"Usurpation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... This usurpation of the government of New York by the Republican party, which seemed so unjust, was, doubtless, under the circumstances, the salvation of the city. It was, moreover, highly important to the whole country, in the anomalous war which threatened ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... President of tyranny, usurpation, illegal acts, of abused power, of misused advantages, of favoritism, stupidity, frauds in administration, timidity, sluggish inaction, oppression, the willful neglect of suffering and the willful refusal to hear the cry of the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... and arming men at their leisure; above all, they acquired a prestige, and accustomed men's minds to the thought of disunion, not only as possible, but actual. They began to grow insolent, and, while compelling absolute submission to their rebellious usurpation at home, decried any exercise of legitimate authority on the part of the General Government as Coercion,—a new term, by which it was sought to be established as a principle of constitutional law, that it is always the Northern ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... itself, and were a constant menace to the independence of its bishops. Pope Stephen III. resorted to Pipin for help against these aggressive neighbors; and, in 754, Stephen solemnly repeated, in the cathedral of St. Denis, the ceremony of his coronation. The Carlovingian usurpation was thus hallowed in the eyes of the people by the sanction of the Church. The alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, so essential to both, was cemented. Pipin crossed the Alps in 754, and humbled Aistulf, the Lombard king; but, as Aistulf still kept up ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Club], as he was inform'd, in opposition to Bp. Juxon, Dr. Sanderson, Dr. Hammond, and other divines of the Church of England, who met privately every 30th of January; and though it was under the Time of Usurpation, had compil'd a private Form of Service for the Day, not much different from what we now find in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... pretty beast without a soul that is given to man to bear his burdens. Among savage, barbarous, and half-civilized people, woman's inferiority is never questioned. The idea is entertained in its bald usurpation and black injustice without a questioning thought. Among us it is covered over a little with cotton beauty and rolled up in sugar-plum sweetness so the woman will bear it a little better. Our women ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... was a diplomatic contest on the part of Great Britain aiming at peace and to safeguard her possessions and prestige, while the Afrikaner Bond, on the other part, continued active in the work of sedition and preparing for a war of usurpation. Every one must admit that the demand of the British Ministry for an immediate and adequate representation proceeded from the necessity and the desire to overcome the South African crisis in a just and pacific way. The measure was counted upon to effect conciliation ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... looked upon you as dead for years, and my father had died before the news of your supposed murder reached us." Katherine could hardly steady her voice; she was burning to get away. "I beg you will not resent the fact of my most unconscious usurpation. I would not do anything unjust." She stopped, remembering what she had done. Surely the punishment was coming quick ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... great troubles of life is that Reason has taken charge of the administration of Justice, and by mere identification it has achieved the crown and sceptre of its master. But the imperceptible usurpation was recorded, and discriminating minds understand the chasm which still divides the pretender Law from the exiled King. In a like manner, and with feigned humility, the Cold Demon advanced to serve Religion, and by guile and violence usurped her throne; but the pure ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... of Bobadilla bore all the appearance of a lawless usurpation of some intruder of the kind. He had possessed himself forcibly of the fortress, and consequently of the town. He had issued extravagant licenses injurious to the government, and apparently intended only to make partisans among the people; and had ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... equally erroneous, have been propagated: maliciously representing it as a political bribe to Johnson, to desert his avowed principles, and become the tool of a government which he held to be founded in usurpation. I have taken care to have it in my power to refute them from the most authentick information. Lord Bute told me, that Mr. Wedderburne, now Lord Loughborough, was the person who first mentioned this subject to him[1106]. Lord Loughborough told me, that the pension ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws,—but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea-tax and stamp-act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the king's prerogative, but the king's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional, beyond its power. It was not till this was made out ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... God. We trust there will be found no man, or set of men in the country, to defend such outrageous conduct, and that even the minions of England, employed around the Federal presses of our country, will be ready to join with us, on this occasion, in denouncing British aggression and British usurpation.' There, sir, I trust that ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... degree of credence, of which I can safely acquit the originator of the calumny. I give the sentences, as they stand in the sermon, premising only that I was speaking exclusively of miracles worked for the outward senses of men. "It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed to. REASON AND RELIGION ARE THEIR OWN EVIDENCE. The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under veil, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Feuerbach[67] were a step beyond even this skeptical usurpation. Religion is man's conduct to himself. Man, from time immemorial, has been buried in self-love, and become so far carried away by it that his religion is now one monstrous hallucination. Religion springs not from his intellect but from his imagination. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... that State, in hostility to the Union, when the body acting as a Legislature there was avowedly acting against this Government, neither he nor I would have received Representatives from it. That was a usurpation which, by force of arms, we have put down. Now the question arises, Has a State government since been inaugurated there entitled to representation? Is not that a fair subject of inquiry? Ought we not to be satisfied upon that point? ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... "An usurpation unparalleled in the history of the world.... If these be the principles to which the Emperor of Russia has inviolably attached himself ... deeply does His Majesty [George III.] lament a determination by which the sufferings ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... members. The Committee was composed mainly of honorable men, deservedly high in the community, in every walk and relation of life. They doubtless acted from a conscientious sense of duty, and neither intended usurpation of the law, violence to justice, nor any wrong whatever. They believed it incumbent upon them to reform what they regarded as the maladministration of public affairs, and to cleanse the city of the corruption which existed—as ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... therefore, no man has a right to bestow upon himself; and added, that he might with equal propriety style himself a volunteer lord or volunteer baronet. It cannot be denied that the remark was just; but Savage did not think any title, which was conferred upon Mr. Cibber, so honourable as that the usurpation of it could be imputed to him as an instance of very exorbitant vanity, and, therefore, continued to write under the same title, and received every year ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of that undefined tenth point of the law which is not involved in the word possession, appointed a Vicar Apostolic of Mongolia. The pope might, with equal impunity, have divided it into bishoprics—no meetings would have been hold to protest against the usurpation; and the mandarins of Pekin would certainly have proposed no law to prevent the Lamas of the western world from assuming what titles they pleased. But even in that case, the interests of the church would not have been much forwarded. The very extent and limits of the vicariate were, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... presenting much more that is tedious in narration, affected in style, and feeble in thought, than we have lately found in any large octavo volume of five hundred pages. We begin with four introductory chapters recounting the events which led to the usurpation of Bolingbroke, and the succession of Mr. Towle's hero to the English throne; we go on with two chapters descriptive of the youthful character and career of Henry the Fifth; we end with six chapters devoted to the facts of his reign. Through all this, it appears to us, we are conducted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a citizen is like to suffer at the hands of a government which in its need and haste must of course commit many errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly or indirectly help the enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the war. When the clamor against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes from those who have done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the attention it ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... incensed by her usurpation of the knot-hole as he would have been, at ordinary times, by theft of watch or pocket-book, and tapped ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... A village demagogue named Hung-tsne-Shuen caught the idea, after reading the papers referred to, that he was inspired; that he was God, King, Emperor, and that he ought to rule; so, puffed up with pride and insatiable ambition, he began raising an army; and aimed at nothing less than the usurpation of the "Dragon Throne." Some thought him mad; but he gathered about him some 20,000 men whom he had influenced to believe in him as the "Second Celestial Brother," and gave out he was a seer of visions, a prophet of vengeance and freedom; a champion of the poor and ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... thorax, making him appear as if in momentary danger of a fit. His manner struck me as not pleasing, but it was not assuming, unembarrassed, yet not easy, unpolished, yet not coarse; there was no kind of usurpation of the conversation, no tenacity as to opinion or facts, no assumption of superiority, but the variety and extent of his information were soon apparent, for whatever subject was touched upon he evinced the utmost familiarity with it; quotation, illustration, anecdote, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... court, which he soon compelled to submit on the terms he chose to dictate. From the occurrence of this open rupture we may date the annihilation of the little power Tamasp had ever enjoyed. Nadir continued to treat him with respect till he deemed the time mature for his usurpation of the throne; but we discover that, as early as his first expedition into Khorasan, he began to prepare the minds of his countrymen for his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... laws, had his seat in the capital of the nation, while the priests of his tribe were scattered among the other tribes, and were hereditary. The Hebrew priests simply interpreted the laws; the priests of Egypt made them. Their power was chiefly judicial. They had no means of usurpation, neither from property, nor military command. They were simply the expositors of laws which they did not make, which they could not change, and which they themselves were bound to obey. The income of a Levite was about five times as great as an ordinary man, and this, of course, was ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... themselves, us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only to transmit these—the former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation—to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, all imperatively require us faithfully ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the judgment of his Majesty's Government, be unworthy of its past and of the traditions of which it is the custodian and trustee if it allowed another day to pass without making it clear that it does not mean to brook the greatest indignity and the most arrogant usurpation to which for more than two centuries it has been asked to submit. We have advised the Crown to dissolve Parliament ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... upon your political methods and appliances, and not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes of taking the sense of the community, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Congress as illustrated in its inability to raise money to pay the public debt and meet the current expenses of government, and from the popular dread of military usurpation which went along with the uneasy consciousness of that weakness, we have now to turn to another group of affairs in which the same point is still further illustrated and emphasized. We have seen how the commissioners of the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... may be rare. Still, it is better to attack than to be invaded; and let us remember that the surest way to check the spirit of conquest and usurpation is to oppose it by ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... favour of the people, they answered, We cannot tell, meaning, It is inconvenient to express an opinion. As they could not venture to pronounce whether a ministry which had left its impress deep on the whole land, was a human usurpation or a divine mission, they had obviously no right to sit in judgment on the credentials of Jesus. When on this point they were condemned out of their own lips the Lord, rising now more into the stern dignity ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... well and worthily represented in the government of each city, and therefore equally so in the assembly of the estates. It was not till later that the corporations, by the extinction of the popular element, and by the usurpation of the right of self-election, were thoroughly stiffened into fictitious personages which never died, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a narrow compass, which few are able to extend by the mere force of curiosity.' He next points out what Cromwell 'owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world;' and continues:—'The King of Prussia brought to the throne the knowledge of a private man, without the guilt of usurpation. Of this general acquaintance with the world there may be found some traces in his whole life. His conversation is like that of other men upon common topicks, his letters have an air of familiar elegance, and his whole conduct ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... raise up for that oppressed child an avenger, or a supporter, or vindicator, if you prefer it. It happened that the reigning king, the usurper—(you are quite of my opinion, I believe, that it is an act of usurpation quietly to enjoy, and selfishly to assume the right over, an inheritance to which a man has only the right of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... campaign with no flattering prospects. Since 1832 their opposition to "executive usurpation" had won for them a new party name, "Whig." But neither their opposition nor any other circumstance had given them party solidarity. National Republicans, anti-Masons, converted Jacksonians, state rights men—upon what broad and constructive platform could they hope to unite? ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... turn made counter accusations, setting forth that the mountaineers had held unauthorized treaties with the Indians, and had trespassed on their lands, and even murdered them. He closed by drawing a strong picture of the evils sure to be brought about by such lawless secession, and usurpation of authority. He besought and commanded the revolted counties to return to their allegiance, and warned them that if they did not, and if peaceable measures proved of no avail, then the State of North Carolina would put down the rebellion by ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Protestants were with him; France, in dread of Mary's kinship with the Emperor, offered support to his plans. Jane therefore was at once proclaimed Queen on Edward's death, and accepted as their sovereign by the Lords of the Council. But the temper of the whole people rebelled against so lawless a usurpation. The eastern counties rose as one man to support Mary; and when Northumberland marched from London with ten thousand at his back to crush the rising, the Londoners, Protestant as they were, showed their ill-will by a stubborn silence. "The ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be, in any particular, wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance, in permanent evil, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... King of the eighteenth dynasty. In the row to the left of the entrance are thirty-one names, and in that to the right are thirty, all of them predecessors of Thothmes. The Theban Kings who ruled in Upper Egypt during the usurpation of the Hyksos invaders are also exhibited among the lists. Over the head of each King is his oval, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... highest pitch the renown of their arms; sullied, however, by superstition and cruelty. An allusion to the inhumanities of the Inquisition terminates this picture. The LAST PART of the Poem opens with the state of Spain previous to the unparalleled treachery of BUONAPARTE, gives a sketch of the usurpation attempted upon that unsuspicious and friendly kingdom, and terminates with the arrival of the British succours. It may be further proper to mention, that the object of the Poem is less to commemorate or detail particular ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... for the security of their Trade, and legal employment, and far beyond whatsoever any Corporation of Apothecaries in all, or in any forreign part enjoy, yet nothing would ever content them, but an unlawful, unreasonable, dangerous, and destructive Usurpation of liberty to some pretended practice, that thereby they might ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... fully and formidably represented there. On the government? it suffers itself to be insulted and defied at home, and abroad it has shown itself incapable of maintaining the relations of peace and amity with its allies, so far has it been divested of power by the usurpation of the press. It is at peace with Spain, and it is at peace with Turkey; and although no government was ever more desirous of acting with good faith, its subjects are openly assisting the Greeks with men and money against ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... to be a popular one with some of the greatest tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, "Ancient ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the Pope from his legitimate sphere in the hierarchy of the Church. The history of the United States with the Presidents left out would be more intelligible than the history of the Church to the exclusion of the Vicar of Christ. How, I ask, could such authority endure so long if it were a usurpation? ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. For this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of God. All these questions fall within a man's natural right, which he cannot abdicate ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... had been adopted, almost at the first dash, on the proposal of M. de Lafayette. Each of the articles was an infringement of the constitution, and an usurpation of sovereign authority. The Emperor at once foresaw all the consequences. "I was right in thinking," said he with vexation, "that I ought to dismiss those fellows, before I departed. It is all over; they are on the point of ruining ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man, of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... appear to any reasoning mind, the man really believed he had a natural right to prevent people from crossing that strip of wood where his pheasants were sitting. His ancestors had assumed it from time immemorial, and by dint of never being questioned had come to regard the absurd usurpation as quite fair and proper. He placed himself straight across the narrow path, blocking it up with his short and stumpy figure. "Now look here, young man," he said, with all the insolence of his caste: "if you try to go on, I'll stand ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... appointed bounds. Given a new waterway in a barren land, and in three years the willows have fringed all its miles of banks; three years more and they will touch tops across it. It is perhaps due to the early usurpation of the willows that so little else finds growing-room along the large canals. The birch beginning far back in the canon tangles is more conservative; it is shy of man haunts and needs to have the permanence of its drink assured. It stops far ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... effectually commanded the little vessel as if his authority were of a more regular character. The audacity and decision of his air and conduct, aided by the consummate mariner in which he worked the boat, might alone have achieved this momentary usurpation, had not the general feeling against impressment been ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... subterraneous granary; it had two grates to let in the air; it appeared perfectly dry, but no one was in it. The Comte observed that it was far preferable to the prison where he was confined in France, during the reign or usurpation of Robespierre. The air of Salee and Rabat, and the adjacent country, 115 is strongly perfumed, morning and evening, with the sweet odour of the orange-flower, of which they make immense quantities of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... quickly be satisfied, there was never so much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding English. If he think it not worth while to examine his works all thro', let him make an experiment in that part, where he treats of usurpation; and let him try, whether he can, with all his skill, make Sir Robert intelligible, and consistent with himself, or common sense. I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman, long since past answering, ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... than five years, this peninsula remained unnoticed by the Spaniards. Then Cortez left Mexico, which he had already subjugated, for a journey of discovery to Honduras, and for the purpose of calling to account, for insubordination and usurpation of authority, Cristoval de Olid, whom he had previously sent to that region from Vera Cruz. He received from the princes of Xicalanco and Tobasco maps and charts, giving the natural features of the country, and the limits of the various States. His march lay through ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... this and subsequent tyrant's reign, they found it their duty (a duty which they had too long neglected) to advance one step higher, by casting off their authority altogether, and that as well on account of their manifest usurpation of Christ's crown and dignity, as on account of their treachery, bloodshed and tyranny. And yet as all these faithful witnesses of Christ did harmoniously agree in promoting the kingdom and interest of the Messiah, in all his threefold ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... task of fabricating election laws for securing a preference to a favorite class of men? Would they not be likely to prefer a conduct better adapted to their own immediate aggrandizement? Would they not rather boldly resolve to perpetuate themselves in office by one decisive act of usurpation, than to trust to precarious expedients which, in spite of all the precautions that might accompany them, might terminate in the dismission, disgrace, and ruin of their authors? Would they not fear that citizens, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... powers, in which the movement at Amboise was branded as a conspiracy directed against the king and the royal authority, called forth a host of replies vindicating the political Huguenots, and setting their project in its true light, as an effort to overthrow the intolerable usurpation of the Guises. The tyrants were no match for the patriots in the use of the pen; but it fared ill with the author or printer of these libels, when the strenuous efforts made to discover them proved successful.[868] The politic Catharine de' Medici, fearing a new and more dreadful ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... that, to resist the usurpation of the French, the queen was rallying about her person all the foreigners she could. Her partiality for the English and Americans was well known; and this was an additional ground for our anticipating a favourable reception. Zeke had informed us, moreover, that by the queen's counsellors ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... correctest writers. I shall, therefore, since the rules of style, like those of law, arise from precedents often repeated, collect the testimonies on both sides, and endeavour to discover and promulgate the decrees of custom, who has so long possessed, whether by right or by usurpation, the sovereignty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... weak but financially strong minority of Democrats, and by supporting a compromise ticket that gave most prominence to the minority sought to preserve harmony. But the efforts of such men have proved unavailing to stem the tide of political usurpation, now rampant at ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... More, still Under-Sheriff of London, is said to have written his "History of the Life and Death of King Edward V., and of the Usurpation of Richard III." The book, which seems to contain the knowledge and opinions of More's patron, Morton, was not printed until 1557, when its writer had been twenty-two years dead. It was then printed from a MS. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... it in the wealthier kingdom of Sweden. Here the clergy and part of the nobility were favourable to the Union; but the vast majority of the people hated it as a foreign usurpation. Matters were still further complicated by the continual interference of the Hanseatic League; and Christian I. (1448-1481) and Hans (1481-1513), whose chief merit it is to have founded the Danish fleet, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... government of the Prince against whom they have rebelled. And respecting the interest of the Highlands in particular," he added, "I crave Sir Duncan Campbell's pardon for my plainness; but it seems very clear to me, that the only effect produced by the present usurpation, will be the aggrandisement of one overgrown clan at the expense of every independent Chief ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... combined, of a clan claiming a foreign origin and asserting a marriage with the heiress of a Highland family whose estates they possessed and whose followers they led, they must invariably have been the oldest cadet of that family, who, by usurpation or otherwise, had become de facto chief of the clan, and who covered their defect by right of blood by denying their descent from the clan, and asserting that the founder had married the heiress of its chief." ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... I said, 'that in the event of the Jerome dynasty being overset by a military revolution, it might be followed by a military usurpation; that Nero might be succeeded ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... fact a casting off of an unjustifiable usurpation in temporal as well as in spiritual things, and a violent reaction against that course of events which, from the eighth century downwards, had been tending to reduce the different sovereigns of Western Christendom to the rank of vassals of ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... old, dim, silent servitor of some sort came back with him and took from a sort of cupboard, where it was kept in a glass box, the embalmed head of the Duke of Suffolk, which he lost for his part in the short-lived usurpation of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. Little was left to suggest the mighty noble in the mummy-face, but the tragedy of his death was all there. It seemed as if the thoughts of the hideous last moment ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... in Northern Germany, which, from the umbrage it gave Russia, proved ultimately the cause of his downfall: but it was reserved for us of the present day, to hear a British minister avow and justify a violent and perfidious usurpation on the plea of political expediency. It must indeed be admitted that, in the early stages of the war, the utter iniquity of the measure met with but faint reprobation from any party in the state: the nation, dazzled by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... undertaken in his OWN RIGHT, to support the Parliament in what he calls THEIRS, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... bygone, as having any right, title to, or interest in the said Crown of Scotland for government, as forfeited several years since by his perjury and breach of Covenant both to God and His Kirk, and usurpation of His Crown and Royal Prerogatives therein." That courageous act of those twenty patriots proclaimed the doom of the House ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... consecrates civil authority, clothes it with a religious character, and makes civil disobedience, sedition, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, civil turbulence of any sort or degree, sins against God as well as crimes against the state. For the same reason she makes usurpation, tyranny, oppression of the people by civil rulers, offences against God as well as against society, and ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... JOHN BRIGHT is said to while away the time, in his retirement, by knitting garters. It seems very strange that such a usurpation of Woman's Rights should be carried into effect by one of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... which he could stand as pretender to any throne but that of Cabool, where, by accident, he had just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have supported him? "Because thou art virtuous," we must have said, are we to support future usurpation? Because the Dost is just to pedlars, "shall there be no more ale and cakes" for other Affghan princes? All Asia could not have held him upright on any throne comprehensively Affghan. Whether that could have been accomplished ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Confederation might have been mitigated and perhaps averted. In their enthusiasm over the Declaration of Independence the people—by whom is meant the articulate class consisting largely of the governing and commercial elements—would probably have accepted such a usurpation of authority. But with their lack of experience it is not surprising that the delegates to Congress did not appreciate the necessity of such radical action and so were unwilling to take the responsibility for it. They ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... o'clock Grant Adams had signed a counter proclamation declaring that the proclamation of martial law in a time of peace was an usurpation of the constitutional rights of American citizens, and that they must refuse to recognize any authority that abridged the right of free assemblage, a free press, free speech and a trial by jury. Amos Adams sent the workers an invitation to meet ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... been expected, the Emperor Henry IV., King of the Romans, was not long in protesting against so decided an infringement of his secular claims. From the synods of Worms and Piacenza came the Imperial decree of deposition against Gregory, which was addressed by "Henry, not by usurpation but by God's holy ordination, King, to Hildebrand, no longer Pope, but false monk." Gregory, strong alike in virtue and in resolve, and aided by the might of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany and of Robert Guiscard, answered by pronouncing a solemn anathema upon ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... been assured that this effect of the approach of the whites is often felt at two hundred leagues' distance from their frontier. Their influence is thus exerted over tribes whose name is unknown to them; and who suffer the evils of usurpation long before they are acquainted with the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... observed by the English living to the eastward; for notwithstanding possession was already fully taken by the building and occupation of Fort Good Hope, and there was no neglect from time to time in warning them, in making known our rights, and in protesting against their usurpation and violence, they have disregarded all these things and have seized and possessed, and still hold, the largest and best part of New Netherland, that is, on the east side of the North River, from Cape Cod, (by our people in 1609 called ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... to give Cato the command of the navy, which consisted of no less than five hundred ships of war, besides a vast number of light galleys, scouts, and open boats. But presently bethinking himself, or put in mind by his friends, that Cato's principal and only aim being to free his country from all usurpation, if he were master of such great forces, as soon as ever Caesar should be conquered, he would certainly call upon Pompey, also, to lay down his arms, and be subject to the laws, he changed his mind, and though he had already mentioned it to Cato, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... water in the city." Again, on the other hand: "Whatever is valid in a smaller matter ought to be valid also in a greater one. One may convert the preceding example." Also, "That which is valid in a parallel case ought to be valid in this which is a parallel case." As, "Since the usurpation of a farm depends on a term of two years, the law with respect to houses ought to be the same." But in the law houses are not mentioned, and so they are supposed to come under the same class as all other things, the property in which is determined by one year's use. Equity then must prevail, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... topics, till, happening to fall upon tithes, the squire struck in, and by dint of loudness of voice, and truculence of brow, fairly overwhelmed both his guests, and proved to his own satisfaction that tithes were an unjust and unchristianlike usurpation on the part of the Church generally, and a most especial and iniquitous infliction upon the Hazeldean estates ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have defenders against foes foreign or domestic. A well-trained militia may be depended upon to fight with valor against a foreign foe, and may at the same time serve as a check upon usurpation. ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... belief, because it is impossible for him to admit any other; nor is it at all natural or necessary that one individual should question the sincerity of another's opinion on any subject, because it differs from his own. Intolerance in this particular has been the result mostly of interference and usurpation—the consequence of that theological despotism to which men have, in some form or other, in all ages, been more or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... family, under Cromwell's usurpation, was the principal cause of all those misfortunes in which Britain has been involved, as well as of many of those which have happened to the rest of Europe, during more than ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... scanned the frequent revolutions of the time with a calm and investigating eye, trusted that he should be enabled to avoid both these errors: and, as the reader has already seen, he had formed the profound and sagacious project of consolidating his usurpation by an utterly new race of nobles, who, serving him by the feudal tenure of the North, and ever ready to protect him, because in so doing they protected their own interests, should assist to erect, not the rotten and unsupported fabric of a single tyranny, but ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons,[466] not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the beneficiary, than with the anger of my ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... though he has made himself steward by an act of usurpation. Just at this time he belongs to my household," said she, with mock dignity. "And, when at home, he is a very important person at Craiggyside, a place unknown to your geography, but a very important and ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of the Magus in their hands, and exhibiting everywhere this proof at once of the death of the late king and of his imposture, they proceeded to authorize and aid in carrying out, a general massacre of the Magian priests, the abettors of the later usurpation. Every Magus who could be found was poniarded by the enraged Persians; and the caste would have been well-nigh exterminated, if it had not been for the approach of night. Darkness brought the carnage ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... counteracted the torrent of partiality in favor of France, and was immediately assailed with intemperate violence in many of the public journals. The right of the executive to issue any proclamation of neutrality was fiercely and pertinaciously denied as a usurpation of legislative authority, and in that particular case it was charged with forestalling and prematurely deciding the question whether the United States were bound, by the guarantee to France of her West India possessions in the treaty of alliance, to take ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... on a keystone, hangs the arch of life, Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form, 155 And all that makes the age of reasoning man More memorable than a beast's, depend on this— That Right should fence itself inviolably With Power; in which respect the state of England From usurpation by the insolent commons 160 Cries for reform. Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies Opposing factions,—be thyself of none; And borrow gold of many, for those who lend 165 Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus Keep the fierce spirit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... conflict with cruelty, disorder, folly and waste. To my mind, it follows immediately that there can be no king, no government of any sort, which is not either a subordinate or a rebel government, a local usurpation, in the kingdom of God. But no organised religious body has ever had the courage and honesty to insist upon this. They all pander to nationalism and to powers and princes. They exists so to pander. Every organised religion in the world exists only to exploit ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... absence that the cosmic mechanism has got out of gear, it is yet He who willed to be so absent, well knowing what results would supervene; if a power other than He and hostile to Him has usurped the place and title of Prince of this world, such usurpation would have been impossible but for His acquiescence, and personified Evil, playing with human happiness, would still be His licensed agent. Evidently, the solution of which we are in search does not lie ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the world to provide this transit in the shape of a canal—the resolution of the Pan-American Congress was practically a mandate to this effect. Colombia was then under a one-man government, a dictatorship, founded on usurpation of absolute and irresponsible power. She eagerly pressed us to enter into an agreement with her, as long as there was any chance of our going to the alternative route through Nicaragua. When she thought we were committed, she refused to fulfil the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... much confided, the annihilation of the English power in that remote region of the Canadas, and the consequent destruction of all his hopes of retrieving his race from the hated thraldom of American tyranny and American usurpation. Such was the first feeling of that noble Warrior, but his was not a soul to despond under the infliction of even a worse trial than that just recorded, and in proportion as the danger and difficulty increased, so rose his energy and his desire to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... comply with the demands of Caesar, but still managed to retain their old Church and King principles. Leslie reserved his wrath for the Tillotsons and the Tenisons and the Burnets, who first, to use his own words, swallowed 'the morsels of usurpation' and then dressed them up 'with all the gaudy and ridiculous flourishes that an Apostate eloquence ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... ingratiate himself with the opposite side, and in 1660 we find him assisting on horseback at the coronation of Charles II. He now resigned the Chief Justiceship, made himself very useful in settling legal difficulties consequent upon the usurpation, and became as loyal as any cavalier: the King, as a mark of his favour, {11a} bestowing a baronetcy upon his son in 1661. He possessed Henley Park, {11b} in Surrey, and an estate at Bicester, in Oxfordshire, (of ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... principal works were De Regno et Regali Potestate, &c. (Paris, 1600), a strenuous defence of the rights of kings, in which he refutes the doctrines of George Buchanan, "Junius Brutus" (Hubert Languet) and Jean Boucher; and De Potestate Papae, &c. (London, 1609), in opposition to the usurpation of temporal powers by the pope, which called forth the celebrated reply of Cardinal Bellarmine; also commentaries on some of the titles of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... husband of Messalina;" but, whatever Claudius may have imagined, all the rest of the world knew the marriage to be real, and regarded it not only as a vile enormity, but also as a direct attempt to bring about a usurpation of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... usurped all other power within the limits of the rebellion, and the United States Government is seeking to overthrow it, in order that the Constitution may be restored, in all its benignity, to the people of the South, whom the usurpation has deprived of it. Is it, then, for the United States Government to propose to the authors of this usurpation to cease seeking its total overthrow? The question recurs, moreover, what 'cessation' have we to propose? It is for them to offer to yield: they are the aggressors, threatening ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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 then on the verge of war with Great Britain, the ally of Spain, an Act of Congress declared ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... prowess, and were reduced to making war by stealth instead of openly carrying off their slaves in fair battle. It seems probable that they now creep into a nest of the far more powerful slave ants, poison or assassinate the queen, and establish themselves by sheer usurpation in the queenless nest. 'Gradually,' says Sir John Lubbock, 'even their bodily force dwindled away under the enervating influence to which they had subjected themselves, until they sank to their present degraded condition—weak in body and mind, few in numbers, and apparently ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... within four bare walls. Everything, except the bed he slept on, had been sold to support him in his illness. As soon as he could totter forth, Beck hastened to his crossing. Alas! it was preoccupied. His absence had led to ambitious usurpation. A one-legged, sturdy sailor had mounted his throne, and wielded his sceptre. The decorum of the street forbade altercation to the contending parties; but the sailor referred discussion to a meeting at a flash ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... your dominion won, th' Ethereal King Possesses lately, thither to arrive I travel this profound. Direct my course: Directed, no mean recompense it brings To your behoof, if I that region lost, All usurpation thence expelled, reduce To her original darkness and your sway (Which is my present journey), and once more Erect the standard there of ancient Night. Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge!" Thus Satan; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... who were dissatisfied with the usurpation of supreme authority by Harold, took refuge in England, where Alfred had recently settled many of the vanquished Danes and Nordmen in the northern part of his dominions, which had been almost entirely depopulated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... when the examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Caesar, Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France and England, at the commencement of the French consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedants' ignorance, to fear a repetition of usurpation and military despotism at the close of the enlightened eighteenth century! Even so, in the very dawn of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reformers Marius, Caesar, &c., and the direful effects of the levelling ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... into actual sovereignty, in other words, the Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that the crown was not a fit plaything for a twelve ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... stand or fall. Congress, by giving the power of granting amnesty to Mr. Lincoln, evidently conceived that it was not a power given to him by the Constitution; by taking it away from Mr. Johnson, it as evidently conceived that it could not be exercised by him except by usurpation. In usurping this power, Mr. Johnson must have known that his act belonged, in the opinion of Congress, to the class of "high crimes and misdemeanors," for the commission of which the Constitution expressly provides that Presidents may be impeached; and he must also have known that Congress, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... confederate states. Were he to have too great influence over one, this would alarm the rest. Were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation." ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the nation. There, in the unified and unifying purpose of nations like America, and of each of her federate States, the power is being safeguarded for the community and for its members severally by political devices which render public servants incapable of prolonged usurpation. ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... fight, And rent the eagles of invading Rome, Whose power had changed a hundred nations' doom. In vain the Empress of the Northern Zone, With arts on arts high piled her ill-gained throne: Stern Engelbert trod Usurpation down, And from the thirteenth Eric tore the crown. Yet may my country fall—earth's works decay, And heaven's high laws ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... over an area of 12,000 square miles, slavery only exists by the usurpation of the cotton aristocracy of the lowland districts of the State.' In all of them, slaves, though in a greater proportion than in the rest of Alleghania, are very greatly in the minority, as ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession, in case of the King's death, with the legitimate heir, Arthur Duke of Brittany, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, the elder brother of John. This usurpation, it is well known, he afterwards effected. His own character being light, profligate, and perfidious, John easily attached to his person and faction, not only all who had reason to dread the resentment of Richard for criminal proceedings during his absence, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... authority than the constitution allows him: that power is to be watched in its very first encroachments; nor is any thing ever gained by timidity and submission: that every concession adds new force to usurpation; and at the same time, by discovering the dastardly dispositions of the people, inspires it with new courage and enterprise: that as arms were intrusted altogether in the hands of the prince, no check remained upon him but the dependent condition of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... this got to the ears of the Archbishops they would be more than justified in calling him to account, for every act he performed relating to the army after he knew that his monarch had refused to sanction his nomination was an act of rebellion and usurpation punishable by death. The Empress was well aware of the jeopardy in which her attache stood, but she implored him not to give up the position, although helpless to make his appointment regular. She hoped her husband's religious ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... not because I am afraid of your disclosing my family secrets, although, for your own sake, I warn you to beware how you do so. Your agency and intermediation can be of little consequence to one who will win or lose all, as lawful right or unjust usurpation shall succeed in the struggle that is about to ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... generation!—the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our state archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional,—beyond ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... been governed for thirty years by the usurpation of three brothers, keeping the lawful king a state prisoner, and ruling according to their own pleasure, shewing the king only once a year to his subjects. They had been principal officers under the father of the king whom they now held a prisoner, who was very young when his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... removed ancestor of his father, as well, had stood high in the favour of the same monarch. Therefore the history of the troublous times of the preceding century, which were brought to a close by the usurpation of Henry VII., would naturally be a subject of talk in the quiet household, where books and amusements such as now occupy our boys, were scarce or wanting altogether. The proximity of such a past of strife and commotion, crowded with eventful change, must have formed a background ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... life, and daily intrusted the young man with more and more authority. Blaise's home was prospering too; Charlotte had now given birth to a second child, a boy, and thus fruitfulness was invading the place and usurpation becoming more and more likely, since Constance could never more have an heir to bar the road of conquest. Without penetrating her singular feelings, Mathieu fancied that she perhaps wished to sound him to ascertain if he ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... are the same as the rights of individuals composing a majority. A man may elect a representative; but he cannot be bound by a representative elected by others. Children should be educated, not by force or authority, but by attraction. The assumption of authority over a child by a parent is usurpation; the use of authority over a child is tyranny. The individuality of a child is its life, and life is sacred. To destroy individuality is murder. We have no right to take Nature's place, and make a human being something different from what she has formed him. Solomon's rod and Paul's authority ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... through all, time, have turned that scale in favor of American freedom. I read it with a prophetic eye, which is made for me too clear for error or misconception. Our avenging armies will henceforth go on conquering and to conquer, till the last vestige of British usurpation ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Huguenot party into the very heart of France. James on the other hand was bitterly angered at Frederick's action. He could not recognize the right of subjects to depose a prince, or support Bohemia in what he looked on as revolt, or Frederick in what he believed to be the usurpation of a crown. By envoy after envoy he called on his son-in-law to lay down his new royalty, and to return to the Palatinate. His refusal of aid to the Protestant Union helped the pressure of France in paralyzing its action, while he threatened war against Holland, the one power which was ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... "intention that no violation whatever shall be offered to women, children, or private property, to sully the arms of Britons or freemen, employed in the glorious and righteous cause of rescuing and delivering this country from the usurpation of rebellion, and that no cruelty whatever be offered against the laws of humanity, but what resistance shall make necessary; and that whatever provisions and other necessaries be taken for the troops, shall ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... engaged, Cooper lugged in a discussion of the political question that was agitating the nation. He remarked, in the course of it, that if the Union were ever destroyed by errors or faults of an internal origin, it would not be by executive but by legislative usurpation. In order apparently to have neither of the two parties in full sympathy with him, he criticised the appointing power of the President, and his action in filling embassies. It is by the most strained interpretation of the danger to our institutions from imitation of those found in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess him. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... he inveighed, in his lectures, against the pope—his usurpation—his infallibility—his pride—his avarice—and his tyranny. He was the first who termed the pope Antichrist. From the pope, he would turn to the pomp, the luxury and trappings of the bishops, and compared them with the simplicity of primitive bishops. Their superstitions ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Solomon's signet. The tale is that Solomon, when he washed, entrusted his signet-ring to his favorite concubine, Amina. Sakhar one day assumed the appearance of Solomon, got possession of the ring, and sat on the throne as the king. During this usurpation, Solomon became a beggar, but in forty days Sakhar flew away, and flung the signet-ring into the sea. It was swallowed by a fish, the fish was caught and sold to Solomon, the ring was recovered, and Sakhar was thrown into the sea of Galilee with a great ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... searching your ships—that favourite word, as it was called, is not omitted, indeed, in the preamble to the convention, but it stands there as the reproach, of the whole—as the strongest evidence of the fatal submission that follows. On the part of Spain, an usurpation, an inhuman tyranny, claimed and exercised over the American seas; on the part of England, an undoubted right, by treaties, and from God and nature, declared and asserted in the resolutions of Parliament, are referred ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... Campbell leaves New Orleans for home this evening. Want of respect for Governor Wells personally, alone represses the expression of indignation felt by all honest and sensible men at the unwarranted usurpation of General Sheridan in removing the civil officers of Louisiana. It is believed here that you will reinstate Wells. He is a bad man, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... mothers a long, long time to become reconciled to the complete usurpation of all their former rights by this new parent whom their boys are bound to serve,—this anything but Alma Mater,—the war school of the nation. As for Miss Nan, though she made it a point to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to precipitate events. It was a piece of religion to defend the Mikado; it was a plain piece of political righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. To Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have arrived. He was himself still confined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelligence; but with that he sharpened a sword for the Shogun's minister. A party of his followers were to waylay the tyrant at a village ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... take a loftier view of the struggle, and to grasp the full compass and grandeur of the issues involved. It was no mere feud between two rival states, but a great national conflict, which was to end in the downfall of a wide-spread usurpation, and the deliverance of a hundred cities from bondage. The whole naval and military forces of Athens lay crippled and helpless within their grasp; they would shatter to pieces the instrument of tyranny, and win an immortal ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... of this," he said. "I have often told him that it was our duty to protect the inferior princes against the usurpation of this islander; but he answers me ever with cold respects of their relations together as suzerain and vassal, and that it were impolitic in him to make an open breach at ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... jealous. If I speak to any other boy he rushes at him and drives him away, and while black Khayr was in the house, he suffered martyrdom and the kitchen was a scene of incessant wrangle about the coffee. Khayr would bring me my coffee and Achmet resented the usurpation of his functions—of course quite hopelessly, as Khayr was a great stout black of eighteen and poor little Achmet not bigger than Rainie. I am really tempted to adopt the vigilant ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... to the law, it rested with the six councillors of the Doge and a majority of the Grand Council to insist upon the abdication of a Doge. The action of the Ten was an usurpation of powers to which they were not entitled by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Constantinople and died. With him were slain his sons Ardabures and Patriciolus, the one long a Patrician, and the other styled a Caesar and son-in-law of the Emperor Leo. Now Olybrius died barely eight months after he had entered upon his reign, and Glycerius was made Caesar at Ravenna, rather by usurpation than by election. Hardly had a year been ended when Nepos, the son of the sister of Marcellinus, once a Patrician, deposed him from his office and ordained him bishop at the Port ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... IV., Henry V., the three parts of Henry VI., and Richard III. This series may be divided into two, each forming a tetralogy, or group of four plays. In the first the subject is the rise of the house of Lancaster. But the power of the Red Rose was founded in usurpation. In the second group, accordingly, comes the Nemesis, in the civil wars of the Roses, reaching their catastrophe in the downfall of both Lancaster and York, and the tyranny of Gloucester. The happy conclusion ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... successors were confirmed in the title of "Supreme Head of the Church in Ireland," with power of reforming and correcting errors in religion. All appeals to Rome were prohibited, and the Pope's authority declared a usurpation. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... same stone, the gum-worker builds her nest at the same period as the mud-worker; but there is no fear of mutual encroachments, for the two Bees, working next door to each other, watch their respective properties with a jealous eye. If attempts at usurpation were to be made, the owner of the Snail-shell would know how to enforce her rights as ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre |
