"British Empire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "crumbling" on the part of the British empire that we have observed is the welcome extended to the "quick lunch." That ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the dominant industrial and maritime power of the 19th century, played a leading role in developing parliamentary democracy and in advancing literature and science. At its zenith, the British Empire stretched over one-fourth of the earth's surface. The first half of the 20th century saw the UK's strength seriously depleted in two World Wars. The second half witnessed the dismantling of the Empire and ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... England. They held, all of them but a little band of republican- grounded sympathizers with the Patriots, that the principles announced by the Patriots went too far, and that, in clinging to them the Americans were endangering the British empire; and the only question among the public men of England was, whether the Crown or the Parliament was the proper instrumentality, as the phrase was, for reducing the Colonies to obedience. Lord Barrington, in his speech above cited, laid most stress on the denial of the authority of Parliament: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Stanford's window the other day, and it amused me. Who believes for a moment that England will remain satisfied with bits here and there? We have to swallow the whole, of course. We shall go on fighting and annexing, until—until the decline and fall of the British Empire. That hasn't begun yet. Some of us are so over-civilised that it makes a reaction of wholesome barbarism in the rest. We shall fight like blazes in the twentieth century. It's the only thing that keeps Englishmen sound; commercialism ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... purpose of the author permitted; and we have many striking passages respecting Wilkes and his various persecutions, the Letters of Junius and their authorship, and the common intellectual and material progress of the British empire. The spirit in which he regards our Revolution is illustrated by the following paragraph, on the rejection, by the House of Peers, of the conciliatory Bill by which Lord Chatham hoped, in 1775, to prevent the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... what we really do want, not what recent legal decisions have told us to want, or recent logical philosophies proved that we must want, or recent social prophecies predicted that we shall some day want. If there must be a British Empire, let it be British, and not, in mere panic, American or Prussian. If there ought to be female suffrage, let it be female, and not a mere imitation as coarse as the male blackguard or as dull as the male clerk. If there is to be Socialism, let it be ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... in eis quidquam acrius quam pecuniae damnum stimulat." If anyone doubts the truth and profound wisdom of these remarks, let him reflect on the exact demonstration of these truths which was afforded two thousand years after, in the British empire. "Si monumentum ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Smith, Elder & Co., for the extract from F. T. Bullen's "The Cruise of the Cachalot"; to Elkin Mathews for Henry Newbolt's poem from "The Island Race"; to Thomas Nelson & Sons for the extract from W. F. Collier's "History of the British Empire"; to The Copp Clark Co., Limited, for selected poems from the works of Charles G. D. Roberts, and of Agnes Maule Machar; to the Hunter-Rose Company for the extract from Canniff Haight's "Country Life in Canada"; to Morang & Company for selected poems from the works of Archibald Lampman, and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... is a fine building, though partly in ruins. It is constructed entirely of granite, without any woodwork whatsoever; but its abounding interest lies not in its structure but in the fact that it was in this palace that the British Empire in India may be said to have ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... self-government. And therefore no compromise is possible under such conditions between self-government in India and the overlordship of England. If self-government is conceded to us, what would be England's position not only in India, but in the British Empire itself? Self-government means the right of self-taxation; it means the right of financial control; it means the right of the people to impose protective and prohibitive tariffs on foreign imports. The moment we have the right of self-taxation, what shall we do? We shall not try to be ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Forbes when the place was captured from the French. However this may be, we do know that Washington was certainly present when the English flag was hoisted and the city named Pittsburgh, on Sunday, November 26, 1758. And at that moment Pittsburgh became a chief bulwark of the British Empire in America. ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... importance to Great Britain. By a stroke of policy the British Government acquired the shares of the almost bankrupt Khedive, Ismail Pasha, and thus had a holding in the company worth several million pounds. But far more important to Britain was the position of the Canal as the great artery of the British Empire, the most vulnerable point on the short sea route to India. Thus Britain became directly concerned in the affairs of Egypt, in its internal administration to secure peace within, and in its military defence to secure the country in general, and the Canal zone in particular, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... graven red profiles of priests and soldiers that came tome at sight of these Egyptians, but the singing fellaheen of the water-buckets of the Nile. And here, too, shovelling the crushed rock, were East Indians oddly clad in European garb, careless of the cold. That sense of the vastness of the British Empire, which at times is so profound, was mingled now with a knowledge that it was fighting for its life, marshalling all its resources ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to ruin—if he could rise from his grave and see how his granddaughter is honored at your hands to-night, why, I think he would return whence he came, thanking God that his efforts to enslave us, in which for eight long years he drained the resources of the British Empire, were ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... of my own life rather than that of the British Empire that engages my present thought. Will you intercede for me ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... ideas from the infinite complexity, the tragic and bewildering detail, of the past four years. The motive which sent me to France three months ago was the wish to make clear to myself if I could, and thereby to others, the true measure of the part played by the British Empire and the British Armies in the concluding campaigns of the war. I knew that if it could be done at all at the present moment—and by myself—it could only be done in a very broad and summary way; and also that its only claim to ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it cleverness is the antithesis of greatness. The British Empire, like the Roman, was built up by dull men. It may be we shall be ruined by clever ones. Imagine a regiment of lively and eccentric privates! There never was a statesman yet who had not some ballast ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... of Ireland, is a city of above two hundred thousand inhabitants, and is considered by the people of Ireland to be the second city in the British Empire. The Liffey, which falls into Dublin Bay a little below the Custom-House, divides the town into two nearly equal parts. The streets are—some of them—very fine, especially upper Sackville Street, in the centre of which stands a pillar erected to Nelson, England's most distinguished Naval Commander. ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... far as numbers go, the dominant religion of the British Empire, the religion of the majority, is Hinduism; ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... besides HMS Volage, three smaller vessels and some transports. On the 19th of January 1839 he bombarded the town and landed his troops, who after a short resistance overcame the Sultan's army, and hoisted the flag on its walls, and Aden became a port of the British Empire, as it has ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... here," declared the governor with aplomb, "and they need some handling, I assure you. We have in this island one of the worst criminals in the British Empire." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... promontory, where the meteor flag, ringed by a bracelet of cannon, flies in the breeze. And then I meandered back, and began to ask myself, had Marryat aught to do with the sponsorship of this outpost of the British Empire? Shingle Point, Blackstrap Bay, the Devil's Tower, O'Hara's Folly, Bayside Barrier, and Jumper's Bastion—the names were all redolent of the Portsmouth Hard; and I almost anticipated a familiar hail at every ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... therefore cease to be paid. We shall not remind our readers that, in the latter years of the war L72,000,000, under the protective system, was levied in the shape of taxes amidst general prosperity, on eighteen millions of people in the British empire; and that now, under the free trade system, fifty-two millions net revenue is felt as extremely oppressive by twenty-eight millions. These topics, vast and important as they are, and deeply as they bear on the past history and future prospects of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... people who have most right to count—are beginning to recognise the absurdity of paying and dying for wars of which they know nothing, and in the quarrels of kings and ministers for whom they have neither reverence nor love. "What is the British Empire to me," I heard a Whitechapel man say, "when I have to open the window before I get room to put on my trousers?" A section of the country was opposed to the Crimean War; a far larger section was opposed to the Boer War. Both were ridiculed, persecuted, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... them. But it is equally true that there are some States in existence which include members of several nations. Take as an example Switzerland which, although only a very small State, nevertheless comprises three national elements, namely German, French, and Italian. Another example is the British Empire, which is a world empire and comprises a number ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... dominant power of England in every portion of the world. The smallest island may become the most impregnable and important coaling-depot. It is the fashion for some modern reformers (happily few) to suggest a curtailment of the British Empire, on the principle that "by pruning we should improve the strength of the national tree." If there are rotten boughs, or exhausting and useless shoots, the analogy might be practical; but if we examine carefully a map of the world it would puzzle the Royal Geographical Society to determine ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... perhaps unintentionally on their part, very much misled the English reader. It would hardly be considered fair, if the wilder parts of Ireland, and the disgraceful acts which are committed there, were represented as characteristic of England, or the British empire; yet between London and Connaught there is less difference than between the most civilised and intellectual portion of America, such as Boston and Philadelphia, and the wild regions, and wilder inhabitants of the west of the Mississippi, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the Company was vested in a court of twenty-four directors, each of whom must own L2000 of stock, and held office four years. This Company became a great territorial power, and laid the foundation of the British Empire in India. Its monopoly of the China trade was abolished in 1833, and the Company was then deprived of its original character as a commercial association. The Sepoy Mutiny, in 1857, combined with other causes, induced Parliament ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... as the representative of the Jews in the British Empire, now commenced making his arrangements for the departure of the Mission, and Monsieur Cremieux, as representative of the Jews in ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... favourite of a stern father and of fate, he had never done a hard day's work in his life. When he and Hannah came into their inheritance, he realised everything except the house and invested the proceeds in Consols. With a roof, four hundred a year from the British Empire, a tame capable sister, and notoriously good health, he took final leave of care at the age of thirty-two. He wanted no more than he had. Leisure was his chief luxury; he watched life between meals, and had time to think about what he saw. Being ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... itself. The Americans claimed the right as Englishmen to tax themselves. The English ministers replied that Parliament, and not the Colonial Assemblies, was the proper body to vote taxes in any and all parts of the British Empire. The Americans replied that they were not represented in Parliament. Parliament replied that many of the towns, shires, and boroughs in England were not represented. If they were not represented, they ought to be, said the Americans;—and thus the ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... of this English immigration escape notice. It was not only English; but it was also filled with a passionate loyalty to the British crown. This fact serves to explain a great deal in later Canadian history. Before 1783 the continuance of Canada in the British Empire was by no means assured: after 1783 the Imperial ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... home is in England, laid the blame of all the British reverses in the Transvaal at the door of what she termed 'the evils of an idle aristocracy.' In a most dramatic manner she denounced the course of the British Empire. After summing up the war situation she said: 'The English armies now on the battle-fields in the Transvaal have at their heads as officers sons of this idle aristocracy, who through their incompetency are not fit to be leaders. They are beneath contempt, but to the English soldier all ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Indore method in 1931 in a slim book called The Waste Products of Agriculture. The widely read book brought him invitations to visit plantations throughout the British Empire. It prompted farmers world-wide to make compost by the Indore method. Travel, contacts, and new awareness of the problems of European agriculture were responsible for Howard's decision to create an organic farming and ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... vital national importance of the oil resource, have imposed severe restrictions on exploration by outsiders. Nationals of the United States are excluded from acquiring oil concessions, or permitted to do so only under conditions which invalidate control, in the British Empire, France, Japan, Netherlands, and elsewhere, and the current is still moving strong in the direction of further exclusion. As the United States fields are yet open to all comers, it has been suggested that some restriction by the United ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... Britain, and might well look to destroy her, if it could command the support of the United States. Founded upon armed power, it proposed by continuous exertion of the same means to undermine the bases of British prosperity, and so to subvert the British Empire. The enterprise was distinctly military, and could be met only by measures of a similar character, to which existing international law was unequal. The corner-stone was the military power of Napoleon, which, by nullifying the independence of the continental states, compelled them to adopt the methods ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... ever written by a soldier) could fail to be impressed by his light touch. A delicate sense of the incongruous seems to have pervaded him; he is at his whimsical best when he sees himself in a ridiculous light. Lord Kitchener, one of the grimmest warriors ever to serve the British Empire, warmed to the man who made him the butt of a practical joke. There is the unforgettable picture of Admiral Beatty at Jutland. The Indefatigable has disappeared beneath the waves. The Queen Mary had exploded. The Lion was in flames. Then word came that the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... felt perfectly sure that so long as Mr. Asquith remained Prime Minister, and Lord Haldane, Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Winston Churchill continued to be members of the Cabinet, their voices would guide the destinies of the British Empire, and that we should remain true to our friendly understanding with the Entente Powers. As the result of the long conversation I had with the Vicomte de la Panouse, I think I was successful in causing this conviction to prevail at ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... next to the Duke of Wellington is now unquestionably the first man of the British Empire, a few days ago in the House of Lords complained of an instance of libel of a species which is extremely common in the United States, and which is of all species the most irritating and offensive. Lord Brougham observed, that no one who had lived ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... British Empire has no common economic interests and no natural common enemy. It is not adapted to any form of Zollverein or any form of united aggression. Visibly, on the map of the world it has a likeness to open hands, while the German Empire—except ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... conspired over whiskey cocktails and a clean sheet of note-paper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends, all the weak points in your opponents' organisation, and unconsciously ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... managed to move his flank-guard three miles in two minutes? So a field day would pass, each rank being roundly condemned to everlasting perdition by the rank immediately below it, until the G.O.C., Egypt, and the British Empire, bore the brunt of the awful damnings. Bad-tempered and dishevelled, the troops would set off on their homeward march, the final straw being added to the annoyances of the infantry by the passage to windward of the mounted rifles. Shrouded in the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... country open to commercial intercourse with the world; because there is no evidence that the supply of food in the world either cannot or will not be increased to meet any actual or possible demand. Within the British Empire alone there was an increase of 75 per cent. in the production of wheat between 1901 and 1911. [15] In Great Britain there has been not only an increase of population but also an increased consumption ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... of the British Empire in 1901. It was able to take advantage of its natural resources to rapidly develop its agricultural and manufacturing industries and to make a major contribution to the British effort in World Wars ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Colonies. An earnest advocate of Federation, he did not see that the best way of retaining colonial loyalty was to preserve colonial independence intact. Nevertheless Froude was a pioneer of the modern movement, still in progress, for a closer union with the scattered parts of the British Empire. He feared that the Colonies would go if some effort were not made to retain them, and he turned over in his mind the various means of building up a federal system. Although Canadian Federation was emphatically Canadian in its origin, and had been adopted in principle by Cardwell during ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... lived in the hope of a speedy rescue. It was unfortunate, she thought, that Colonel Dermot, with his extraordinary knowledge of and influence over the Bhutanese, had left India. But even without him the power of the British Empire would be set at once in motion to avenge this outrage on an Englishwoman. Dermot's understudy, the Assistant Political Officer, faithless lover though he was, would do all he could to save her. Assuredly she would not ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... excelled. But it had the supreme qualities of manifest sincerity and transparent honesty, and it derived its overwhelming effect from one transcendent characteristic of which the speaker himself may have been quite unconscious. It spoke to the British Empire as to a British gentleman. "You can't stand by and do nothing while the friend by your side is being beaten to his knees. You can't let a mischievous and unprincipled buccaneer tread into the dust the neighbour whom he has joined with you in swearing to protect?" ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... * * * 7l. 10s. 0d., being a portion of the money received for showing the "British Empire" before she left Bristol. Observe again, esteemed Reader, what a variety of ways the Lord uses to supply me with means; for I had not before even heard of the name of this vessel, nor did I know her owners, ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... nowhere but in Germany, and that, therefore, if he allowed cyanide to leave Germany for the United States or Mexico the English would capture it and would use it to work South African mines, thus adding to the stock of gold and power in war of the British Empire. It was a long time before the German manufacturers and I could convince this gentleman that cyanide sufficient to supply all the British mines was manufactured near Glasgow, Scotland. He then reluctantly gave a permit for the export of a thousand tons of cyanide; and its arrival in the United ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... such persons that the Act had been levelled, and there had never been any question of attempting to apply it to anyone else. Now, however, it was pressed into requisition in order to compass the ruin of as loyal a subject as could have been found throughout the wide expanse of the British Empire; who had resided in Upper Canada for a continuous period of nearly eighteen months; who was no more an alien than the King upon the throne; and whose only real offence was that he would not stand calmly by while rapacious and dishonest placemen carried on their nefarious ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... splendid Imperial Show! Magnificent weather! Real QUEEN'S weather, and consequently a big success. The grandeur, the solidarity of the British Empire—[&c., &c. *.* Editor regrets that for lack of space he is compelled to omit the remainder of this remarkably fine panegyric. He suggests to Author that it would come out well in pamphlet form, price one shilling, or it might be given away with a pound of Indian tea.—ED.] Obedient ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... He, however, then little thought what a monster he was nourishing, in the shape of a standing army. Sir Robert Wilson also was bred a soldier; and he also published a pamphlet, addressed to Mr. Pitt, under the title of "An Inquiry into the present State of the Military Force of the British Empire, with a view to its re-organization." This pamphlet was in favour of a regular army, in preference to the volunteers. In fact, the whole nation was mad; and as drunk with fear now, as they had been in the commencement ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Celtic ornamentation; for all details of Celtic archaeology he has authority. Yet both he and I have striven to give Celtic things as they appear to, and attract, the English mind, rather than attempt the hopeless task of representing them as they are to Celts. The fate of the Celt in the British Empire bids fair to resemble that of the Greeks among the Romans. "They went forth to battle, but they always fell," yet the captive Celt has enslaved his captor in the realm of imagination. The present volume attempts to begin the pleasant captivity ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Governor, and Mr. Alfred de Rothschild were present. The members of the bar mustered in force, and the reserved seats were chiefly occupied by ladies. Mr. Hardinge Gifford, Q.C. (now Lord Chancellor of the British Empire), and Mr. Watkin Williams, Q.C. (instructed by Messrs. Freshfield, the solicitors of the bank), appeared as ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... judiciary. State law and State courts are more familiar to the people than most of the national legislation. In the German Empire each state has its own prince, and in many respects is self-governing, but has been more and more sinking its own individuality in the empire. In the British Empire there is still another relation. England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were once independent of each other, but military and dynastic events united them. For local legislation and administration they tend to separate, and already Ireland has obtained home ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... and misfortune, loyalty and devotion to the British Empire, have brought into the Dominion of Canada the people who, within a comparatively short period of time, have won from the wilderness a country whose present condition is the best evidence of their industrial activity. Religion was a very potent ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... amusement in glove-knitting, and at present wants no other work. We quite run over with books. She has got Sir John Carr's "Travels in Spain," and I am reading a Society octavo, an "Essay on the Military Police and Institutions of the British Empire," by Capt. Pasley of the Engineers, a book which I protested against at first, but which upon trial I find delightfully written and highly entertaining. I am as much in love with the author as I ever was with Clarkson or Buchanan, or even the two Mr. Smiths of the city. The first soldier I ever ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... mutterings of a wizard, gave way and fell back, leaving a gap in the line, yet the enemy failed to gain their object. For the 1st Canadian Division flung itself across the gap and held on like heroes, fought with desperate bravery indeed, and wrought for the people of the British Empire, and for their brothers and sisters in Canada, a tale which, so long as the British nation exists, will never ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... changes for the worse. The master-statesman Pitt had gone out of power and the back-stairs politician Bute had come in. Pitt's 'bloody and expensive war'—the war that more than any other, laid the foundations of the present British Empire—was to be ended on any terms the country could be persuaded to bear. Thus the end of the Seven Years' War, or, as the British part of it was more correctly called, the 'Maritime War,' was no more ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... have on one side the man of dismal forebodings, so well known in India, and against him the hopeful, resolute officer, who lays just stress on England's superior position, with all the strength and resources of India and the British empire at her back. One supremely important point in the discussion is, by consent of both speakers, the probable behaviour in such a crisis of the native Indian army; and we may here express our agreement with ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... tactics, but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby snatch a discreditable victory. So, clear speaking is needed: a fight that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than any defeat. I make the point here because we stand for separation from the British Empire, and because I have heard it argued that we ought, if we could, make a foreign alliance to crush English power here, even if our foreign allies were engaged in crushing freedom elsewhere. When such a question can be proposed it should be answered, though the time is ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... understand that there was a lively scene over the purchase of a doll, the cost of which—clad only in its birthday dress—was reported to me as 'a fair affront.' Even after all these years Mary jibs at Continental prices. It is her way of keeping up the prestige of the British Empire, bless her. An overcharge, in her opinion, is a deliberate ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... that the South African war, though instigated and furthered by financial interests, would never have happened if public opinion had not been in favour of it on grounds which were quite other than financial—the desire to bring back the Transvaal into the British Empire and to wipe out the memory of the surrender after Majuba, and humanitarian feeling which believed, rightly or wrongly, that the natives would be treated better under our rule. These may or may not have been good reasons for going to war, ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... little ways in which the Roman Catholic population of the island try to annoy me, now that they see my back to the wall." I was tickled with the idea of a fossil preserve, which coupled itself in my mind, through a trick of the associative faculty, with the idea of a great fossil act for the British empire, framed on the principles of the game-laws; and, just wondering what sort of disreputable vagabonds geological poachers would become under its deteriorating influence, I laid hold of the pickaxe and broke into the stonefast floor; and thence I succeeded in abstracting,—feloniously, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... as in other departments of study, what has not been reduced to rule and line is beyond the ken and apprehension. How stupendously wrong a Power which could count, and into a European War! on insurrection in India, the Cape, and other parts of the British Empire! and how naively did Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg disclose the Zeitgeist of German rulers when with passion he declared Britain to be going to war for "a scrap of paper!" A purpose to serve, a treaty becomes "a scrap"—in ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... resulted in the loss of the fairest portion of his American possessions. Had Pitt been allowed to guide the public policy and direct the honest but stubborn mind of the king at the beginning of his long reign of half a century, these United States might have remained a part of the British Empire fifty years longer. But that great man, whose genius as a statesman, eloquence and wisdom as a legislator, and whose thorough knowledge of human nature and the past history of the world, made him peerless, and whose administration ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... have been built from the beginning. Many civilizations have had some dominant craft to carry them the major part of the way. The priests have made India. The classical student has preserved Old China to its present hour of new life. The samurai knights have made Japan. Sailors have evolved the British Empire. One of the enticing future Americas is that of the architect. Let the architect appropriate the photoplay as his means of propaganda and begin. From its intrinsic genius it can give his profession a start beyond all others in dominating this land. Or such ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... foster multinational cooperation and assistance, as a voluntary association that evolved from the British Empire ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... portraits of two Irish sisters—the Countess of Coventry and the Duchess of Hamilton—two of the most beautiful women in all the British Empire. "Seven hundred people sat up all night, in and about a Yorkshire inn, to see the Duchess of Hamilton get into her postchaise in the morning, while a Worcester shoemaker made money by showing the shoe he was making for the ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... experience was a visit to the aviation meeting at Rheims, the first ever held in the world, and a most successful one. Yet the British Empire was hardly represented even by visitors. Such great filers as Curtis, Lefevre, Latham, Paulhan, Bleriot ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... History of the Republic of Venice, and with it I have woven the adventures of an English boy, endowed with a full share of that energy and pluck which, more than any other qualities, have made the British empire the greatest the world has ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... thought he was a man inspired with the highest political wisdom and knowledge. His gifts of dialectical vaticination made them look upon him as the lively oracle of the special Providence which he himself was accustomed to say presided over the British Empire. After a time, however, they began to think that he was what they called too "viewy," too much inclined to paradox, too wild. Often, alas! the feeling in regard to him ended here, and he was written down as impracticable if amusing. That view, though probable, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... his country flying above him, but now his first glance aloft drew from him a loud exclamation, for he found that while below he had apparently been turned into an Englishman, and away up yonder the gale was playing with the Red Cross banner of the British Empire. He stared at it for a moment, and then he made an excited rush for Senor Zuroaga. He might have reached him sooner, but for a lurch of the Goshawk, which sent him sprawling full length upon the deck. It did not hurt him much, however, and as soon as he was on his feet, he blurted ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... trade with a neighbouring and friendly Power, which cannot be said to redound to the credit of the British Government. It is in direct opposition to the sentiments and tradition of the laws of the British Empire." It was here in Chinatown, in San Francisco, that I was brought face to face with the havoc that is made through the opium trade and the use of the pernicious drug in eating and smoking. I was told that Europeans and Americans sometimes ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... strangely insignificant when seen through the vista of time; but of this I feel satisfied, that if the men of to-day by their actions can do anything to put upon a permanent basis cordial, friendly relations and co-operation between your Republic and the British Empire, these actions will grow in men's estimation larger rather than smaller, and generations to come will rise to call those blessed who put the relations of the two countries upon a sound and satisfactory ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... lost confidence in their ability or prudence. The British Government at once gave its assent to this Constitution, which was accordingly inaugurated in 1856; and from that date the political management of New South Wales has been an imitation of that of the British Empire. In 1858 two small modifications were introduced: the Lower House was increased in numbers to sixty-eight members, and the privilege of voting for it was extended to every male person over twenty-one years of age who had dwelt not less than six ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... BRITISH EMPIRE, the name now loosely given to the whole aggregate of territory, the inhabitants of which, under various forms of government, ultimately look to the British crown as the supreme head. The term "empire" is in this connexion obviously used rather for convenience than in any sense ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... from having no nerves to give warning or reaction; it reads no danger signals; it has no premonitions; about its own spiritual doom its sentinels are deaf and all its spies are blind. On the other hand, the British Empire, with all its blunders and bad anomalies, to which I am the last person to be blind, has one noticeable advantage—that it is a living thing. It is not that it makes no mistakes, but it knows it has made them, as the living hand knows when it has touched hot iron. That ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... appeared as irrational and excessive as that of a powder-magazine in reply to nothing more than the light of a spark. It was known that a valorous General of the Algerian wars proposed to make a clean march to the capital of the British Empire at the head of ten thousand men; which seems a small quantity to think much about, but they wore wide red breeches blown out by Fame, big as her cheeks, and a ten thousand of that sort would never think of retreating. Their spectral advance on quaking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unsuccessfully waged war may sometimes be more beneficial to a people than the surrender of vital interests without a blow. We find an example of this in the recent heroic struggle of the small Boer States against the British Empire. In this struggle they were inevitably defeated. It was easy to foresee that an armed peasantry could not permanently resist the combined forces of England and her colonies, and that the peasant armies generally could not bear heavy ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... their British progenitors had to face, and they showed a masterly spirit in adapting the ideas of which they were the heirs to a new country and new conditions. The result is one of the greatest pieces of constructive statesmanship ever accomplished. We, who belong to the British Empire, are at this moment engaged, under very different circumstances, in welding slowly and gradually the scattered fragments of the British Empire into an organic whole, which must, from the very nature of its geographical ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... means to an end, cunningly devised and skillfully applied; it is not a mere matter of instinct, inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of Dickens's satire were perfectly honest people according to their lights. They were sincerely convinced that the British Empire would crumble to pieces the moment its ligaments of red tape were in the slightest degree relaxed. Their strength lay in the fact that they represented an innate tendency in the nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the period of ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... in believing that such barbarities could be practiced within the British Empire, were it not for the fact that Mr. Plaatje not only quotes from the act in extenso but quotes also from the debates in the Colonial Parliament to show that the intention of the legislators was to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... classes and masses, and led them to return as one man to that God in covenant from Whom all have gone so far away. A national movement, in penitence and faith, for the repeal of the Acts Rescissory and the recognition of the National Covenants would be as life from the dead throughout the British Empire. The people and rulers of these dominions shall yet behold the brilliancy of the Redeemer's crowns; and shall, by universal consent, exalt Him who rules in imperial majesty over the entire universe of God. For, "The seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Hasheesh Club, doubtless. In its day it numbered the choicest spirits in New York, and the very center of all of them was this same Charley Vanderhuyn, whose face, the boys used to say, was like the British Empire—for on it the sun never set. His unflagging spirits, his keen love for society, his quick sympathy with everybody, his fine appreciation of every man's good points, whatever they might be, made Charley a prince wherever he went. I said he was the center of the circle of young men ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... time, while Lord Clive was, by a series of victories, laying the foundation of the British Empire in the east, Admiral Watson commanded in the Indian seas. To assist the army the squadron entered the Hooghly, when a body of seamen was landed to attack the fort of Boujee. By a singular event it was carried ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... very strange way. We are told that we are not to claim any rights for the French Language in Ontario, because there is no text of law. I ask you, gentlemen, if you have ever seen anywhere a text of law which says that the English language is the official language of the British Empire? No, there is no such law, none anywhere, not at Westminster, at Ottawa or at Toronto. Why? Simply because language is a natural right—there are rights that we all enjoy which do not need the sanction of law, the right to live, ...
— Bilingualism - Address delivered before the Quebec Canadian Club, at - Quebec, Tuesday, March 28th, 1916 • N. A. Belcourt
... faults cannot be denied; and it is not sufficient excuse to say that they were necessary to the founding of the British empire in India. But his second administration, the reforms he introduced into the government, and the system of wise policy which he established, may well atone for his errors; indeed, it has done so in India, where the natives not only respect his memory as a conqueror, but venerate ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... often forcibly argued, all experience tended to show that a man must die; and whether he died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he benefited the British Empire. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... microcosms, these hotels! Most of these people live here all summer and then migrate to Italy or the Riviera. The English are the only people who can lead that kind of life with dignity—those soft-voiced old ladies in Shetland shawls somehow carry the British Empire under their caps. Civis Romanus sum. It's a curious study—there might be some good things ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... quarter of the globe and separated when the crisis is passed and not to meet again. But what a moment and what a meeting it is, and what a distinction for this little place. Organise your mass meetings and pack your town-halls, you never will get together such a sample of the British Empire as you will see any afternoon in this remote pothouse. What would you give for a peep at the show; to see the types and hear the talk? You would give a hundred pounds, I daresay. I wish I could take you one of these afternoons: I would do it ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... comforts of every Englishman; I shall feel too happy if they leave Europe untouched, and are not ultimately fatal to the destinies of America; but I am madly bent upon keeping foreign enemies out of the British empire, and my limited understanding presents me with no other means of effecting ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... leave the rights and privileges of the colonies unimpaired, together with their perpetual exemption from taxation, but to superadd such further benefits as might be consistent with the common prosperity of the empire; and then he says, "I am now led to devote my life to the reunion of the British Empire as the best and only means to dry up the streams of misery that ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... am I to judge the Government of the British Empire? What do I know of their difficulties, pledges, and enemies—whether outside or inside ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... as he behaved honourably in that of debtor. It would have been a pleasure, we might indeed say a distinction, to live under the same roof with such a man, whose very name carries us back to the primitive times of the colony, when Charleston was a city of the British Empire, and English laws, manners, habits, and feelings regulated the proceedings and relations of its inhabitants. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the London solicitor will some day drop in quietly upon his friend in Charleston, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... are a token that the Great Abbey, and all its memories of 800 years, does not belong to us alone, nor even to the British Empire alone and all its Colonies, but to America likewise! That when an American enters beneath that mighty shade, he treads on common and ancestral ground, as sacred to him as it is to us; the symbol of common descent, common development, common ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... assistance is granted, the inevitable result is that we have foreign interests. For us to refuse the customary support and protection of such interests would be in derogation of the sovereignty of this Nation. Our largest foreign interests are in the British Empire, France, and Italy. Because we are constantly solicitous for those interests, I doubt if anyone would suppose that those countries feel we harbor toward them any militaristic or imperialistic design. As for smaller countries, we certainly do not want any of them. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... who turns to it will be surprised at the statement. He begins by saying that we are paying honour to a man for a patriotic high spirit which enabled him to take a conspicuous part in building up the great fabric of the British Empire. But he was also—as all who were taking part in the ceremony believed in their hearts—a 'man of the world' and 'a man of pleasure.' Do we, then, disbelieve in our own creed, or are we engaged in a solemn mockery? Palmerston had not obeyed the conditions under which ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... personal deeds are wanting, but his ships saw service, and from his character it is certain that when duty called, James Cook would not be found wanting. Many of the men under whom he served have left behind names that will always be associated with the construction of the present British Empire, and with most of them he was in immediate personal contact, and obtained in every case their respect, in some their close ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... the said Hastings had clandestinely meditated against him, although the sum aforesaid would have been a considerable and seasonable acquisition at that time: the said Hastings being determined, at a critical period, to risk the existence of the British empire, rather than fail in the gratification of his revenge against the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be. I want you to be nice to them—both of you. They are friends of mine. [She turns to the Doctor.] They're the girls I used to act with. We went all over Europe—twelve of us—representing the British Empire. They are ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the British Empire and the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth have not merely obscured but contradicted the crucial truth. From such phrases one would fancy that England, in some imperial fashion, now first realized that she was ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... The game is afoot at last. The liberty of Ireland may come sooner or later, by peaceful negotiation or bloody conflict—but it is sure; and wherever between the poles I may chance to be, I will hear the crash of the downfall of the thrice-accursed British Empire." ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... something, if you desired. Individual tuition was given, but in this instance the tutors were free to levy fees. The mastery of languages became one of the most popular occupations to pass the time. I myself had a class of dusky members of the British Empire, drawn from various Colonies, and speaking as many dialects, to whom I undertook to teach English, reading, writing, drawing, and other subjects. At the time the class was formed, they could only muster a few English words, conducting conversation for the most part by signs and indifferent ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... post haste to request your dear little permission, before accepting this tardy recognition of his services to the British Empire." ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... match for the huge Zeppelin. It was the old story of David and Goliath, of the Roman youth who bested the Gaul, of Drake's improvised fleet against the Armada. The lieutenant was called to London and presented with the Victoria Cross by King George, who thanked him in the name of the British Empire for adding another laurel to the long list of its honors. A day or two later President Poincare received him in Paris and pinned the Legion of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... is the capital of the empire of India and the second city in the British Empire. Although situated on an arm of the delta of the Ganges, eighty miles inland, Calcutta is an immense seaport, but its sea-going privileges can be maintained only by great engineering works, because of the silt ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various |
