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Subversion   Listen
noun
Subversion  n.  The act of overturning, or the state of being overturned; entire overthrow; an overthrow from the foundation; utter ruin; destruction; as, the subversion of a government; the subversion of despotic power; the subversion of the constitution. "The subversion (by a storm) of woods and timber... through my whole estate." "Laws have been often abused to the oppression and subversion of that order they were intended to preserve."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subversion" Quotes from Famous Books



... to have been favourable to the holding of the convention, which he doubtless regarded as a possible means of consolidating the Reform party, and of rendering its opposition to the Government more effective. It was agreed that for the present nothing should be said to him about the contemplated subversion of the Government by force. The boldest features of the scheme were intended to be kept secret from nearly everyone until the time for action should be near at hand, but no oath of secrecy was imposed, and, in spite of all resolutions, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... attainments far superior to the average of the American people—it may be said that such could not have become all at once infamously bad; and, if they did suffer such transformation, would have oppressed the blacks at the instigation of the whites, who were willing and able to pay well for such subversion of authority, and not the reverse. This would seem to be true, but we are not now dealing with speculations, but with facts! We know that they did become such a pest because at the South they were likened to the plagues of Egypt, and the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... in the history of villainy a parallel for the gigantic crime against property conspired by the Tammany Ring. It was engineered on the complete subversion of free government in the very heart of Republicanism. An American city, having a population of over a million, was disfranchised by an open vote of a Legislature born and nurtured in Democracy and Republicanism, and was handed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... fighting the battle of our own State alone, but for all the States that are attempting the great problem of State government throughout the world. The corruption or destruction of the ballot is a crime against free government, and when successful is a subversion ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... In the eleventh century learning flourished for a short time during the reign of Constantine Porphyrogennetus; and this emperor is said to have employed many learned Greeks in collecting books, and forming a library, the arrangement of which he himself superintended. But the final subversion of the Eastern Empire, and the capture of Constantinople in 1453, dispersed the literati of Greece over western Europe, and placed the literary remains of that capital at the mercy of the conqueror. The imperial library, however, was preserved by the express command of Mohammed, and continued, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... among which the Divine will has to choose, when it proceeds to create. The denial of this doctrine in the Nominalist and Cartesian Schools, and their reference to the arbitrary will of God of the eternal, immutable, and absolutely necessary relations of possible things, is the subversion ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... far as the land areas are concerned, in the fields of the richest and highest life. It is clearly impossible to avoid this destruction over all the surface which we win to culture. Spare as we may, the subversion of the ancient balances and adjustments must be complete before the earth is ready for our tillage and other modes of use. This overturning is a part of the destiny of man. It is a characteristic of the new dispensation which came with his ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... exist as a power among the nations, its laws must be enforced at all hazards and at any cost. And especially should courts and juries do their whole duty, without respect to persons, when crimes are committed, tending to the subversion of the Government and the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... and black men who were lifted into a "little brief authority" by a mighty but unwieldy voting force. That black man who connived at and shared in the corruption in the South which resulted in the subversion of the majority rule, is a traitor to his race and his country, wherever he may now be eking out a precarious and inglorious existence, and I have nothing to heap upon his head but the curses, the execrations of an injured people. Like Benedict Arnold ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... his columns was heralded by a proclamation or manifesto. In this document he announced to the people of France that he entered the country as the ally of their sovereign, and with the purpose of visiting on Paris an "exemplary and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance . . . military execution and total subversion," and of bringing "the guilty rebels to the death they have deserved." Copies of the manifesto reached Paris on the 3rd of August, with immediate effect. To Louis the Prussian general's utterances appeared so incredible that they were promptly disavowed as a forgery. To the people ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... distracted by a din in front that shattered the solemn hush of the night. There was a thunderous beat of tom-toms, the shrill rasping screech of conch-shells, and in intervals of subversion of instrumental clamour they could hear women's voices, high-pitched, singing the scahailia (song of joy). Loud cries of "Jae, Jae, Omkar!" rose in a chorus from a ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... the ordinances of the Prophet disregarded. The Shah, who is a pious prince, and respects the Ullemah, and who holds the ceremony of marriage sacred, complained to the head of the law, the mollah bashi, of this subversion of all morality in his capital, and, with a reprimand for his remissness, ordered him to provide a remedy for the evil. The mollah bashi (between you and me, be it said) is in every degree an ass,—one who knows as much ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... one preached to the Honourable House of Commons, the other to the Lower House of Convocation. In a letter. They resolved that it was "a malicious, villainous libel, containing very many reflections on King Charles I., of ever-blessed memory, and tending to the subversion ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... their first appointment to Dublin had been kept, they might have been there; but now they tarry to pass with the deputy. Sir, for the love of God, let some aid be sent to Dublin; for the loss of that city and the castle were the plain subversion of the land."—Allen to Cromwell, Oct. 4: State Papers, Vol. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... false apostles to return to the weak and beggarly elements of the Law. I would not be surprised to see my church perverted by some fanatic through one or two sermons. We are no better than the apostles who had to witness the subversion of the churches which they had planted with their own hands. Nevertheless, Christ will reign to the end of the world, and that miraculously, as He did during the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... contrary to reason; repelling three different arguments. (1) He demonstrates that it cannot be reasonable to break or keep covenants according to benefit supposed to be gained in each case, because this would be a subversion of the principles whereon society is founded, and must end by depriving the individual of its benefits, whereby he would be left perfectly helpless. (2) He considers it frivolous to talk of securing the happiness of heaven by any kind of injustice, when there is but ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... nephews of the cardinal, with sir Anthony Fortescue their sister's husband, and other accomplices, had been led, either by private ambition, by a vehement zeal for the Romish faith, or both together, to meditate the subversion of the existing state of things, and to plan the following wild and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... and points of view is gradual only, and it seldom results in the subversion or entire suppression of a standpoint once accepted. A distinction is still habitually made between industrial and non-industrial occupations; and this modern distinction is a transmuted form of the barbarian distinction between ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... Was it necessary to afford them the occasion of committing crimes that even you cannot excuse by the facility and assurance of absolution which you offer them? . . . The licence which your teachers have assumed of tampering with the most holy rules of Christian conduct amounts to a total subversion of the Divine law. They violate the great commandment which embraces the law and the prophets; they strike at the very heart of piety; they take away the spirit which giveth life. They say that the love of God ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... intensity, and not only involving finally the ruin of the Ashikaga shogunate but also subverting all law, order, and morality. Sons turned their hand against fathers, brothers against brothers, and vassals against chiefs. Nevertheless, amid this subversion of ethics and supremacy of the sword, there remained always some who reverenced the Throne and supported the institutions of the State; a noteworthy feature in the context of the fact that, except during brief intervals, the wielder of the sceptre in Japan never possessed competence to enforce ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... instead of alleviating, aggravates, in most cases, the loss of the creditors of the public; and, without any advantage to the public, extends the calamity to a great number of other innocent people. It occasions a general and most pernicious subversion of the fortunes of private people; enriching, in most cases, the idle and profuse debtor, at the expense of the industrious and frugal creditor; and transporting a great part of the national capital from the hands which were likely to increase and improve it, to those who are likely ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... patriotic instinct, and, with greater consistency than others who have at times followed his example, joins the fighting ranks of his country's enemies by way of illustrating his sincerity. His action proves to be in conflict with the elementary condition of social equilibrium. The subversion of the natural instinct is brought to the logical issues of sin and death. Domestic ties are rudely severed. The crime of treason is risked with an insolence that is fatal to the transgressor. With relentless logic ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... soul, that if right and justice were ever to be violated, they were to be violated for the sake of reigning. This was the chief end and purpose of his life—the scheme that he had formed from his early youth; so that, as Cato truly declared of him, he came with sobriety and meditation to the subversion of the republic. He used to say, that there were two things necessary to acquire and to support power—soldiers and money; which yet depended mutually upon each other: with money, therefore, he ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... rising in the favour of his sovereign. All this had passed away like a dream: he himself was dishonoured, his father disgraced, and he had become involuntarily the confidant at least, if not the accomplice, of plans, dark, deep, and dangerous, which must infer either the subversion of the government he had so lately served or the destruction of all who had participated in them. Should Flora even listen to his suit favourably, what prospect was there of its being brought to a happy termination amid the tumult of an impending insurrection? Or ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... have a race of transcendent heroes, who have annihilated the navy and trade and colonies or our arch enemy, have vindicated and preserved our glory and freedom and prosperity, and bid fair to restore the honour and independence of the civilized world, threatened with subversion by the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... principle of egoism and boorishness and the right of the stronger, gives full course to the unchaining of all animal passions, and coquettes with all the emotions which, flattering the animal part of man, {231} aims at the subversion of all that exists and at the destruction of the ideal acquisitions of mankind. In tracing everything which constitutes the higher position and dignity of man back to his own work, and permitting it to be worked out of physical, spiritual, and ethical brutishness, in slow development and effort, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... abhorrence, and cannot but be owned to be a proper introduction to such scenes, as seem designed to kindle in the audience a flame of opposition, patriotism, publick spirit, and independency; that spirit which we have so long endeavoured to suppress, and which cannot be revived without the entire subversion of all ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... conferences with Talleyrand and several audiences of Bonaparte, in which representations, as just as energetic, were made, which, however, did not alter the intent of our Government or increase the favour of the Russian Ambassador at the Court of St. Cloud. But it proved that our schemes of subversion are suspected, and that our agents of overthrow would be ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... on this false simplification is the complete subversion of that scale of dignity or excellence upon which we range the various kinds of living creatures, putting ourselves at the top—not merely in obedience to a pardonable vanity, but, as has hitherto ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... you. I have now opened my eyes; I see that you are all scoundrels—the subversion of all government is your aim. Gentlemen, I will no longer herd among rascals in whose infamy my name and character must be included. I therefore renounce you all, gentlemen, as you ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions, but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... of October, at the Old Bailey, commenced the trial of Hardy, one of the secretaries of the chief treasonable society. The bill brought in by the grand jury had included twelve. The charges were those of "compassing the death of the king, and the subversion of the government." Hardy was a shoemaker, a man of low attainments, but active, and strongly republican. His activity had made him secretary to the London Corresponding Society, and by its direction a member ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... passing of this act, say, "That the principles of administration had not been changed in America, and that the maxims of government had there been always the same." For here is, in principle, a total overthrow of the whole; and not a subversion only, but an annihilation of the foundation of liberty and absolute dominion ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine

... himself at Louvain in the summer of 1517 he had a vague presentiment that great changes were at hand. 'I fear', he writes in September, 'that a great subversion of affairs is being brought about here, if God's favour and the piety and wisdom of princes do not concern themselves about human matters.' But the forms which that great change would assume he did ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... said he, with indignant eloquence, "to see the earth take the place of heaven, since you, oh Spartans, meditate the subversion of equal laws and the restoration of tyrannical governments—a design than which nothing can be more unjust, nothing more wicked. If you think it well that states should be governed by tyrants, Spartans, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... upon themselves and rolled back eastward to meet the advancing civilization of the westbound rails, caring nothing for history and less for the civilized society in which they formerly had lived. This story of bedlam broken loose, of men gone crazed, by the sudden subversion of all known values and all standards of life, was at first something which had no historian and can be recorded only by way of hearsay stories which do not always tally ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... House of Warwick by the simple sentence, "The certainty was not, for both their honours, openly known!"] True, that in his change of party he was not, like Julian of Spain, an apostate to his native land. He did not meditate the subversion of his country by the foreign foe; it was but the substitution of one English monarch for another,—a virtuous prince for a false and a sanguinary king. True, that the change from rose to rose had been so common amongst the greatest ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... shape which, like the magicians of old commanding their familiar spirits, the great magician of our age commanded her to assume. Peace—the rights of man—the mutual ties of nations—the freedom of the serf and the slave—the subversion of all the abuses of the ancient thrones—all the old nominal principles of revolutionary patriotism, were instantly thrown aside, like the rude weapons of a peasant insurrection, the pike and the ox-goad, for the polished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... 61. [Subversion of Order; bringing into disorder.] Derangement — N. derangement &c v.; disorder &c 59; evection^, discomposure, disturbance; disorganization, deorganization^; dislocation; perturbation, interruption; shuffling &c v.; inversion &c 218; corrugation &c (fold) 258; involvement. interchange ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Waterland have urged in defence of the Nicene Fathers is (like every thing else from such men) most worthy of all attention. They contend that no other term but [Greek: homoousia] could secure the Christian faith against both the two contrary errors, Tritheism with subversion of the unity of the Godhead on the one hand, and creature-worship on the other. For, to use Waterland's mode of argument, [4] either Eusebius of Nicomedia with the four other dissenters at Nice were right or wrong in their assertion, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... well as foreign; and that any intermeddling by any one or more States, or by a combination of their citizens, with the domestic institutions of the others, on any pretext whatever, political, moral, or religious, with the view to their disturbance or subversion, is in violation of the Constitution, insulting to the States so interfered with, endangers their domestic peace and tranquillity—objects for which the Constitution was formed—and, by necessary consequence, tends to weaken and destroy the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... under the control of the general principle that the works which might be thus aided should be "of a general, not local, national, not State," character. A disregard of this distinction would of necessity lead to the subversion of the federal system. That even this is an unsafe one, arbitrary in its nature, and liable, consequently, to great abuses, is too obvious to require the confirmation of experience. It is, however, sufficiently definite and imperative to my mind ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... death of their prophet, Joseph Smith. And this ceremony is not a mere empty form of words. It is an oath, the spirit of which the Endowed carry into their daily life and all their relations with the Gentile world. In it lies the root of the evasion, and finally subversion, of Federal authority which occasioned the recent military expedition ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... for had he not always said in the goodness of his heart, that he would never disturb the faith of old people drawing nigh their end, because such no more possessed the needful elasticity of brain to accommodate themselves to the subversion of previous modes of feeling and thought, unavoidable to the adoption of his precious revelation. Precious he did believe it, never having himself one of those visions of infinite hope, which, were his theory once proved as ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... John Knox the Scottish reformer; and before the volume was issued from the press at the end of the year a determined attempt was made to have the obnoxious instruction removed by order. The Archbishop however with resolute dignity protested against the arbitrary subversion of what Parliament had sanctioned. He carried his point, and the instruction was retained, though an explanatory note (known as the Black Rubric)[Footnote: Cf. Dixon, iii., 475 ff.] was appended, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... imagine the transition of feeling which ensued on your accession to power. Your subversion of the Constitution of 1824, your establishment of centralism, your conquest of Zacatecas, characterized by every act of violence, cruelty, and rapine, inflicted upon us the profoundest astonishment. We realized all the uncertainty of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... disturbance, involving widespread debt, entailed an amount of personal suffering and humiliation of which, in these kinder days, we can form no adequate conception. It tended to make the debtor an outlaw, ready to entertain schemes for the subversion of society. In the crisis of 1786, the agitation in Rhode Island and Massachusetts reached white heat, and things were done which alarmed the whole country. But the course of events was different in the two states. In Rhode Island the agitators obtained control of the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... ideologic, etiologic, and other significations, before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic reform. For instance, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... This subversion, commenced by art and learning in the inner man, was carried out to fulness and finished by the spirit of innovation in government. It was, no doubt, reasonable to expect that the simple organisation of the primitive republics ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... the newspapers would say, commanded the attendance of a physician, who was only a Licentiate, and, thereby, struck consternation throughout the whole body of "Fellows." The great men already in attendance were dreadfully alarmed and confounded by this terrible subversion of established College etiquette. "Sire!" said one of them, "we humbly acquaint your Majesty, with all dutiful submission that as Dr.—— is not a Fellow, it is contrary to rule and custom to meet him in attendance here."—"A Fellow?" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... measure. Even Franklin seemed to believe that the Declaratory Act would not cause much trouble in America. The event denied the hope, and indignation at the Declaratory Act outlasted in America the rejoicing over the subversion of Grenville's policy. Nevertheless, the rejoicing was very great. On May 16, 1766, the public spirit of Boston was stimulated by the distribution of a broadsheet headed "Glorious News." This broadsheet announced the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of Perth were sanctioned by the Parliament. This act of ratification was accompanied by a remarkable demonstration of Providence. Parliament was then evidently carrying out the will of the king, for the subversion of the Presbyterian Church, the Reformed religion, the liberty of conscience, and the rights of the people. Parliament met for this purpose in Edinburgh, August 4, 1621. The morning was gloomy. With the advancing hours the clouds grew denser and darker; the whole sky ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and prompter, the selection ought to be made in accordance with other principles. The substitution of the priest or preacher in the place of the husband or guardian, presupposes or foreshows a subversion more or less of the most essential relations of family life. The necessity of resorting to this means of gaining or maintaining power must degrade the clergy who depend on it, by tempting them to arts of flattery and excitement, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... colony, should, after Monday, the 7th of November, retain in his or their service any one or more of the persons described in a former order, such persons should be considered as encouraging a set of lawless and seditious people, to the total subversion of all order and government, and to the weakening of His Majesty's authority in the settlement. He next informed the people whose conduct had occasioned this order, that if they were of opinion, that to threaten would be the best means of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... almost uninhabited spot near Bay St. Louis.[446] This intervention was justified on the ground of a claim to the territory, asserted to be valid; and occasion for it was found in the danger of a foreign interference, resulting from the subversion of Spanish authority by a revolutionary movement. By Great Britain it was regarded as a usurpation, to effect which advantage had been taken of the embarrassment of the Spaniards when struggling against Napoleon for national existence. On May 14, 1812, being ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... arrogated to himself the whole power. The project he had formed, when he favoured the revolution of the 18th Fructidor, was now about to be realized. It was then an indispensable part of his plan that the Directory should violate the constitution in order to justify a subsequent subversion of the Directory. The expressions which escaped him from time to time plainly showed that his ambition was not yet satisfied, and that the Consulship was only a state of probation preliminary to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... not wholly and in all its parts condemn it. Lord Palmerston was conspicuous among them. Without expressing approval of all that had been done, he always maintained that the condition of France was such that a violent subversion of an unworkable Constitution and the establishment of a strong government had become absolutely necessary; that the Coup d'etat saved France from the gravest and most imminent danger of anarchy and civil war, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... criminal to advocate assassination or anarchism has been adverted to when we were considering the rights of aliens. In England, it is treason to imagine the death of the king. There is no constitutional reason why it should not be treason to imagine the death of the president, or perhaps even the subversion by force of organized society. Such laws have been passed in Washington, Wisconsin, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... promiscuity with the girl Gorcut, known as Athenais, under Brotteaux's very roof, he is the accomplice of the said girl and the said ci-devant nobleman. During his imprisonment at the Conciergerie he has never ceased for one single day writing pamphlets aimed at the subversion of public ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... clearly given up the policy of the question. They had been determined by the justice of it. Why were they then to be troubled again with arguments of this nature? These, if admitted, would go to the subversion of all public as well as private morality. Nations were as much bound as individuals to a system of morals, though a breach in the former could not be so easily punished. In private life morality took pretty good care of itself. It was a kind of retail article, in which the returns were speedy. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... disobedience, nor ever cease from disturbances and sedition. Concession is mere madness; if we have any wisdom and resolution at all, we shall, on the contrary, never rest till we have recovered from them that tribunician power they have extorted from us; as being a plain subversion of the consulship, and a perpetual ground of separation in our city, that is no longer one, as heretofore, but has in this received such a wound and rupture, as is never likely to close and unite again, or suffer us to be of one mind, and to give ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... assisted him to realize one leading object which he had in view, that of uniting in himself (perhaps for the first time in the person of an English painter) the artist and the man of fashion. From his acknowledged success in the attainment of this object, tending as it did to the subversion of ancient prejudices degrading to art, what beneficial effects might not have resulted, had the President exerted his influence to sustain the dignity of the artist in others! But satisfied with the place in society which he himself had ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... Pliny's villa Laurentana, Tully's Tusculan, Jovius' study, that they might better vacare studiis et Deo, serve God, and follow their studies. Methinks, therefore, our too zealous innovators were not so well advised in that general subversion of abbeys and religious houses, promiscuously to fling down all; they might have taken away those gross abuses crept in amongst them, rectified such inconveniences, and not so far to have raved and raged against those fair ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... grieving over the acts which have driven the Parliament to taking up a hostile attitude to him, yet holds it his duty to support him against the violent men who have now assumed power, and who are aiming at the subversion of the constitution and the loss ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... atrocious sentiments, though sometimes artfully veiled, which were disseminated in their books, and which, spreading all over Europe, imperceptibly took possession of the public mind, and prepared the way for the subversion of religion, morals, and government. As soon as the sale of the works was sufficient to pay expenses, inferior editions were printed and given away, or sold at a very low price; circulating libraries of them were formed, and ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... was to undermine the nobility. She pursued the plan of her great father to recall all rights to the crown lands, which during the reign of her weak and inefficient predecessors had been granted to the nobility. The prosecution of this plan for the perfect subversion of the feudal aristocracy was unfortunately interrupted by her death; her imprudent and weak successor having no power to restrain the turbulent spirit of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various



Words linked to "Subversion" :   subvert, subversive activity, overthrow, corruption



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