevism. Under Jacobinism and Bolshevism, as their inventors proclaim, true policy must be made to prevail by force, or fraud, if necessary. Privilege is claimed for the minority. Oligarchy, and a very militant form of oligarchy, thus takes the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... under Edward the Fourth this largeness of borough life was roughly curtailed. The trade companies which vindicated civic freedom from the tyranny of the older merchant gilds themselves tended to become a narrow and exclusive oligarchy. Most of the boroughs had by this time acquired civic property, and it was with the aim of securing their own enjoyment of this against any share of it by "strangers" that the existing burgesses for the most part procured charters of incorporation from the Crown, which turned them ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... point of view, the English with their sort of Doge, are more advanced than we are. Politics have nothing to do with that, my dear fellow. Politics consist in giving the nation an impetus by creating an oligarchy embodying a fixed theory of government, and able to direct public affairs along a straight path, instead of allowing the country to be pulled in a thousand different directions, which is what has been happening for the last forty years in our beautiful France—at once so intelligent ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... the government at the last moment mistrusted a city jury in this instance—even a packed city jury—and without any notice to the traversers, sent the indictments before the county grand jury, so that they might be tried by a jury picked and packed from the anti-Irish oligarchy of the Pale. It was an act of gross illegality, hardship, and oppression. The illegality of such a course had been ruled and decided in the case of Mr. Gavan Duffy in 1848. But the point was raised vainly now. When Mr. Pigott, of the Irishman, was called ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... case it is no good for the particular problem of their own country. Palestine cannot have a population of Prime Ministers and Chief Justices; and if those they rule and judge are not Jews, then we have not established a commonwealth but only an oligarchy. It is said again that the ancient Jews turned their enemies into hewers of wood and drawers of water. The modern Jews have to turn themselves into hewers of wood and drawers of water. If they cannot do that, they cannot turn themselves into citizens, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... other reasons for objecting to class stratification of income which have heaped themselves up since the time of Jesus. In politics it defeats every form of government except that of a necessarily corrupt oligarchy. Democracy in the most democratic modern republics: Prance and the United States for example, is an imposture and a delusion. It reduces justice and law to a farce: law becomes merely an instrument for keeping the poor in subjection; and accused workmen are tried, not by a jury ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... the larger sense, and even to some extent in the narrow political sense, unless the college can produce a hierarchy of character and intelligence which shall in due measure perform the office of the discredited oligarchy of birth, we had better make haste to divert our enormous collegiate endowments ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... of Government, in the Histories, and books of Policy; as Tyranny, and Oligarchy: But they are not the names of other Formes of Government, but of the same Formes misliked. For they that are discontented under Monarchy, call it Tyranny; and they that are displeased with Aristocracy, called it Oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... was to show the ills resulting to Greece from the separation and conflict of the spirits or elements of democracy and oligarchy. The object of Tacitus was to demonstrate the desperate consequences of the loss of liberty on the minds ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... difficulty most men who are concerned both for the good of their country and for the general order of society incline, especially as they grow older, to one, or other of the old traditional organic methods by which a State may be expressed and controlled. They incline to an oligarchy such as is here in England where a small group of families, intermarried one with the other, dining together perpetually and perpetually guests in each other's houses, are by a tacit agreement with the populace permitted to direct a nation. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... for the French people." He seems to have predicted that after his death they would require his "ashes" to tranquillise an enraged people. Of the other contracting party he says in the fifth paragraph of his will:—"I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy and its deputy; the English nation will not be ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... absolutely necessary that the classification of the citizens should be revised. On that classification depended the distribution of political power. Party spirit ran high; and the republic seemed to be in danger of falling under the dominion either of a narrow oligarchy or of an ignorant and headstrong rabble. Under such circumstances, the most illustrious patrician and the most illustrious plebeian of the age were entrusted with the office of arbitrating between the angry factions; and they performed their ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in his daring chariot entering the courtyard of Apsley House? Great was the panic at Brookes', wild the hopes of Carlton Terrace; all the gentlemen who expected to have been made peers perceived that the country was going to be given over to a rapacious oligarchy. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... and prosaically, no doubt, during the last two hundred years, but without any violent overturn such as has rent the life and history of almost every other considerable country, from a kind of mediaeval oligarchy to a vast modern democratic State based on the suffrages of six million or seven million electors, loyal to the Crown, and clothed with all the stately forms of the venerable English monarchy. Finance has been the keystone. Take finance away from the House of Commons, take the complete ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... political mystification, during which a people without power or education, had been induced to believe themselves the freest and most enlightened nation in the world, and had submitted to lavish their blood and treasure, to see their industry crippled and their labour mortgaged, in order to maintain an oligarchy, that had neither ancient memories to soften nor present services to justify ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... belonged to Thrace until 358 B. C., when it was seized by Philip, king of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great It was the place where Marcus Antonius and Octavius defeated Brutus and Cassius (42 B. C.). which defeat overthrew the Roman Oligarchy, and Augustus (Octavius) was made Emperor. Is was on the great highway through which all trade and traders going eastward and westward must pass, and was, therefore, a fit center of evangelism for all Europe. It was the place where the first church Of Europe was ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... reading I have preferred; and Dean Merivale and Hosius adopted it. (27) For the character and career of Curio, see Merivale's "History of the Roman Empire", chapter xvi. He was of profligate character, but a friend and pupil of Cicero; at first a rabid partisan of the oligarchy, he had, about the period of his tribuneship (B.C. 50-49), become a supporter of Caesar. How far Gaulish gold was the cause of this conversion we cannot tell. It is in allusion to this change that he was termed the prime mover ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Commonwealth against the renewed danger of a Royalist outburst at home and inburst from abroad to take advantage of the political crash, the Wallingford-House chiefs would probably have thought it sufficient to constitute themselves into a military Oligarchy for maintaining and carrying on Richard's Protectorate. Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert would have been a Triumvirate in Richard's name, and the only deliberative apparatus would have been the general council of officers continued, or ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the Marechal-Duc and the election of M. Grevy the Government of France, ten years ago, became what it now is—a parliamentary oligarchy, with absolutely no practical check upon its will except the recurrence every four years of the legislative elections. And as these elections are carried out under the direct control, through the prefects ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the century drew to a close, and the futility of so many vaunted reforms, the hollowness of so many promises, became apparent to the Italians with the shameful treaty which gave Venice, liberated of her oligarchy, to Austria, all the nobler men of the day, Pindemonti, Botta, Foscolo, and the crowds of nameless patriotic youths who filled the universities, were seized by a terrible soul-sickness; everything seemed to have given way, each ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... country is wheat, and the question of its rapid and cheap transportation is a most important one, both to the producer and consumer. Combinations have been formed in the past whereby the carriage and price was subject to the control of a few, to the great detriment of the producer; but this wheat oligarchy is now likely to receive its quietus in view of this new and competing outlet to eastern markets by way ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... government threw him into contact. He read and spoke English, he was acquainted with Italian. He knew that the kings were dilettanti, that the theory of the aristocracies was liberal. He had no little sympathy with the philosophy which a leisurely oligarchy had framed in England; it is one of the tragedies of the Revolution that he desired to the last an alliance, or at least peace, with this country. Where Robespierre was a maniac in foreign policy, Danton was more than a sane—he was a just, and even a diplomatic man. He was fond of wide ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... obtained in this memorable struggle. This section of the aristocracy were the origin of the English Whigs, though that title was not invented until the next reign. The primitive Whigs-'Parliament-men,' as they liked to call themselves, 'Roundheads,' as they were in time dubbed—aspired to an oligarchy. For a moment they obtained one; but unable to maintain themselves in power against the returning sense and rising spirit of a generous and indignant people, they called to their aid that domestic revolutionary party which exists in all countries, and an anti-national enemy in addition. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... its object and secured the acknowledgment of it from the other party to the quarrel, and from the world at large. The Republican Party in the November elections had really effected a peaceful revolution, had emancipated the country from the tyranny of an oligarchy which had abused the functions of the Government almost from the time of its establishment, to the advancement of their own selfish aims and interests; and it was this legitimate change of rulers and of national policy by constitutional means ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... centuries of republican rule are apt to turn any republicans into patricians, particularly so if they are prosperous, self-confident, and well aware of their importance. And a patrician republic necessarily turns into an oligarchy. The prince-merchants of Holland were Holland's statesmen, Holland's absolute rulers; two centuries of heroic struggles, intrepid energy, crowned with success on all sides, may even account for their belief that they were entrusted ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... favorite of Pompey. The doctor hated aristocrats as he hated the gates of Erebus. Now Pompey was not only the leader of a most selfish aristocracy, but also their tool. Secondly, as if this were not bad enough, that section of the aristocracy to which he had dedicated his services was an odious oligarchy; and to this oligarchy, again, though nominally its head, he was in effect the most submissive of tools. Caesar, on the other hand, if a democrat in the sense of working by democratic agencies, was bending all his efforts to the reconstruction of a new, purer, and enlarged aristocracy, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... bedroom windows. And the tradesmen's boys were continually leaping in and out of carts, or off and on tricycles, busily distributing food and drink, as though Putney had been a beleaguered city. It was extremely interesting and mysterious—and what made it the most mysterious was that the oligarchy of superior persons for whom these boys and girls so assiduously worked, remained invisible. He passed a newspaper shop and found his customary delight in the placards. This morning the Daily Illustrated announced nothing but: "Portrait ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... is successful, the Republic no longer endures. The people no longer rule; an oligarchy rules in the name of the people. And where this is true, the people deserve their fate. And so, young man, if you do not expect this fate to overtake the entire country, you have got to get right into "the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... others—and a wrong may be excusable in 1885 which is monstrous in 1895. The primitive virtue which had characterised the farmers broke down in the face of temptation. The country Boers were little affected, some of them not at all, but the Pretoria Government became a most corrupt oligarchy, venal and incompetent to the last degree. Officials and imported Hollanders handled the stream of gold which came in from the mines, while the unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the taxation was fleeced ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Rico, and Hawaii was of great interest to her, and she at once asked for the enfranchisement of the women of these newly won island possessions. She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male oligarchy," as she called it. "I really believe I shall explode," she wrote Clara Colby, "if some of you young women don't wake up and raise your voice in protest.... I wonder if when I am under the sod—or cremated and floating in the air—I shall have ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... it would not," replied Winthrop with an ironical laugh. "At least, it was not intended that way. But does our Government expect to make itself an oligarchy or despotism? If that is so, I should like to know ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... law, and self-sacrificing public spirit, without which a corporate body cannot exist: but that a "democracy" of mere numbers is no democracy, but a mere brute "arithmocracy," which is certain to degenerate into an "ochlocracy," or government by the mob, in which the numbers have no real share: an oligarchy of the fiercest, the noisiest, the rashest, and the most shameless, which is surely swallowed up either by a despotism, as in France, or as in Athens, by utter national ruin, and helpless slavery to a foreign ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... rejoiced to learn, from your excellent sister here, that you are occupied with another tale exposing slavery. I feel that it will act directly upon pending questions, and help us in our struggle for Kansas, and also to overthrow the slave-oligarchy in the coming Presidential election. We need your help ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... glimpse of the high-class criminal world of Chicago. The city, which was owned by an oligarchy of businessmen, being nominally ruled by the people, a huge army of graft was necessary for the purpose of effecting the transfer of power. Twice a year, in the spring and fall elections, millions of dollars were furnished by the businessmen and expended ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... day in which Graham dined with the Savarins, M. Louvier assembled round his table the elite of the young Parisians who constituted the oligarchy of fashion, to meet whom he had invited his new friend the Marquis de Rochebriant. Most of them belonged to the Legitimist party, the noblesse of the faubourg; those who did not, belonged to no political party at all,—indifferent ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fo'c'sle, no better school of philosophy than that of men upon their "beam ends." There were many such—Poles, Slovaks, Roumanians, an Armenian or two, refugees, adventurers from America, old, young, dissolute, making a necessity of virtue under that successful oligarchy, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... passed into unconsciousness, Loy Chuk went to work once more, using that pair of brain-helmets again, exploring carefully the man's mind. After hours of research, he proceeded to prepare his plans. The government of Kar-Rah was a scientific oligarchy, of which Loy was a prime member. It would be easy to get the ...
— The Eternal Wall • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... respite. But the Church still dominated the civil courts, and a transfer of the case meant that the Church would throw the onus of executing sentence on those lay figures who were the puppets of a Pharisaical oligarchy. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... an easy thing for John Randolph, and the other champions of the eastern Virginia oligarchy to commit their cause to the democratic party of the Mississippi Valley, whose leader was the "lawless" Jackson. Yet this is what they did. Nowhere outside of South Carolina was the influence of Calhoun more effective than in Virginia, and it must ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... the invaders. The fires of the hostile camp were seen from the top of the Stadthouse of Amsterdam. The Republic, thus fiercely assailed from without, was torn at the same time by internal dissensions. The government was in the hands of a close oligarchy of powerful burghers. There were numerous selfelected Town Councils, each of which exercised within its own sphere, many of the rights of sovereignty. These councils sent delegates to the Provincial States, and the Provincial States again sent delegates ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... therefore, shewn that, for the benefit of all classes, and the maintenance of order, the wisest plan was to make it hereditary. It is not to be denied that despotism, when it falls into good hands, has rendered a nation flourishing and happy, that an oligarchy has occasionally, but more rarely, governed with mildness and a regard to justice; but there never yet was a case of a people having seized upon the power, but the result has been one of rapacity and violence, until ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... development. They had been successively the subjects of Greece, Rome, and the Califate, of the German-Roman emperors, and of the republic of Pisa. Their latest ruler was Genoa, which had now degenerated into an untrustworthy oligarchy. United to that state originally by terms which gave the island a "speaker" or advocate in the Genoese senate, and recognized the most cherished habits of a hardy, natural-minded, and primitive people, they had little ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... maintained. The time will come, when repudiation will be repudiated by Mississippi—when her wretched secession leaders, the true authors of her disgrace and ruin, will be discarded—when her insolent slaveholding oligarchy will be overthrown, when the people will break the chains of their imperious masters, and labor, without regard to color, will be emancipated. Secession, repudiation, and slavery are the same in principle and had ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Oligarchy - a government in which control is exercised by a small group of individuals whose authority generally is based on wealth ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... affairs of men which sooner or later unveils the hidden features of selfishness; and there is no position in which my opinion is more fixed than in the utility of a firm union of honest men. If the cabals of the day be not speedily arrested, where shall our political bark be anchored? The Sylla of oligarchy, or Charybdis of disorganization must be the portion of our government. Of all tyrannies, oligarchies are the most delusive and dreadful, and anarchy ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... presidency, presidentship[obs3]; administration; proconsul, consulship; prefecture; seneschalship; magistrature[obs3], magistracy. monarchy; kinghood[obs3], kingship; royalty, regality; aristarchy[obs3], aristocracy; oligarchy, democracy, theocracy, demagogy; commonwealth; dominion; heteronomy; republic, republicanism; socialism; collectivism; mob law, mobocracy[obs3], ochlocracy[obs3]; vox populi, imperium in imperio[Lat]; bureaucracy; beadledom[obs3], bumbledom[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of creeds, and the autocrats of Rome no more represent the "Coming of the Son of Man," the Divine Logos that was and is "in the bosom of the Father in heaven," than do the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Harrimans, constituting the oligarchy of wealth, or than the political grafters and bosses of our municipalities represent the "New Commandment," "that ye love one another." The barons of wealth have not yet resorted directly to murder, as ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... all the baser elements of the popular nature; by moneyed corporations; by those enriched by the depreciation of government securities or paper; by small attorneys, schemers, money-jobbers, speculators and adventurers—an ignoble oligarchy, enriched by the distresses of the State, and fattened on the miseries of the people. Then all the deceitful visions of equality and the rights of man end; and the wronged and plundered State can regain a real liberty only by passing through "great varieties of untried being," purified ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the assembled nations of all the world, we protest against this government of the United States as an oligarchy of sex, and not a true republic; and we protest against calling this a centennial celebration of the independence of the people ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the second number was it revealed that the arch criminals were to be found in the exploiting class, a sinister combination, all-powerful, working to the detriment of the common people; an industrial oligarchy under whose rule the cowed wage slave toiled for his crust of bread. This number unflinchingly indicted the capitalistic ruling class; fearlessly called upon the exploited masses to rise and throw off the yoke put upon them by this nefarious plunderbund. The worker's plight was depicted ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... heart in the statement recently made by the Editor of "The New Age" that in moments such as these, when any waste is inexcusable, sterile complaint is the worst of waste. But my complaint here is not sterile. It is fruitful. This Capitalist Press has come at last to warp all judgment. The tiny oligarchy which controls it is irresponsible and feels itself immune. It has come to believe that it can suppress any truth and suggest any falsehood. It governs, and governs abominably: and it is governing thus in the midst of ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... creeping in everywhere, and under any and every form of government. This is being strikingly illustrated in these days. Under the name of a Republic, the traditions of a Military Oligarchy have ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... endeavoring to put in the enduring form of history, that the Convention at Montgomery was nothing but a set of 'conspirators,' whose object was the overthrow of the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and the erection of a great 'slavery oligarchy,' instead of the free institutions thereby secured and guaranteed. This work of the Montgomery Convention, with that of the Constitution for a Provisional Government, will ever remain, not only as a monument of the wisdom, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... neighbor and constant foe of Milan, had become a close oligarchy by a process of gradual constitutional development, which threw her government into the hands of a few nobles. She was practically ruled by the hereditary members of the Grand Council. Ever since the year 1453, when Constantinople fell beneath the Turk, the Venetians had been more and more straitened ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... school, a member of the Legislative Council of Upper Canada, and a firm ally and stiff upholder of the Provincial Executive, who had earned for themselves, by their autocratic rule, the rather sinister designation of "the Family Compact." As a trusted friend and loyal supporter of the oligarchy of the day, whom a well-known radical who figured prominently in the later history of the Province was wont to speak of as that army of placemen and pensioners, "Paymasters, Receivers, Auditors, King, Lords and Commons, who ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Taking the slow step first: it certainly was not the step of the proprietor. Men of his type walk with a rapid waddle, or they sit still. It could not be any servant or messenger waiting for directions. It did not sound like it. The poorer orders (in an oligarchy) sometimes lurch about when they are slightly drunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous scenes, they stand or sit in constrained attitudes. No; that heavy yet springy step, with a kind of careless emphasis, not specially ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... moss upon the stone assist in doing this, although repeatedly cut and cleaned away. It seems as if Nature wished to draw a kind of veil over the memory of the witch's judge, himself the sorrowful victim of a theocratic oligarchy. The lesson we learn from his errors is, to trust our own hearts and not to believe too fixedly in the doctrines of Church and State. It must be a dull sensibility that can look on this old slate-stone without a feeling of ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... art of war, and learn jurisprudence by serving in rotation upon grand and petit juries, their liberty is secure, and they will certainly flourish most when their public affairs are best administered by their Senate and Councils. I cannot think a monarchy or an oligarchy stronger in substance, whatever they may be in appearance, than a popular government.... I shall not die in peace without visiting your United States for a few months before the close of the eighteenth century. May I find wisdom ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... argument a few simple propositions,—that self-government is the natural condition of an adult society, as distinguished from the immature state, in which the temporary arrangements of monarchy and oligarchy are tolerated as conveniences; that the end of all social compacts is, or ought to be, to give every child born into the world the fairest chance to make the most and the best of itself that laws can give it; that Liberty, the one of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... did not itself govern. It obeyed a financial oligarchy which formed opinion by means of the newspapers, and held in its hands the representatives, the ministers, and the president. It controlled the finances of the republic, and directed the foreign affairs of the country as if it were ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... hardly for those who were thus debased; but the result was—and in this respect the analogy with England still holds good—that a very efficient and energetic government was created. The government of an oligarchy makes sometimes a very rich and powerful state, but ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of my Village Virus is simple enough. I was born in an Ohio town about the same size as Gopher Prairie, and much less friendly. It'd had more generations in which to form an oligarchy of respectability. Here, a stranger is taken in if he is correct, if he likes hunting and motoring and God and our Senator. There, we didn't take in even our own till we had contemptuously got used to them. It was a red-brick Ohio town, and the trees made ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... periods of English history, indeed, have the citizens of London stepped forward as the champions of freedom, and shown themselves the incorruptible guardians of the public interests. Never at any time, however, was there greater necessity for a sturdy bulwark against the growing power of the oligarchy than at the present moment. Little by little—or, rather, by rapid strides—does the Government seek to get within its grasp the control of every department of the commonwealth. To-day, the East-India Company is abolished, for the sake of the "better government of India;" to-morrow, the ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... another, those who really wished to preserve the public interests were weeded out, and nothing was left but a rump devoted to the Executive will. Instead of answering the purpose for which it was originally intended, the Legislative Council became a mere instrument in the hands of the oligarchy for stemming back the tide of public opinion. Instead of forming a seasonable and wholesome check upon extravagance and inconsiderate legislation in the Lower House, it contributed to the impoverishment ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the most grave and stern and just assembly that the world had seen—was now, with but a few superb exceptions, a timid, faithless, and licentious oligarchy; while—name whilome so majestical and mighty!—the people, the great Roman people, was but a mob! a vile colluvion of the offscourings of all climes and regions—Greeks, Syrians, Africans, Barbarians from the chilly north, and eunuchs from the vanquished ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... much in England by the unfortunate circumstance of his having been the leader of a political party. As the chief of a powerful party which he transformed with amazing audacity, as the victorious destroyer of the old Whig oligarchy and the founder of the new Tory democracy, as a man of Jewish birth and alien race, as a man to whom satire was the normal weapon and bombastic affectation a deliberate expedient for dazzling the weak—Disraeli, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... The machine era very shortly and decisively exploded the simple belief that "all men are born free and equal." Political power was superseded by economic and industrial power. To sustain their supremacy in the political field, governments and politicians allied themselves to the new industrial oligarchy. Old political theories and practices were totally inadequate to control the new situation or to meet the complex problems that ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... man as you, sir, would consent to put himself in nomination at the next election, every true Liberal in this place would rush to support you; and crush the oligarchy who rides over the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... legally a freeman. He lived unchanged under the old Slavonic patriarchal system of Mirs, or communes, and Volosts. These were the largest political organizations of which he had personal cognizance. He knew nothing about Muscovite consolidation, nor oligarchy, nor autocracy. No crumbs from the modern banquet had fallen into his lap. With a thin veneer of orthodoxy over their paganism and superstition the people listened in childish wonder to the same old tales—they lived their old primitive life of toil under the same system of simple fair-dealing ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... fact was that the speech was composed and written by one Expectant Dobbs, a poor retainer of Gashwiler, and the honorable member's labor as a proof-reader was confined to the introduction of such words as "anarchy," "oligarchy," "satrap," "palladium," and "Argus-eyed" in the proof, with little relevancy as to position or place, and no ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... consisting for the most part of salaried officers, judges, and members of the Legislative Council, who were not responsible either to the Governor or to the Legislative Council, or to the House of Assembly—an independent, irresponsible body—an oligarchy which exercised great power, was very ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... captured, as well as from the new[29] tributes and taxes just established, and they ought, inasmuch as it had been provided by the dangers that citizens had incurred, to expend it upon those very persons. Furthermore he was for constituting the land commissioners not a small body, to seem like an oligarchy, nor composed of men who were laboring under any legal indictment,[30] lest somebody might be displeased, but twenty to begin with, so that many might share the honor, and next those who were most suitable, except ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... provincial society, the "sets" and petty distinctions, giving a humorous relation of the collapse of her well-meaning efforts, in conjunction with friends at the sous-prefecture, to do away with some of these caste prejudices, of the horror and indignation created in the oligarchy of La Chatre by the apparition of an inoffensive music-master and his wife at the sous-prefet's reception, horror so great that on the next occasion, the salon of the official was unfurnished with guests, except for the said music-master and ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Assembly, ever in alarm on its own account, shields the popular club and accords it its favor or indulgence. A journal of the party had recommended "the people to form themselves into small platoons." These platoons, one by one, are growing. Each borough now has a local oligarchy, an enlisted and governing band. To create an army out of these scattered bands, simply requires a staff and a central rallying-point. The central point and the staff have both for a long time been ready in Paris, it is the association ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... so much for the empire. Their power was increased after the arrival of Governor John Wentworth—afterwards made a baronet—who had been the royal governor of New Hampshire, and had naturally a strong antipathy to democratic principles in any form. In his time there grew up an official oligarchy, chiefly composed of members of the legislative council, then embodying within itself executive, legislative and judicial powers. A Liberal party soon arose in Nova Scotia, not only among the early New England settlers of the time of Governor Lawrence, but among the Loyalists themselves, ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the constitution of savage society, it tended to place the control of affairs in the hands of the ablest man: it shifted the balance of power from the many to the one: it substituted a monarchy for a democracy, or rather for an oligarchy of old men; for in general the savage community is ruled, not by the whole body of adult males, but by a council of elders. The change, by whatever causes produced, and whatever the character of the early ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... reforms in her system, a further wise extension of the suffrage, with the vote by ballot, a cordial moral alliance with her kindred race in America, and a full participation, mutually beneficial, in our ever enlarging commerce. But her oligarchy has chosen coalition with the South and slavery, and war upon our Union and the republican principle. Divide and conquer is their motto, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... States to maintain governments which Congress might recognize, it has become the duty of the United States, standing in the place of guarantor," . . . "Therefore be it resolved, that there shall be no oligarchy, aristocracy, caste or monopoly invested with peculiar privileges or powers, and there shall be no denial of rights, civil or political, on account of race or color within the limits of the United States or the jurisdiction thereof, but all persons therein shall be equal before the law, whether ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few. Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary. Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government. The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Caesar describes as sacrificing human beings in vast wicker cages were the Druidical peoples who built Stonehenge and the great stone circles of Dartmoor and Cumberland, or whether with them the mode of worship was already traditional, preserved by a priestly oligarchy from a yet remoter age, and connected by I know not what strange links with the fierce Eastern worship of Baal or Melkarth, it is impossible to say with certainty at present, though the names by ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... received at the time in Europe, as well as the strong consciousness on the part of the patriarch, and those who acted with him, of the expediency of throwing the voice and countenance of the Church into the scale alike against the tribunitial oligarchy and against local jealousies and prejudices. There was perhaps in this case the additional inducement that the proposal to invest the doge with supreme power and jurisdiction over the Church, as well as over the state, might seem to involve ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Brutus are highly spoken of; the former stands as the ideal Stoic. The Senate, except in Book v. ad init., appears in a rather unfavourable light, and so does the plebs. Lucan did not want the re-establishment of the republican oligarchy, but acquiesced in the empire as being ordained by fate. This is borne out by what we know of the Pisonian conspiracy, the object of which was not to re-establish the republic, but to put some leading man like Seneca on the throne. A few ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... government being recognised, it was another sign of the times that its control should be transferred from the monarch to a committee of barons. At this point the rigid conceptions of the triumphant oligarchy stood in the way of a wide national policy. Since the reign of John the custom had arisen of consulting the representatives of the shire-courts on matters of politics and finance. In 1258 there is not the least trace of a suggestion that parliament could ever include a more popular element ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... so: crazy with conceit and vanity and arrogance. Who am I that I should set up for a critical bookstore-keeper? What is the Republic of Letters, anyway? A vast, benevolent, generous democracy, where one may have what one likes, or a cold oligarchy where he is compelled to take what is good for him? Is it a restricted citizenship, with a minority representation, or is it ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... made to confuse the public mind as to its origin and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States down from the national position they had instinctively taken to the old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaiming negro slavery the corner-stone of free institutions, and in the first flush of over-hasty confidence venturing to parade the logical sequence of their leading dogma, "that slavery is right ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... not tell me of our past Union, and for how many years we have been one. We were only one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to form an oligarchy on the floor of Congress! The moment we say no to this, the Union ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Say, she's a raving beauty. This Balta'd like to be elected planetary president, see—to succeed Wilcox, who has bigger plans. There's always been a strong sentiment for the old monarchy, anyway. The oligarchy never did go big. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... any one party, or any one form of government, is absolutely and exclusively true. Truth consists in the just relations of objects to each other. A majority or democracy may rule as outrageously and do as great harm as an oligarchy or despotism—though far less likely to do so. But the great evil is either a violation of the relations just referr'd to, or of the moral law. The specious, the unjust, the cruel, and what is called the unnatural, though not only permitted but ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the "intellectuals'' would simply lead to the substitution of the Divine right of kings by the Divine right of a petty oligarchy, which is too often narrow and tyrannical. Liberty cannot be created ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... you that, now, Commodore," Prince Trevannion said as Shatrak blanked the screen. "We have a petrified authoritarianism. Quite likely some sort of an oligarchy; I'd guess that this Convocation thing they talk about consists of all the ruling class, everybody has equal voice, and nobody will take the responsibility for doing anything. And the actual work of government is ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... into a river, or into a trench as quickly as possible. His family are left in ignorance as to his fate, and their only conclusion is to assume that he is dead. But Mr. Kruger's methods and his ruthless military oligarchy were disapproved even by his own countrymen, and more especially by his own countrywomen, who now began to mistrust the continual story of Boer victory, and asked pitifully for permission themselves to seek for fathers, sons, and brothers from whom they ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... altogether; that there are many of his kind whom, so far from loving, he hates, and that he would like to write his hatred with a lash upon their backs. Look again at the severe Prussianism which betrays itself in the New Creed of Strauss. Look at the oligarchy of enlightenment and enjoyment which Renan, in his Moral Reform of France, proposes to institute for the benefit of a select circle, with sublime indifference to the lot of the vulgar, who, he ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... to say that we now have to deal with an oligarchy of wealth, and that the Government must develop power sufficient enough to enable it to do ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the slave-holding oligarchy of the South rose in arms against those who presumed to interfere with this divine institution, the men of God of the South called down blessings upon their armies in words which, with the proper change of names, might have been spoken in Berlin in August, 1914. Thus Dr. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... magistrates were generally members, though not always. As to the number of temporal lords, it was almost invariably more than twelve, sometimes double as many. From the very first, this self-appointed oligarchy saw that in unity was strength; and while the different members of the royal family were squabbling among themselves, the Cabinet seized the opportunity to increase its power. Though not entitled to a definite ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... anything bad enough about aristocracies this morning, Hardy, and now to-night you are crowing over the success of the heaviest and cruelest oligarchy that ever lived, and praising them up ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... test of our institutions, that it is a life-and-death struggle between the two principles of liberty and slavery, that it is the cause of the common people the world over. We believe that every struggling nationality on the globe will be stronger if we conquer this odious oligarchy of slavery and that every oppressed people in the world will be weaker if we fail. The sober American regards the war as part of that awful yet glorious struggle which has been going on for hundreds ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... it after two weeks of effort, and marched on to the next royal post at Bedford, which was by far the nearest of the national garrisons. It was betrayed to them. When they were within the gates they received a message from the wealthier citizens of London (who were in practice one with the Feudal Oligarchy), begging ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... shown in a private letter to his chief, Lord John Russell. The picture he draws is lively, unflattering, but instructive. 'I am satisfied that the mass of the people are sound—moderate in their demands and attached to British institutions; but they have been oppressed by a miserable little oligarchy on the one hand and excited by a few factious demagogues on the other. I can make a middle reforming party, I am sure, that will put down both.' The record of seventy-five years and of two wars shows the attachment of the Canadians to British institutions, and how justly the governor-general ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... perceive the necessity of combining in 1400 under Louis XI., nor in 1600 under Richelieu, can we expect that in this nineteenth century of progress the middle classes will prove to be more permanently and solidly combined that the old nobility? An oligarchy of a hundred thousand rich men presents all the dangers of a democracy with none of its advantages. The principle of "every man for himself and for his own," the selfishness of individual interests, will kill the oligarchical selfishness so necessary to the existence of modern society, and ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... us to the ultimate analysis of this singular influence that has prevented doctrinal demands by the English people. There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day's newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people. In one paper ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... of the Mexican War was to add a large territory and a fast-increasing population to the tier of slave-holding States, and thus to aggrandize the slave-holding oligarchy, as opposed to the party in favor of free soil. On the other hand, the military glory won by General Taylor, and his adoption in the year after the war as the Whig candidate for the Presidency, singularly enough brought into power the party which had persistently opposed ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... on the island, but you are "requested" to keep off it, and not forbidden in the harsh imperatives of our brief authorities. It is again the difference between the social and the public, which is perhaps the main difference between an oligarchy and a democracy. The sensibilities are more spared in the one and the self-respect in the other, though this is saying it too loosely, and may not be saying it truly; it is only a conjecture with which I am parleying while I am getting round to add that such part of the levee as I saw in plain ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... modern American historians and writers whom I have read. I give my judgment for what it is worth. In my view, the victory of Jackson over the Whigs was the turning-point of American history and finally decided that the United States should be a democracy and not a parliamentary oligarchy. And I am further of opinion that, both as soldier and ruler, "Old Hickory" was a hero of whom any nation might ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... and functions of the League of Nations planned by Mr. Wilson there was little that appealed to one who was opposed to the employment of force in compelling the observance of international obligations and to the establishment of an international oligarchy of the Great Powers to direct and control world affairs. The basic principle of the plan was that the strong should, as a matter of right recognized by treaty, possess a dominant voice in international councils. Obviously ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... selfish if you will; all patriotism is in a measure selfish. What does the rest of the world care if we are a republic or a monarchy, an oligarchy or hopeless anarchy? We work for ourselves and to please ourselves, and I for one will not ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... States were slow to adopt the Democratic creed. The oligarchy of New England, and the rich proprietors and landholders of the Middle States, turned with alarm and horror from the levelling doctrines urged upon them by the "liberty and equality" propagandists of the South. The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a slow process of evolution, was built up in the "black belt" of the South an industrial empire, based upon slavery, nominally democratic, but in reality an oligarchy composed of a group of talented men, united in their traditions, social standards and political ideals by virtue of their common loyalty to the "peculiar institution" of their section. It was democratic within its own limits, chivalrous, cultured although it cherished ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... under the rule of the Whig oligarchy, which had no clearly conceived ideas on imperial policy. Under the influence of the mercantile class the Whigs increased the severity of the restrictions on colonial trade, and prohibited the rise of industries likely to compete with those of the mother-country. But under the influence of ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... further affirmed, "That this shewed him a good member of a democratic state; for the coming prepared to the rostrum was a mark of respect for the people. Whereas, to be regardless of what the people might think of a man's address shewed his inclination for oligarchy, and that he had rather gain his point by force than by persuasion." Another proof they gave us of his want of confidence on any sudden occasion is, that when he happened to be put into disorder by the tumultuary behaviour of the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... a plebeian fist with my tender skin must have impressed me. Really gentlemen, I was so surprised that I literally lost my balance. I was, as you are no doubt aware, merely asserting my rights as a free citizen to protest against the presumptions of the unprincipled oligarchy which is at present ruling this fair city. My case is exactly parallel to that of Caius Gracchus, who, I admit, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... years misunderstood Sunday, on the plateaus of Manassas, where, after all, blundering and imbecility brought disaster, but not shame, upon the devoted soldiery, aroused the sense of the North to the reality of war, as the overthrow at Jemmapes in 1793 convinced the Prussian oligarchy that the republic in France ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... resulted from the Pharisaic instinct that assumes superiority over other men. Pharisaism is simply an Imperialism of the spirit—joyless and domineering. Religion is a communion of immortal souls. Pharisaism is a denial of this and an attempt to set up an oligarchy of superior persons. All the great religious reformations have been rebellions on the part of the immortal souls against the superior persons. Religion, the reformers have proclaimed, is the common possession of mankind. Christ came into the world not to afford ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... an oligarchy that the Provisions of Oxford established, "intended rather to fetter the King than to extend or develop the action of the community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... members of either House of Congress, or hold any office or enjoy any privilege whereof citizenship of the United States is a necessary qualification, must depend solely on the will of Congress. By virtue of it, though Congress can grant no title of nobility, they may create an oligarchy, in whose hands would be concentrated the entire power of the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... must be either toward industrial oligarchies or socialism. Either the functions of private corporations will increase till they absorb the central government, or the functions of government will increase till it absorbs the corporations. Much may be said on the chance of the oligarchy. Should an old manufacturing nation lose its foreign trade, it is safe to predict that a strong effort would be made to build a socialistic government, but it does not follow that this effort would be ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... remembered about the very nature of our country. It may be shortly stated by saying that England is not such a fool as it looks. The types of England, the externals of England, always misrepresent the country. England is an oligarchical country, and it prefers that its oligarchy ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... except those kept there by their offices and by old habits."[5269] At Coulommiers, "the merchants and the people are so severely taxed they dread undertaking any enterprise." Popular hatred everywhere is profound against octroi, barrier and clerk. The bourgeois oligarchy everywhere first cares for itself before caring for those it governs. At Nevers and at Moulins,[5270] "all rich persons find means to escape their turn to collect taxes by belonging to different commissions or through their influence with the elus, to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... were but the disguise of rapacity, pride, and selfishness, the nation longed for the restoration of a lineal Sovereign, a regular government, and determinate laws. Even those who first signalized themselves by opposition to the late King, acknowledged that his government was preferable to the oligarchy and military tyranny that followed; and the Presbyterians felt their horror of Episcopacy abate while contrasting the temperance of established supremacy with the violence of the numerous sects who strove for superiority as soon as the hierarchy was overthrown. The easy good humour and affable ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and some political. It faces a multitude of censorships, all of them very potent. It is censored by the Postoffice, by the Jewish advertisers, by the Catholic Church, by the Methodists, by the Prohibitionists, by the banking oligarchy of its town, and often by even more astounding authorities, including the Sinn Fein. Now and then a newspaper makes a valiant gesture of revolt, but it is only a gesture. There is not a single daily in the United States that would dare to discuss ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... a pure democracy, social and political—it came of individual interest and neighborly love and of no abstract philosophical theory or of protest against oligarchy; it came from the application, voluntary for the most part, of "older institutions and ideas to the transforming influence of land," free land; and such has been the result, says Professor Turner, [Footnote: See his "Significance of the Frontier in ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... they declared that they were actuated by a generous disinclination to see an old county member put from his seat; but the world knew that the battle was to be waged against the great Llama. It was to be a contest between the powers of aristocracy and the powers of oligarchy, as those powers existed in West Barsetshire,—and, it may be added, that democracy would have very little to say to it, on one side or on the other. The lower order of voters, the small farmers and tradesmen, would no doubt range themselves on the side of the duke, and would endeavour ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... the coveted post of Sheikh el-Beled. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the authority of the Turkish pashas had become merely nominal, while that of the beys had increased to such an extent that the government of Egypt became a military oligarchy. The weakness of the Turks left the way open for the rise of any adventurer of ability and ambition who might aspire to lead the Mamluks to overthrow ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... this particular university was an oligarchy; was governed by a few absolute individuals. Perhaps such a condition is not as rare as might be supposed. However that may be, it was here a case of being either "in" or "out." Chester was unpopular, and from the first ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Three Hundred members, and also a smaller Council of One Hundred, of which the latter were the most powerful, holding office for life, and exercising an almost sovereign sway over the other authorities in the state. The government was a complete oligarchy; and a few old, rich, and powerful families divided among themselves the influence and power of the state. These great families were often opposed to each other in bitter feuds, but concurred in treating with contempt the mass ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... waves its stripes and stars over every sea, and that foreign influence, which has placed the internal peace—we may say the subsistence of millions in every manufacturing country in Europe—within the power of an oligarchy of planters." ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... as much as Dicaearchus thought he did Pythagoras. For Lycurgus, I suppose you know, banished out of Sparta all arithmetical proportion, as being democratical and favoring the crowd; but introduced the geometrical, as agreeable to an oligarchy and kingly government that rules by law; for the former gives an equal share to every one according to number, but the other gives according to the proportion of the deserts. It doth not huddle all things together, but in it there is a fair discretion of good and bad, every one having ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... profession. It was her nature to look out for duties, to appeal to her conscience for tasks. This attentive organ, earnestly consulted, had represented to her that he was an offshoot of the old slave-holding oligarchy which, within her own vivid remembrance, had plunged the country into blood and tears, and that, as associated with such abominations, he was not a worthy object of patronage for a person whose two brothers—her only ones—had given up life for the Northern ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... that it was only a truce. They must have seen that Rome would never be satisfied with any thing short of the abject submission of so detested and dangerous a rival. There was a peace party, an oligarchy, at Carthage; and it was their selfishness which ultimately brought ruin upon the state. But the party which saw that the only safety was in aggressive action found a military leader in Hannibal,—a leader not surpassed, and perhaps not equaled, by any other general ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... his brain; such as the actual forecasting of the development theory before Darwin, Spencer and Huxley were born— though not exactly in detail with them; his bolder conception still of the destiny of man, and his Cosmogony; of the progress of present civilization towards an oligarchy of capital, foretold so exactly,—as is now seen by thinking minds, three quarters of a century ago; his profound analysis of the human springs of action; his discovery of the divine laws applicable to the future as well as to the present wants of the human race. For the presentation of all this ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... from the senate by the censor Appius Claudius, one of the most zealous among the optimates. The other censor, L. Piso, did not protect either Sallust, or any of the others who shared the same fate with him, against this act of partiality. Rome was at that time governed by the most oppressive oligarchy, which was then mainly directed against Julius Caesar, who, as a reward for his brilliant achievements in extending the Roman dominion in Gaul, desired to be allowed to offer himself in his absence as a candidate for his second consulship—a ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... which alone of the three concerns us now, the establishment of some kind of standard for the degree of Master of Arts. Through all the changes of more than thirty years, I have always said, when I have had a chance of saying anything, Give us neither a resident oligarchy nor a non-resident mob. Keep Convocation with its ancient powers, but let Convocation be what it was meant to be. Let the great assembly of masters and doctors go untouched; but let none be made masters or doctors who do not show some fitness to bear those titles. Every degree was meant ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... because of "high blood pressure!" There is no disputing army surgeons and their judgment in this case may be justified, but coming at the time it did, nearly every Negro in the United States believed that the "high blood pressure" that retired Colonel Young was in the prejudiced heads of the Southern oligarchy who were determined that no American Negro should ever wear the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Senate, but that in exercising this function the vote in the House of Representatives should be taken by states. Thus the humours of the delegates from the small states, and of those who dreaded the accumulation of powers into the hands of an oligarchy, were alike gratified. This arrangement was finally adopted by the votes of ten ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... the few plutocrats who now usurp the avenues of human activity; and I believe that we will be able to enlist men in support of the idea that the rights of the majority transcend the aggressions of the oligarchy of American capitalists." ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... had their own line. Their general thesis was that not only did the people of England not govern, Parliament did not govern either. The Cabinet governed and it was chosen by the real rulers of the party. For each party was run by an oligarchy, and run roughly on the same lines. Lists were given of families whose brothers-in-law and cousins (though not yet their sisters and their aunts) found place in the Ministry of one or other political party. Moreover, the governing families on both sides were in many cases connected ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the elections, and the court none at all. The nobility selected a few popular deputies, but mainly such as were devoted to the interests of their order, and as much opposed to the third estate as to the oligarchy of the great families of the court. The clergy nominated bishops and abbes attached to privilege, and cures favourable to the popular cause, which was their own; lastly, the third estate selected men enlightened, firm, and ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... rightfulness, and the determination not only to terminate, but to extend, strengthen and perpetuate it. He was a nullifier because a slave-holder in principle. The one grew out of, and was a part of the other. The maintenance of an oligarchy was the ultimate end, that rested on slavery, and so "state rights" so called, and the divine right of ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... community, and the rules laid down by the state to regulate this matter are of the first and highest importance in determining the civil condition of the country and the prosperity of the people. Whenever but one class among the people is privileged to have property in land a most exclusive oligarchy is formed.[7] When the land is held in small portions by a great number and nobody is legally or practically excluded from acquiring land, there we find provided ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... had proof of the amazing perfection and grip of the great, the mysterious organisation, that oligarchy within a republic, which has always played a paramount role in every section of Parisian life. The American diplomatist had not lived in France all these years without unconsciously acquiring an almost superstitious belief in the omnipotence of the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes |
