"Absolutism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people of Boston of the English Parliament's right to tax them, until he joined Jefferson in forcing on the then unprepared mind of the public the idea of a complete and final separation from the "Mother Country," his aggressive denunciations of the English government's attempts at absolutism made him so hated by the English administration and its colonial representatives that, with John Hancock, he was specially exempted from General Gage's amnesty proclamation of June 1775, as "having committed offenses of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... cf. note Fernando, p. 34, 5. Ferdinand welcomed the intervention of the French in Spain to support him in his absolutism against the advanced party, which clamored for constitutional liberties. The French expedition (1823) was completely successful, the resistance being so slight that the French describe the invasion ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... purposes were the complete restoration of Catholicism in Germany, held the provinces conquered by him with an iron hand. Wallenstein, who seemingly had in view the weakening of the power of the League and the raising of the emperor to absolutism, broke down all ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... but neither party cared a straw for what it talked about, and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they could get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite as the Jacobs themselves. As for the Tories, no great change in them was necessary; everything favouring absolutism and slavery being congenial to them. So the whole nation—that is, the reading part of the nation, with some exceptions, for, thank God, there has always been some salt in England—went over the water to Charlie. But going ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... be supposed, however, that her self-will was a passionate, moody absolutism. She had outgrown that, and was too well-bred ever to show much temper. The tendency of her mature purposes and prejudices was to crystallize into a few distinct forms. With the feminine logic of a narrow mind, she made her husband ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... to swallow his opinions as being absolute and final. This disposition to govern his circle co-existed, however, with the most lavish appreciation of every good quality displayed by the members of it, and all the little uneasiness to which his absolutism may sometimes have given rise was much more than removed by constantly recurring acts of good-fellowship,—indeed it was forgotten ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... has happened to America since our federal government was converted into a centralized absolutism. The central government in Washington arrogated to itself the unconstitutional power and responsibility of regulating the relationships between private employers and their employees, enacting laws which established "collective bargaining" as "national policy," and which, to that end, gave international ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... these facts fully stated by any historian or by any biographer of Knox, except by the Reformer himself, partly in his History, partly in his letters to a lady of his acquaintance. The mystery of the Kirks turns on the Knoxian conception of the 'lawful minister,' and his claim to absolutism. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... horrible dungeons; by dungeons of the blood-thirsty Spanish inquisition, then across Europe and Asia, to the mines of Nertschinsk, in the ever-frozen Altai. We lost all we had on earth; seemingly we were always beaten; but Portugal and Spain enjoy to-day a constitutional regime that is an improvement on absolutism. France has expelled forever the Bourbons, and universal suffrage, spelt now by the French people, is a progress, is a promise of a great democratic future. Germany has in part conquered free speech and free press. Italy is united, Romanism is falling to pieces, Austria ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... by the clergy, through the close connection with canon law which was in force in Germany. German emperors and territorial lords also favoured Roman law because they saw how well suited it was to absolutism; they liked to engage jurists trained in Italy, especially if they were doctors of both canon and Roman law. Nor did the German people object. From the fourteenth century many schools of jurisprudence were ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... knew that republics are not created by fiat. He believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition from monarchy. Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of symbol and ceremonial. He had also a special belief that the smaller peoples were better fitted for ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... is the only one that requires this wilful humanistic culture. An absolutism like Russia's is served better when the people accept their ideas as authoritative and piously sacrifice humanity to a non-human purpose. An aristocracy flourishes where the people find a vicarious enjoyment in admiring the successes ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... determining success in a manner absolutely defying all the speculations of human reason.[7] The biographer of Frederick apparently finds no inscrutable force at all, but only will, tenacity, and powder kept dry. There is a vast difference between this and the absolutism of the mystic. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... an effort to-day to picture the social power of France and Eugenie twenty years ago. The mantle has not fallen to England and Alexandra. Only a people like the French can endue fashion with absolutism. ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... transformers. A day will come when they will see that they are impoverished under the pretext of being enriched; that, when they are robbed of their souls and of God, both their titles to liberty are stolen from them. Atheism and Republicanism are two words which exclude each other. Absolutism may thrive without a God, for it needs only slaves. Republicanism cannot exist without a God, for it must have citizens. And what is it that makes citizens? Two things,—the sentiment of their rights, and the sentiment of their duties ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the world is more innately democratic than Spain—none, perhaps, so attached to monarchy; but one lesson has been learned, probably alike by King and people—that absolutism is dead and buried beyond recall. The ruler of Spain, to-day and in the future, must represent the wishes of the people; and if at any time the two should once more come into sharp collision, it is not the united people of this once-divided country ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... has seen FLINK's surprise, gets up). Listen to me! Suppose we had a king who said: "Either you help me to establish a democratic monarchy—purged of all traces of absolutism, purged of falsehood—or else ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... highly disapproved both of Palmerston's policy and of his methods of action. He was opposed to absolutism; but in his opinion Palmerston's proceedings were simply calculated to substitute for absolutism, all over Europe, something no better and very possibly worse—the anarchy of faction and mob violence. The ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... peace in connection, nations themselves wear the human form, and must, therefore, realize the various states of infancy, youthfulness, and manhood—of germ, growth, and fruitage. This is true of whatever national form. Nationalities founded upon the principles of absolutism, embody and express the same laws and conditions. Their principle of supreme external authority is first a condition of germination, then of growth or labored effort toward maturity, and lastly of fruitage, in which the whole form is matured in perfectly organic completeness, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Philip's might have pictured a youth of splendid hope, for he must have been entering upon manhood in 1848 when kings, remembering their brother of France, went about with an uneasy crick in their necks; and perhaps that passion for liberty which passed through Europe, sweeping before it what of absolutism and tyranny had reared its head during the reaction from the revolution of 1789, filled no breast with a hotter fire. One might fancy him, passionate with theories of human equality and human rights, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... throne prematurely, through the influence of the King of Prussia, he began well, but after a few years shook off the restraints of good advice and entered upon a course of autocratic folly that made Wuerttemberg a far-shining example of the evils of absolutism under the Old Regime. Early in his reign he married a beautiful and high-minded princess of Bayreuth, but his profligacy soon drove her back to the home of her parents. Then a succession of mistresses ruled his ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... which is evidently impending between the Teutonic races in Western Europe, with their Protestantism, free speech, individual liberty, right of private judgment, and scorn of all thraldom, both material and mental, on the one side, and the dark powers of absolutism, repression, and irresponsible authority in church and state, on the other? How Russia, the type of brute-force, presses with crushing weight on intellectual Germany! Soon she will absorb the old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their lives. Hundreds of persons ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... and Leibniz the heads of rival sects, but politically they were on the same side. As against Louis's political absolutism and enforced religious uniformity, both championed religious toleration and the freedom of the mind. Their theological liberalism was political prudence; it was not necessarily for that reason the less personally ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... know something of the purging of the University and the Ministry of Aberdeen by the Covenanting General Assembly of 1640. These deposed Aberdeen doctors may have had too strong leanings to episcopacy in the Church and to absolutism in the State, but they were not Vicars of Bray. The first half of the century was adorned by a band of scholars, who have gained renown by their cultivation of Latin poetry; a little oasis in the desert of Aristotelian Dialectics. It would be needless and ungracious to enquire whether ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... was "point de redressements de griefs, point d'argent." On December 11 came a royal message to the States-General which, while promising certain concessions regarding the taxes, the Collegium Philosophicum and the language decree, stated in unequivocal terms the principle of royal absolutism. To quote the words of a competent ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... local position, and character, one of these communities of freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this antagonism,—Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France. The one was the offspring of a triumphant government; the other, of an oppressed and fugitive people: the one, an unflinching champion of the Roman Catholic reaction; the other, a vanguard ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Demosthenes was inspired by the traditions of the past, but had a much less vague conception of the moral to be drawn from them than had the multitude. Athens, for him as for them, was to be the first state in Hellas; she was above all to be the protectress of democracy everywhere, against both absolutism and oligarchy, and the leader of the Hellenes in resistance to foreign aggression. But, unlike the multitude, Demosthenes saw that this policy required the greatest personal effort and readiness for sacrifice on the part of every individual; and he ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... with something of her old absolutism, came to his house continually to inquire and give orders, and to his room to see him every afternoon, found out for herself in the course of his convalescence this strange death of the sensuous side of Jocelyn's nature. She had said that Avice was getting extraordinarily ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... is the gross and unrestrained tyranny of what in modern phrase is styled Imperialism, and on the other a wise and benevolent modification of temporal sovereignty in the interests of all by an established and accepted spiritual power. No middle path lies before the people of Europe. Temporal absolutism we must have. The only question is whether or no it shall be modified by the wise, disinterested, and moderating counsels of the Church, as ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... colors, declaring that he "never concerned himself to disguise his sentiments, to restrain his passions, or to conciliate the affections of those who might possibly have been one day his subjects. Relying on the victory which had been apparently declared for absolutism, inflexible in his persuasions, and unbending in his demeanor, the Duke treated popular opinion with a ferocity of contempt which could scarcely be surpassed at St. Petersburgh or Warsaw. In his pleasures he asserted ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... glimpses into the thoughts that had habitation under the white mane and that came militantly out through the unyielding eyes even in silence. Stuart winced often under the sting and irritation of a bigotry which could, without question or doubt, undertake to rule offhand and with absolutism on every question ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... founded a constitutional government and distributed the lands among the people. After the Kamehamehas came King Lunalio, who ruled but one year, and Kalakaua, who ruled from 1874 to 1891 and showed such a disposition to return to absolutism that the people were in constant dread for their liberties and lands. It was only by a revolt of the people that they regained their rights, forcing him to grant them a new constitution and their former liberties ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... parchment arrangements. The truth is, the old Union is nan est invenius, and its restoration, with its pro-slavery compromises, well-nigh impossible. The conflict is really between the civilization of freedom and the barbarism of slavery—between the principles of democracy and the doctrines of absolutism—between the free North and the man-imbruting South; therefore, to this extent hopeful for ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... trod them one by one under her feet, gained power by the aid of Tartar swords and spears or through sheer dread of the Tartar name, and when the Golden Horde was at length overthrown the Grand Prince took the place of the Great Khan and ruled with the same absolute sway. It was the absolutism of Asia imported into Europe. Step by step the princes of Moscow had copied the system of the khan. This work was finished by Ivan the Great, at once the deliverer and the enslaver of Russia, who freed that country from the yoke of the khan, but laid upon ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... manifestation as comstockery, the particular business of the present essay, is necessary to an understanding of its workings, and of its prosperity, and of its influence upon the arts. Save one turn to England or to the British colonies, it is impossible to find a parallel for the astounding absolutism of Comstock and his imitators in any civilized country. No other nation has laws which oppress the arts so ignorantly and so abominably as ours do, nor has any other nation handed over the enforcement ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... hatred and distrust of Parliament and the Crown. On the contrary it saw them in greater union than of old. The House of Commons was more corrupt than ever, and it was the slave of the king. The king still called himself a Whig, yet he was reviving a system of absolutism which Whiggism, to do it justice, had long made impossible. His minister was a mere favourite and in Englishmen's eyes a foreigner. The masses saw all this, but they saw no way of mending it. They knew little of their ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling these same minorities to council. As the king-in-council succeeded the king by the grace of God, so in future democracies the toleration and encouragement of minorities and the willingness to consider as "men" the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... strengthen the movement in that direction in the south. The emigre Count of Provence, the next younger brother of Louis XVI., who had assumed the title of regent, desired the government to allow him to enter the town. As the emigres aimed at the restoration of absolutism it would have been fatal to the hopes built on the movement in the south in favour of a constitutional monarchy to have granted his request, and it would have been unfair to the Toulonese who stipulated ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... especially in summer, and indeed, if the mind and body are active from an early hour, a little repose is useful, if not necessary, after mid-day. Busy men however like Cicero could not always afford it in the city, and we find him noting near the end of his life, when Caesar's absolutism had diminished the amount of his work both in senate and law-courts, that he had taken to the siesta which he formerly dispensed with.[434] Even the sturdy Varro in his old age declared that in summer he could not ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... not really governed at all, in the sense in which government came to be understood in subsequent years. Government was a treaty, not a design; it was forensic, conservative, disputatious, unseeing, unthinking, uncreative; throughout the world, except where the vestiges of absolutism still sheltered the court favourite and the trusted servant, it was in the hands of the predominant caste of lawyers, who had an enormous advantage in being the only trained caste. Their professional education and every circumstance in the manipulation ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... infection in its acute, "childish" form. The social and cultural anti-Semitism of the West did not undermine the modern foundations of Jewish civil equality. But Russian Judaeophobia, more governmental than social, being fully in accord with the entire regime of absolutism, produced a system aiming not only at the disfranchisement, but also at the direct physical annihilation of the Jewish people. The policy of the extermination of Judaism was stamped upon the forehead of Russian reaction, receiving various colors ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... to expressions of sympathy for his downtrodden country by individuals, by voluntary associations, and by municipalities. All his speeches after his visit to Washington were laden with one thought, viz., the duty of all free countries to resist the spread of absolutism. Pre-eminently this duty was upon America. "Republican America," said he, "and all-overwhelming Russian absolutism cannot much longer subsist together on earth. Russia active,—America passive,—there is an immense ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... that these excesses should produce other excesses, in a contrary direction. Moved by hatred or fear of revolutionary absolutism, nations seek an asylum in governmental absolutism, or they retrograde towards the middle ages, and consider the mutual bond of protection and dependence of that period as the ideal and the realization of true liberty. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... said Leonardo Donato, "and there is one fault. It limits his power to achieve; it increases his absolutism. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... tending rapidly, under fearful exigencies, to the absolutism which, in a republic, alone can summon the full forces into the field. Power must be concentrated, and wielded with promptitude and precision, else we shall fail to achieve our independence. All obstructions in the way ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Turks had been defeated by Charles' fleets in the Mediterranean. The Council of Trent, at first refractory, seemed yielding to his wishes. Spain, where at one time he had faced a violent revolt against his absolutism, was now wholly submissive. Germany seemed equally overcome. The Emperor was at the summit of his ambitions. Europe lay ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... least impair freedom if, for example, one has personified evil as a living Devil. The error does not lie in this, but in the making absolute these determinate, aesthetic forms of religion. The reaction of the thinking activity against such aesthetic absolutism then undertakes in its negative absolutism to despise the content also, as if it were a ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... the Triune Kingdom and the Serb Vojvodina. The dynasty and the monarchy survived, but Jugo-Slav hopes and the promises they had received were unfulfilled or soon withdrawn, as for instance the Vojvodina in 1861. Absolutism reigned supreme from 1849 ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... for speculation on these grounds is indicated by the heroes of Bakounin. He always meant to write the story of Prometheus, and he never spoke of Satan without an admiration that approached adoration. They were the two unconquerable enemies of absolutism. He was "the eternal rebel," Bakounin once said of Satan, "the first free-thinker and emancipator of the worlds."[2] In another place he speaks of Proudhon as having the instinct of a revolutionist, because "he ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... began, England was a Commonwealth. Charles I., by obstinate insistence upon absolutism, by fickleness and faithlessness, had increased and strengthened his enemies. Parliament had seized the reins of government in 1642, had completely established its authority at Naseby in 1645, and had beheaded the king in front of his own palace in 1649. The ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... ready-made manor for the Giffards and Duchesnays of the future, where their descendants could becomingly receive fealty and homage. (foi et homage) from their feudal retainers. There was, however, nothing here to remind one of the lordly pageantry of other times—the days of absolutism—of the dark era, the age of lettres de cachet, corvees, lods et ventes, and other feudal burthens, when the flag of the Bourbons floated over the fortress of New France. In 1846, at the time of my visit, in vain would you have sought in the farm yard for a live seigniorial ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... been one of momentous events. Within its first week the victorious advance of America and her allies terminated in the armistice of November eleventh. The power of organized despotisms had been proven to be inferior to the power of organized republics. Reason had again triumphed over absolutism. The "still small voice" of the moral law was seen to be greater than the might of kings. The world appeal to duty triumphed over the world appeal to selfishness. It always will. There will be far-reaching ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... that he who runs may read, that they would have been vastly greater but for a malignant influence which has met the elements of progress, even on these shores. Disengaged from the opposing influences which surrounded them in Europe—from the spirit of absolutism, of hereditary aristocracy, of ecclesiastical despotism, from the habits, the customs, the institutions of earlier times, more or less rigid, unyielding on that account, and hard to change by the new forces, disengaged from these hampering ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... because men in their dreadful degraded condition do not know how to appreciate it. In this condition, if the old systems would succeed so far as to crush down with absolute despotism all movements for deliverance, they could not keep for a long time people in bondage of absolutism. Crevices would be always found, from which the movements of the secret aspirations for liberty would commence to be made manifest, till the eruption of the flood of revolution and war would effect great destruction of life and property. But also in the case, that the enemies of the old institutions ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... solitary Orleans King, the shadowy Republic of '48, and the imperial government, all have endeavored to do something to elevate France, to win for her new glories, and to regain for her her old position. The expedition into Spain, in 1823, ostensibly made in the interest of Absolutism, was really undertaken for the purpose of rebaptizing the white flag in fire. Charles X. and M. de Polignac were engaged in a great scheme of foreign policy when they fell, the chief object of which, on their side, was the restoration to France of the provinces of the Rhine,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... on the part of almost all individuals to place personal rights ahead of social duties. The modern spirit of individualism has grown strong since the Renaissance and the Reformation. It has forced political changes until absolutism has been yielding everywhere to democracy. It has extended social privileges until it has become possible for any one with push and ability to make his way to the top rung of the ladder of social prestige. It has permitted freedom to profess and practise ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... were parlements, too, but to mention them without explanation would be only to let the term mislead, for they were not representative bodies or parliaments in the ordinary sense: their powers were chiefly judicial and they were no barrier in the way of the steady march to absolutism. The political structure of the Bourbon realm in the age of Louis XIV and afterwards was simple: all the lines of control ran upwards and to a common center. And all this made for unity and autocratic efficiency in finance, in war, and in ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... the decoration of the Grand Hall of Mirrors—"the epitome of absolutism and divine right and the grandeur of the House of Bourbon." For two hundred and forty feet it extends along the terrace that surveys the gardens where Louis XIV and his successors delighted to ordain ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... and citizens was necessary. But Nicolas II. restricted elections to the College of Cardinals by a two-thirds vote, and gave to the German emperor the right of confirmation. For almost two centuries there was a struggle for mastery between the cardinal oligarchy and papal absolutism. The cardinals were willing enough that the pope should be absolute in his foreign rule, but the never failed to attempt, before giving him their votes, to bind him to accord to them a recognized share in the government. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... that once confronted each other in war's dreadful array, but of the myriad thousands that have since found in the American nation the hope of the future and the refuge from age-entrenched wrong and absolutism. To them, Lincoln, his life, his history, his character, his entire personality, with all its wondrous charm and grace, its sobriety, patience, self-abnegation, and sweetness, has come to be the very prototype of a ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... consciousness. This revival marked the beginning of the Czecho-Slovak struggle for the re-establishment of their independence. The movement was at first literary, and only in the forties became political. It was a continuous struggle against reaction and absolutism, and if the Czecho-Slovaks to-day can boast of an advanced civilisation, it is only owing to their perseverance and hard endeavours, and not because of any good-will on the part of the Austrian Government which put every possible obstacle in ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... that this should be so, for the whole course of French history since the thirteenth century had led up to the absolutism of Louis XIV. During the early ages of feudalism France had been distracted by the wars of her kings against rebellious nobles. The virtues and firmness of Louis IX {2} (1226-70) had turned the scale in favour of the crown. There were still to be many rebellions—the ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... population than an absolute rule?" What a number of points have to be clearly apprehended before we are in a position to say one word on such a question! What is meant by "constitution"? by "constitutional government"? by "better"? by "a population"? and by "absolutism"? The ideas represented by these various words ought, I do not say, to be as perfectly defined and located in the minds of the speakers as objects of sight in a landscape, but to be sufficiently, even though incompletely, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... more or less, by one and the same inspiration: our nobles have lived upon the crumbs of royal favor, and if on some rare occasions they have ventured to place themselves in opposition to the monarch, it has not been in the cause of the nation, but of the foreigner, or of clerical absolutism. The nobility can never be regarded as an historical element: it has furnished some fortunate Condottieri, powerful even to tyranny, in some isolated town; it has knelt at the feet of the foreign emperors who have ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... bring peace to Zukovo. What you do to-day will be visited on you to-morrow. I pray that you will listen to me. I have fought for you and with you—with Gleb Saltykov and Anton Lensky, against the return of Absolutism in Russia. The old order of things is gone. Do not stain the new with crime in Zukovo. I beseech you to disperse—return to your homes and I will come to you to-morrow and if there are wrongs I will set them right. You have believed in me in the past. Believe in me now ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... king's life, is punished with death and confiscation, instead of the old composition by payment of the royal weregeld. Hence he has been accused of imperializing and anti-Teutonic tendencies; he had even the misfortune to be fixed upon as a prototype by Oxford advocates of the absolutism of Charles I. There is no ground for the charge, so far at least as Alfred's legislation or any known measure of his government is concerned. The kingly power was the great source of order and justice amidst that anarchy, the sole rallying point and bond of union for the imperilled nation; ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Absolutism, pomp, formality, and, let it be added, a sense of personal responsibility for retainers—all characteristics of feudalism—marked the rule of the Hudson's Bay Company from the beginning. The adventurers were not merely merchants ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... forgotten, or would be remembered only as implicated in the confusion that had ceased; and in a short time there would be parties, factions, divisions, and the beginnings of a new spider-web of Court-government and Absolutism. "Have you not found him at this play all along? And do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite at it?" So the Remonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex, wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing one with ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... map of Europe after the imperial Catholic power was rolled southwardly, as they were for the pure interest of Protestantism. The German intellect did eventually gain something from this political result, because it interrupted the literary absolutism which reigned at Vienna; no doubt literature grew more popular and German, but it did not very strikingly improve the great advantage, for there was at last exhaustion instead of a generously nourishing enthusiasm, and the great ideas of the period became ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... questioned the policy of the mother country toward her all too energetic children. Hobbes' "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil," appeared in 1651, a powerful argument for absolutism, but cast in such a form as to make the [36]writer an unwelcome adherent to royalty ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... same time philandering with ideas and projects of human amelioration. Bismarck and Cavour seized the opportunity of making extremely useful for Germany and Italy the irrelevant and vacillating idealism and the timid absolutism of the third Napoleon. Great Britain has occupied in this respect a better situation than has the Continental Powers. Her insular security made her more independent of the menaces and complications of foreign politics, and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... she had a frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions. That innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him. Her husband's uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of the surprises of her marriage. That an artist should believe in his potential powers ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... in truth a "Reign of Terror" by an absolutism standing upon the ruin of every rival. The power of the Barons had gone; the Clergy were panic-stricken, and Parliament was a servant, which arose and bowed humbly to his vacant throne at mention of his name! A member for whom he had sent knelt trembling one day ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... military caste (of which the naval and all government bureaus are branches) has organised the nation for war with the efficiency of the managers of a great American corporation. The government is an absolutism. No Jew can become an officer. Officers of crack regiments do not go to the homes of persons in any kind of business. A business man is called a "Kaufmann," as we speak of a house painter. Some tame professors are paid by the State to ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... can hardly have a friend, since he can never have an equal, among those around him. I do not wonder that a tinge of melancholo-mania is so often perceptible in the chiefs of that great House whose Oriental absolutism is only "tempered by assassination." But an Earthly sovereign may now and then meet his fellow-sovereigns, whether as friends or foes, on terms of frank hatred or loyal openness. His domestic relations, though never secure ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... and unantagonised victory of the opposing force. To the obstinate resistance with which republican principles combated Asiatic monarchy in Rome, we must even to-day render thanks for the fact that Europe was not condemned, like Asia, to carry the eternal yoke of semidivine absolutism, even in dynastic regimes. What social force destined to perish would still have power to struggle if it clearly foresaw its inevitable future dissolution; if it did not fortify itself a little with some deluding vision ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... been able to hold her own in every situation, and never be crushed by the opposing forces about her, is a phenomenon in itself only to be explained by due recognition of the influence of individual qualities in a ruler even in the semi-absolutism of China.—Arthur H. Smith ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... possessed little interest for the masses, was not unwilling to submit itself without reserve to the guidance of a strong ruler provided he could guarantee peace both at home and abroad. Practically speaking, hitherto absolutism had been unknown. The rights that had been won by the barons on the plains of Runnymede were guarded jealously by their descendants, and as a result the power of the king, more especially in regard to taxation, was hedged round by several restrictions. But during the long ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... visibly and stedfastly tending; but, at the same time, her sagacity and prudence enabled her to ward off the immediate result. She secured her throne,—she was able to maintain, in the rocking of those movements, her own political and spiritual supremacy,—she made gain and capital for absolutism out of them,—the inevitable reformation she herself assumed, and set bounds to: whatever new freedom there was, was still the freedom of her will; she could even secure the throne of her successor: it was mischief for Charles I. that she ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... it out under the name of democracy,—American democracy! In this manner it serves the despotic ends of European despots: they point to the freest government in the world for examples of their own absolutism, shield their autocracy beneath its democracy, and with it annihilate the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... was probably not aware that his years of residence in the "garden" had indeed accustomed his ear to some un-Roman sounds.[6] Octavian was of course not unaware of the advantage that accrued to the ruler through the Oriental theory of absolutism, and furtively accepted all such expressions. By the time Vergil wrote the Aeneid the Roman world had acquiesced, but then, to our surprise, Vergil ceases to ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... any refutation of the charge. It cannot be refuted, for it is true. And be assured, my dear sir, it is no extravagant prediction when I say that the question of Popery and Protestantism, or Absolutism and Republicanism, which in these two opposite categories are convertible terms, is fast becoming and will shortly be the great absorbing question, not only of this country but of the whole civilized ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... peasants themselves are not the miserable and resigned creatures of Veressayev's earlier stories. Certainly, liberty is not yet a legal thing in Russia, and the Duma is still an unstable institution, but the end of absolutism is near, for a great event has taken place in the empire of the Tsar, namely, this awakening of the feeling of human dignity, and the spirit of revolt among the lower strata of the Russian people, which in the past, by its unconsciousness, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... work: one imagines that a similar threat from the Lord Mayor of London might have a salutary effect upon the restorers of Westminster Abbey or the decorators of St. Paul's. How very much more entertaining must have been the world when absolutism was the fashion and the preposterous method of universal suffrage had never been considered! But the Chapter, as those in power always are, was bent upon restoring, and induced Charles V. to give the necessary authority. The king, however, had not understood ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... of democracy in England is to trace the steady resistance to kings who would govern without the advice of counsellors, and to note the growing determination that these counsellors must be elected representatives. Only when the absolutism of the Crown is ended and a Parliament of elected members has become the real centre of government, is it possible, without a revolution, for democracy ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... gives its members the habits of twentieth-century autonomy, individual initiative and responsibility, together with collective living and working, while the home often seeks to perpetuate thirteenth-century absolutism, serfdom, and subjection. In social living outside the home we learn to do the will of all; in the home we attempt to compel children to do ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... spread of political liberty became apparent; although it is equally certain that they were at the same time fatal alike to the aristocracy and to the magistrature; and that they rapidly paved the way to the absolutism of Louis XIV, to the shameless saturnalia of the Regency, and to the dishonouring and degrading excesses of Louis XV, who may justly be said to have prepared by his licentiousness the scaffold ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... is quite another question whether Russia really needs an alliance either with Germany or with the Western Power just referred to, and my view of the case leads me to answer this question in the negative. Russia is, at the present time, the last and sole bulwark of absolutism in Europe, and if a ruler called by God's grace to the highest and most responsible of all earthly offices is to remain strong enough to crush the spirit of rebellion and immorality which here and there, under the influence of ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... exhortations. Never before nor since has our country seen so extraordinary a union of the clever and indefatigable party-manager, with the reflective and philosophic habits of the speculative publicist. It is much easier to make either absolutism or democracy attractive than aristocracy; yet we see how consistent with his deep moral conservatism was Burke's attachment to an aristocratic party, when we read his exhortation to the Duke of Richmond to remember that persons in his ...
— Burke • John Morley
... paroxysm of political disgust, cast out the last Stuart in 1688. That Revolution marks, as we have seen, the close of a long and tragic struggle which began in the autocratic theories of James the First and in the absolutism of Charles. Almost every phase of that momentous conflict had its reverberation across the Atlantic, as the history of the granting and withdrawal of colonial charters witnesses abundantly. The American pioneers ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... of Reason against it; and, as in a civil polity the State exists and endures by means of the rivalry and collision, the encroachments and defeats of its constituent parts, so in like manner Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide;—it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by the beauty and the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... whether Lutheran or Gallican or Anglican, whether completely separated from Rome or retaining a spiritual communion with it, the Church submitted to the principle of cujus regio ejus religio, and became an instrument in the hands of kings for erecting the lay and territorial absolutism on the ruins of the universal church-state. James I spoke for all his kind when he cried out, "No Bishop no King!" The lay prince wished not to destroy the Church, but to use it; the sum of his purpose was to transfer the ultimate ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... between the rival powers. In moments of calm Gracchus may have believed that his reforms were but a renewed illustration of that genius for compromise out of which the Roman constitution had grown, and that he had but created new and necessary defences against a recently developed absolutism; but, in the heat of the conflict into which he was soon plunged, his vindictive fancy saw but the gloomier aspect of his new creation, and he boasted that the struggle for the courts was a dagger which he had hurled into the Forum, an instrument ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the Russian girl, Elizabeth, did for her father, 'I suppose she was tired of Siberia, and liked the journey.' When I married, I found in your uncle a character exactly opposed to my father's, but not perhaps more suited to mine. The invincible reserve, the minute despotism, or rather absolutism, of his nature, raised between us the same barrier, which worldliness of mind and absence of warm feelings had caused to exist between my father and myself. You have seen and observed this drawback to our ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... their brilliant and steadfast glow, Palmerston represented, not always in their best form, some of the most generous instincts of his countrymen. A follower of Canning, he was the enemy of tyrants and foreign misrule. He had a healthy hatred of the absolutism and reaction that were supreme at Vienna in 1815; and if he meddled in many affairs that were no affairs of ours, at least he intervened for freedom. The action that made him hated at Vienna and Petersburg won the confidence of his countrymen. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... necessity of severe and rigorous measures. It presupposes the tendency to crime and violence, that men are brutes and must be coerced like wild beasts. We are warranted in assuming a very low condition of society when despotism became a necessity. Theoretically, absolutism may be the best government, if rulers are wise and just; but, practically, as men are, despotisms are cruel and revengeful. There are great and glorious exceptions; but it cannot be denied that society is mournful when tyrants bear rule. And it is seldom that society improves under ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... age of progress. Wars of succession are no more. Absolutism must forever hang its head. Fling a glance at France; peer into Prussia, Vox populi is the voice of the King, and the voice of the king is therefore vox Dei. When a king speaks for his people he must speak sooth; what ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... of the following half century, from the civil wars to the death of Richeleau, as in the English parallel from the Armada to the Long Parliament, was the rise of political absolutism. Henry IV, the prince who made it acceptable and national, and even popular in France, was fitted to disarm resistance, not only by brilliant qualities as a soldier and a statesman, but also by a charm and gladness of character in which he has hardly a rival among ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton |
