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Despotism   /dˈɛspətˌɪzəm/   Listen
Despotism

noun
1.
Dominance through threat of punishment and violence.  Synonyms: absolutism, tyranny.
2.
A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.).  Synonyms: absolutism, authoritarianism, Caesarism, dictatorship, monocracy, one-man rule, shogunate, Stalinism, totalitarianism, tyranny.






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"Despotism" Quotes from Famous Books



... be of all men the one 'most like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force till the softening influence of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman life, made the stoical ideal seem too hard and unsympathising; till the corruption and despotism of the Empire had withdrawn the best men from political life and attached a certain taint or stigma to public employment; till new religions arose in the East, bringing with them new ideals to govern the world. Gradually we ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... civil war in the North, and a revival of warlike spirit in the South. Elect General McClellan, and we shall have to choose between constant warfare, as a consequence of having approved of Secession by approving of the Chicago Platform,—which is Secession formally democratized,—and despotism, the only thing that would save us from anarchy. Anarchy is the one thing that men will not, because they cannot, long endure. Order is indeed now and forever Heaven's first law, and order society must and will have. Order is just as compatible with constitutional government as it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... the cathedral are the finest old gabled houses I ever saw, Charley. I never tire in looking at them. They were the great houses of the time when the Duke of Alva made Antwerp the scene of his cruel despotism, and when the Inquisition carried death and misery into men's families. The oppressions of the Spaniards in this city sent many of the best manufacturers from the Low Countries to England; and Queen Elizabeth ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... the sixteenth century, Spain was the incubus of Europe. Gloomy and portentous, she chilled the world with her baneful shadow. Her old feudal liberties were gone, absorbed in the despotism of Madrid. A tyranny of monks and inquisitors, with their swarms of spies and informers, their racks, their dungeons, and their fagots, crushed all freedom of thought or speech; and, while the Dominican held his reign of terror and force, the deeper Jesuit guided the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... is impossible to find a trace of either the primacy of Peter or the supremacy of the Pope; but the facts already stated throw some light on the history of that great spiritual despotism whose seat of government has been so long established in the city of the Caesars. It is obvious that at a very early period various circumstances contributed to give prominence to the Church of Rome. The epistle addressed to it contains a more complete exhibition of Christian doctrine than any ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... there has been some exaggeration in describing the extent to which Tobacco is King, so there has doubtless been some overstatement as to the cruelty of his despotism. Enough, however, remains to condemn him. The present writer, at least, has the firmest conviction, from personal observation and experience, that the imagined benefits of tobacco-using (which have never, perhaps, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... much in archness as in imperiousness for a prolonged wooing—we have also sympathy to spare for the young Prince, with manly dignity and a little indignant pain, resisting alike girlish volatility and womanly despotism, asserting what was only right and reasonable, that he could not wait much longer for her to make up her mind—great queen and dear cousin though she might be. It was neither just nor generous that he should be kept hanging on in a condition of mortifying ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... therefore, but one form of government could succeed—an efficient military despotism. The people could be wholesomely controlled only by an English deputy, sustained by an English army, and armed with arbitrary power, till the inveterate turbulence of their tempers had died away under repression, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... of a good and tender husband; but when, the very next day, he recalled this order, threw it into the fire before her eyes, and confined her for six hours in her bedroom; because she was not dressed in time to take a walk with him on the ramparts, one is apt to believe that military despotism has erased from his bosom all connubial affection, and that a momentary effusion of kindness and generosity can but little alleviate the frequent pangs caused by repeated insults and oppression. Fortunately, Madame Napoleon's disposition is proof against ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Oriental clergy. True to the traditions of the Achemenides and the Pharaohs, those priests preached doctrines tending to elevate the sovereign above humanity, and they supplied the emperors with dogmatic justification for their despotism.[22] ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... and the more open to reason the individual the more convincing the facts of experience. Ignorance, superstition, and fear recede in the presence of these Lights of man's intelligence, as do dogma and despotism, that seek to ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... companionship, and how insignificant seem those barriers raised between the two sexes, in some ages and countries, by the pride, the caprice, and the despotism, of man. Are we destined to a common moral tribunal? Pitiful is his spirit, who, for any fancied or real, outward advantages, shall here and now, with the ancient philosopher, "thank God that he was born a man, and not a woman." And contracted ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... leadership of Italy to other nations—Spain, England, and France; but had to find their career and resources not in their own commercial republics, but at the Courts of the new centralised kingdoms of the West, where a paternal despotism gave the best hope of guiding any popular movement, social or religious or political or scientific,—so in the earlier fifteenth century, mariners like Cadamosto and De Nolli, scientific draughtsmen like Fra Mauro and Andrea Bianco, ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... course being discussed as to its probable effect upon his stomach or his nerves—the question being usually settled with a whimsical high-handedness by the young woman—gave him a pretty good notion of their relations and the state of affairs in general. Notwithstanding Miss Blake's benevolent despotism, the invalid was still wrangling feebly over some last dish when John rose and went to the smoking room ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... in praying to God for the year 1817, and his fears were a presentiment: the skies of Germany, lightened by Leipzig and Waterloo, were once more darkened; to the colossal and universal despotism of Napoleon succeeded the individual oppression of those little princes who made up the Germanic Diet, and all that the nations had gained by overthrowing the giant was to be governed by dwarfs. This was the time when secret societies were organised ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... two hours. He was appointed, and in this way he came to know the horrors which he afterwards studied more fully in a second visit to Siberia. He traveled fifteen hundred miles through that wintry prison of Russia, and saw and heard the sorrowful things which the despotism of the Czar has done to men who dare to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... as did our forefathers, for nationhood. But let me ask Mr. Watson if our psychological unpreparedness was entirely our fault. When Britain allied herself with Russia, did she give a thought to the effect it would have on the American mind? To us, Russia was the last stronghold of barbaric despotism, and yet Britain made that alliance, identifying herself with the forces of reaction. I do not say that we would have entered into a similar or any agreement with Britain, but there are alliances of the spirit far more binding ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... extraordinary excitement. England was in a transition state. A long chain of events brought on a crisis which involved the kingdom in tribulation. It was the struggle between the unbridled despotism of Epsicopacy, and the sturdy liberty of Puritanism. For although the immediate cause of the civil wars was gross misgovernment—arbitrary taxation without the intervention of Parliament, monopolies and patents, to the ruin of trade; in fact, every abuse of the royal power—still, without the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... understood that, at that day, Fashion had not risen to the despotism it now enjoys: it took its colouring from Power, not controlled it. I shall show, indeed, how much of its present condition that Fashion owes to the Heroine of these Memoirs. The Duchess of Winstoun could not now be that great person she was then: there is a certain good taste ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of Madame; nor was he displeased, indeed, to observe the seriousness of her manner, feeling persuaded that there was some sort of affinity between Madame's sentiments and his own. In fact, every one at court of any perception at all knew perfectly well the capricious fancy and absurd despotism of the princess's singular character. Madame had been flattered beyond all bounds by the king's attentions; she had made herself talked about; she had inspired the queen with that mortal jealousy which is the gnawing worm at the root of every woman's happiness; ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... Uncouth, Savage People; and the Turkish Despotism has quite destroyed that security and Liberty which of old gave birth and encouragement to Learning: hence the knowledge of Medicine, Philosophy, and the Mathematics, which once so flourished among the Arabs, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... gradual stages intimated to me that Updegraff would convey me secrets of "The Seven" in exchange for a guarantee that I would not attack his interests. I do not know what his motive in this treachery was—probably a desire to curb the power of his associates in industrial despotism. ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... knew that they were a vicious, worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in general. His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate, careless king, nominally absolute; the heads of great houses paying court to, but in reality ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... between centralized tyranny and the spirit of civil and religious liberty, was already foreshadowed. The elements, of which that important republic was to be compounded, were germinating for centuries. Love of freedom, readiness to strike and bleed at any moment in her cause, manly resistance to despotism, however overshadowing, were the leading characteristics of the race in all regions or periods, whether among Frisian swamps, Dutch dykes, the gentle hills and dales of England, or the pathless forests of America. Doubtless, the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... people. By all means give foreigners fair play, but after England's boys are cared for. Charity begins at home, our home is England. English boys are far better sailors than any foreigners, who no doubt excel us in cookery and silks, and manners and despotism, but not in the hard duty bravely done, when storms lash clouds and ocean into ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... and temple may make amends for hovels somewhat more squalid than before. Hence, those who cannot conceive a rational polity, or a co-operative greatness in the state, especially if they have a luxurious fancy, can take pleasure in despotism; for it does not, after all, make so much difference to an ordinary fool whether what he suffers from is another's oppression or his own lazy improvidence; and he can console ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... brochure bore the title le Parti catholique and was directed against the despotism of the Univers and against Veuillot whose name he refused to mention. Here the sinuous attacks were resumed, venom filtered beneath each line, when the gentleman, clad in blue answered the sharp physical blows of the fighter ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... gentleman comes here as the apostle of a creed which is a creed of force, which is a creed of oppression, which is a creed of the destruction of all liberty, and of the erection of a despotism against it, and on its ruins, different from every other despotism only in this,—that it is more absolutely detached from all law, from all tradition, and from all restraint." Sir William Harcourt also referring to Mr. Dillon in the House once said, "The ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... their people, or by other means, for what purpose they may have come; for you must be aware, Master Armitage, that the times are dangerous, and people's minds are various. In attempting to free ourselves from what we considered despotism, we have created for ourselves a worse despotism, and one that is less endurable. It is to be hoped that what has passed will make not only kings but subjects wiser than they have been. Now, what do ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... unfortunate, if the constitution of the mind did not permit them to bring one passion into the field against another? passions that operate in the human breast, like poisons of a different nature, extinguishing each other's effect. Our hero's grief reigned in full despotism, until it was deposed by revenge, during the predominancy of which he considered everything which had happened as a circumstance conducive to its gratification. "If I must be prisoner for life," said he to himself, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... with fiery face, bull-neck, bowed legs, keen, rough, obstinate, passionate, left England greater and freer, and yet with more of a personal despotism than he had found her. The trouble with such triumphs is that they presuppose the wisdom ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... and title of him who at this time wielded the destinies of Mexico. For more than a quarter of a century this man had been the curse of the young Republic—its direst, deadliest bane. For although his rule was not continuous, its evil effects were. Unfortunately, the demoralisation brought about by despotism extends beyond the reign or life of the despot; and Santa Anna had so debased the Mexican people, both socially and politically, as to render them unfitted for almost any form of constitutional government. They had become incapable of distinguishing between the friends ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... between the two. Upon what particular points these intestine disputes turned we are not distinctly informed. They were not, however, peculiar to the period immediately preceding the archonship of Solon. They had prevailed before, and they reappear afterward prior to the despotism of Pisistratus; the latter standing forward as the leader of the Diacrii, and as champion, real or ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... of despotism! Associated, intelligent, political co-operation, is the educator which shall teach the people, that a true republic cannot exist until, in the minds of its leaders, every vestige of the spirit of despotism ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... rich, and enervated by luxury and ease. Solomon had civilised the Jewish kingdom, till it had become one of the greatest nations of the East; but it had become also, like the other nations of the East, a vast and gaudy despotism, hollow and rotten to the core; ready to fall to pieces at Solomon's death, by selfishness, disloyalty, and civil war. Therefore it was that Solomon hated all his labour that he had wrought under the sun; for all was ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... out the little the other oppressors had left; anger, discontent, wretchedness, famine, a terrible separation between one order of people and another; an incredible indifference to the miseries their despotism caused on the part of the aristocracy; a sullen and vindictive hatred for the perpetration of those miseries on the part of the people; all places sold—even all honours priced—at the court, which was become ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... various elements as parts of a great whole. Britain had stood outside the area of the Revolution, and yet had put forth stupendous efforts, ultimately successful, to make an end of the revolutionary era and of the Napoleonic despotism. This tended perhaps to give to Britons some natural satisfaction in the British Constitution and the established Church which flourished under it. Finally, while men on the Continent were devising holy alliances ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... an opportunity to take sides with the nation which represents Catholicism, as this creed of abominations will resort to bloodshed if by so doing she believes she can carry her point and establish her rule of despotism. ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... closed against him. The anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red moment, to be succeeded, for ages by the gloomy night of despotism. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Sir William Jones observes in the preface to the translation which he was the first to make a little more than a century ago of these extraordinarily full and detailed ordinances, they represent a system of combined despotism and priestcraft, both indeed limited by law, but artfully conspiring to give mutual support with mutual checks. But though they abound with minute and childish formalities, though they prescribe ceremonies often ridiculous, though the punishments they enact are partial and fanciful, for some crimes ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... cudgels against the specialists: they are a harmless and necessary race, so long as they are aware of their limitations. But the tyranny of an oligarchy is the worst kind of tyranny, because it means the triumph of an average over individuals, whereas the worst that can be said of a despotism is that it is the triumph of an individual over an average. The tyranny of the specialistic oligarchy is making itself felt to-day, and I should like to fortify the revolutionary spirit of liberty, whose boast it is ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Church in living under the Merovingian monarchs with their despotism and violence is illustrated by the following passage. The date ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... serious collisions and outbreaks. The guards have sometimes proved too strong for the dynasty that created them, and have made their own generals the real monarchs of the country. When such a state of things as this exists, the government which results is called a military despotism. This happened in the days of the Roman empire. The army, which was originally formed by the regular authorities of the country, and kept for a time in strict subjection to them, finally became too powerful to be held any longer under control, and they ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... nations. Some day the accumulated horrors of the Kaiser's ideas of sportsmanship will have taught the latter the lesson that Kaiserdom with Europe as a Kaiser estate means the death of liberty, the extinction of the smaller nations, and the setting up of a despotism as cruel as that of Attila and his Huns—the self-accepted and preached examples of William II ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... whether he approved this dreadful determination or not. What part he took in the catastrophe is still a mystery to the Russians: either they are ignorant on the subject, or they make a secret of the matter: the effect of despotism, which enjoins ignorance ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... that, what brought them together was that instinct which comes to humanity at critical times when the moment has arrived to cross rivers of blood in order to rescue humanity from the grip of some strangling despotism. [Cheers.] They have done nobly. That is what has brought them together, but we want more, [cheers,] and I have no doubt ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... north, whose raids were extending more and more, whose wrath fell alike upon all—upon Arab slave-hunter and the prey sought by the latter—a Zulu-speaking tribe said to have taken its origin in some hardly recorded exodus in the days of Tshaka—Zulu alike in its habits and customs, and in the despotism of its ruler. This nation was known as the Abagcatya or Ba-gcatya, "The People of the Spider." Hazon, too, believed in its existence, and Hazon was a first-class authority on such subjects. And now the warriors who had attacked him, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... civil liberty, where Superstition has been generally prevalent; whereas there is no instance on record of anything approaching to national Atheism, in which government by law was not speedily superseded by anarchy and despotism. And the reason of this difference may be that in every system of Superstition, whether it be a corruption of Natural or of Revealed Religion, "some faint embers of sacred truth remain unextinguished," some convictions which ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... the great object of National development. Let our progress be across the land and over the sea, let our flag as stated in your resolutions, continue to wave its welcome to the oppressed, who flee from the despotism of other lands, until the constellation which marks the number of our States which have already increased from thirteen to thirty two, shall go on multiplying into a bright galaxy covering the field on which we now display the revered stripes, which record ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... as he judges best for the support of government. This duty they collect from the example of Jesus Christ, who paid the tribute money himself, and ordered his disciples to do it, and this to a government, not only professedly military, but distinguished for its idolatry and despotism. Personal service, however, they conceive to militate against a positive command by our Saviour, as will ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... neglecting his work. He was not afraid to lie. He had no remorse about it. The stoic principles of life, to which he had hitherto delighted to bend his will, morality, duty, now seemed to him to have no truth, nor reason. Their jealous despotism was smashed against Nature. Human nature, healthy, strong, free, that alone was virtue: to hell with all the rest! It provoked pitying laughter to see the little peddling rules of prudence and policy which the world adorns with the name of morality, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... creation, and the one cannot survive the other;—the liberation of Europe, for its united strength can be chained no longer;—perhaps the liberty of man, for the next step for nations which have crushed foreign dominion is to extinguish domestic despotism. Europe once free, what is to come? A new era, a new shape of society, a new discovery of the mighty faculties of nations, of the wonders of mind, of matter, and of man; a vast shaking of the earth and its institutions; and out of this chaos, a new moral creation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. In their view, man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things are ultimates, and they never look beyond their sphere. The presence of Reason mars this faith. The first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the senses, which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it, and shows us nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this higher agency intervened, the animal eye sees, with wonderful accuracy, sharp ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... Hahnemannian school of medicine was to dilute the dose of the Allopaths, and the Christian Scientists confirmed the homeopaths in a belief concerning the beauties of the blank tablet, so did Luther, Calvin and Knox neutralize the arrogance of Rome, and dilute the dose of despotism. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... highest type of that despotism so common among Pagan nations. The Czar is the successor of the Gentile Caesar; he unites in himself the civil and spiritual power; the inevitable result is social oppression, denial of the rights of conscience, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... educate and please, From master minds who know their subject well, And on its salient points delighted dwell. These with free libraries and concerts tend Much happiness with useful work to blend; And our fair city may be proud to know, Th' uplifting forces which from them outflow. The despotism of custom in our day To much benignant progress bars the way, While superstition, ignorance and sloth Oppose all national and mental growth. But under education's brightening ray, And blessed reason's ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... was made for to-day," the girl said softly. "And by a higher power than any of us. Mr. Ames is the type of man who is slowly turning our Republican form of government into a despotism of wealth. He boasts that his power is already greater than a czar's. You bow before it; and so the awful monster of privilege goes on unhampered, coiling its slimy tentacles about our national resources, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... superstition, and invoking all the forms of German horror, to appal every timid heart. Hence, we have been haunted by ghosts of all complexions; and "Cloud Kings," and "Water Kings," and "Fire Kings," have been crowned by this poetical magician, to rule with despotism in the realms of Fancy. A lively satirist, endowed with the gifts of Genius, easy in versification, pleasant in his humour, and inimitably successful in parody, has, in some of his "Tales of Terror" undertaken to mock the doleful tones of Mr. Lewis's muse, or shall ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... case in modern times of the absolute despotism of name and ownership over all other considerations was that of the portion of William Morris's library submitted to public sale in December 1898. The books themselves were, as a rule, below mediocrity in state, and could not have well ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... than one small observer, that there was a very curious and unusual expression in the usher's face; but he took his seat, without opening his lips in reply. Squeers, casting a triumphant glance at his assistant and a look of most comprehensive despotism on the boys, left the room, and shortly afterwards returned, dragging Smike by the collar—or rather by that fragment of his jacket which was nearest the place where his collar would have been, had he ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... power of the Irish chieftains. We see also the beginning of the feud between Ulster and the other provinces in Ireland, which has continued in a modified form to the present day. Strafford found that, in order to bolster up the despotism of the Stuarts, he had not only to invade England, but to expel the Scottish settlers from the Northern province. The Irish Parliament in the time of Tyrconnel again began to prepare for the invasion of England by an attempt to destroy the Ulster plantation. The settlers had their estates confiscated, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies may have contained sprang from the extinction of the poetical principle, connected with the progress of despotism and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others: lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud, characterized a race amongst whom no one ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... two intimates, Gallatin and Madison, there was a touch of that philosophy which colored the thought of reformers on the eve of the French Revolution, a naive confidence in the perfectability of man and the essential worthiness of his aspirations. Strike from man the shackles of despotism and superstition and accord to him a free government, and he would rise to unsuspected felicity. Republican government was the strongest government on earth, because it was founded on free will and imposed the fewest checks on the legitimate ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... subject. All projects for further Parliamentary Reform had failed utterly in England; and nobody dreamt of what the next five or six years would bring. In France there was what looked like a crushing military despotism: in other Continental countries the repression which had followed the outbreaks of 1848-49 was only just being relaxed, or not relaxed at all. American democracy had not had its second baptism of Civil ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... your instances unfortunately, Mr. Armstrong,' Gertrude answered. 'Georges and Alfred lived to write vile and bitter books about each other, and Stella broke her heart under the despotism of a brute. I do not care for such ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... three terms can be varied without at once destroying this proportion. If the sovereign tries to govern, and if the prince wants to make the laws, or if the subject refuses to obey them, disorder takes the place of order, and the state falls to pieces under despotism or anarchy. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... of still deeper import. The Dutch Republic originated in the opposition of the rational elements of human nature to sacerdotal dogmatism and persecution—in the courageous resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism. Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-embraces of a false Divinity with, a Humanity of impossible beauty, nor was the infant career of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... necessary result of the Romish tyranny by which it had been oppressed, but unworthy of an intellect of such grasp and candour. In the Protestant countries of Europe, particularly Holland and England, he had seen the working of Christianity detached from the rigid despotism by which the Church of Rome fetters belief, and the well-conceived appliances by which it stimulates imagination, and opens a refuge for frailty. Impressed with the new ideas thus awakened in his mind, he had in his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... three possible solutions of the tendencies of the present time—viz. the bayonet, a return to the true principles of the original government, or the sway of money. For the first it may be too soon; the pressure of society is scarcely sufficient to elevate a successful soldier to the height of despotism, though the ladder has been raised more than once against the citadel of the Constitution by adventurers of this character, through the folly and heedless impulses of the masses. Fifty years hence, and a condition of society will probably exist among us that would ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper

... mystic sources learned that his English relatives pined for his society, and devotion to family ties tempted him to betray his friend. Subsequently Alberoni was appointed to a more northern country, where he may find congenial society; for, in a despotism tempered only by assassination, the knees of all ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... glory, but now it is all falling; its churches and palaces are crumbling to dust, its commerce interrupted. The republic continually harassed by the Porte, and obliged to call on foreign aid; depressed by her internal despotism, her council of ten, and state inquisitors; her decline, though gradual, is sure; yet the splendor of her arts remains, and the genius of Titian, her favorite son, is yet in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... case, there was no resource but to transform the so-called free Republic into an absolute oligarchy. Much has been said of the "Russian despot," but this century can present no more complete spectacle of despotism than that of Mr. Kruger. The Emperor of Russia, autocrat as he is, is guided by the traditions of his empire and the machinations of his ministers, but Mr. Kruger has allowed himself to be reasoned with and influenced by none, and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... and the rich which had forced Athens to adopt the laws of Draco and Solon. In Rome this conflict had occurred in the fifth century B. C. As a result the freemen had obtained a written code of laws which protected them against the despotism of the aristocratic judges by the institution of the "Tribune." These Tribunes were city-magistrates, elected by the freemen. They had the right to protect any citizen against those actions of the government officials which were thought to be unjust. A consul had the right to condemn a man to ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... erect, fine looking, a thorough Democrat, but not the tool of slavery. Thaddeus Stevens was in the House, and just at the beginning of his remarkable congressional life; but the slave power, then in full sweep of its despotism, took good care to keep him in the background in the organization of the committees. He made several speeches, in which he displayed his rare powers of invective, irony, and sarcasm, in dealing with the Southern leaders; and no one who listened ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... We will not now pause to consider it minutely either for praise or for blame. With some provisions that seem to be judicious, and which afterward proved themselves to be salutary, it embraces the most destructive elements of despotism and dissension. The settlers were deprived of the meanest privilege of self-government, and were subjected to the control of a council wholly independent of their own action, and of laws proceeding directly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... of his nature as a human bring. He is born under this law, and he continues under it during his life. Now the West Indian slavery is of such an arbitrary nature, that it may be termed proper or absolute. The dominion attached to it is a despotism without control; a despotism, which keeps up its authority by terror only. The subjects of it must do, and this instantaneously, whatever their master orders them to do, whether it be right or wrong. His will, and his will alone, is their law. If the wife of a slave were ordered ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson

... liberation-parties think that they can succeed in a project which has been attempted a million times in the history of the world and has never in one single instance been successful—the "modification" of a despotism by other means than bloodshed? They seem to think they can. My privilege to write these sanguinary sentences in soft security was bought for me by rivers of blood poured upon many fields, in many lands, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... subject may be fully spoken, without obliging me to exalt the father at the expense of the mother, or ennoble man by denying the essential equality of woman. It is among the things settled by experience, that, equal or not equal in talents, woman, the moment she escapes from the despotism of brute force, and is suffered to unfold and exercise her powers in her own legitimate sphere, shares with man the sceptre of influence; and without presuming to wrest from him a visible authority, by the ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... is, in the fullest sense of the word, despotism. It is a monarchy the most unlimited and uncontrolled on the face of the earth, there being no law but the king's will, who may chop off as many heads as he pleases, when he is "i' the vein," and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... have had its conquerors, who, ascending from the plains to the tablelands of the Cordilleras, and abandoning a wandering life, would have subdued the civilized nations of Peru and New Grenada, overturned the throne of the Incas and of the Zaque,* and substituted for the despotism which is the fruit of theocracy, that despotism which arises from the patriarchal government of a pastoral people. (* The Zaque was the secular chief of Cundinamarca. His power was shared with the high priest (lama) of Iraca.) ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... were suggested by the history of the Persian kings; and to them I will now return. The ruin of their empire was caused by the loss of freedom and the growth of despotism; all community of feeling disappeared. Hatred and spoliation took the place of friendship; the people no longer fought heartily for their masters; the rulers, finding their myriads useless on the field of battle, resorted to mercenaries as their only salvation, ...
— Laws • Plato

... to Eastern Virginia? Where is the line of division to be run, and what armies would be strong enough to maintain peace upon the border? What portion of the mighty Territories uniting us with the Pacific are to be surrendered? Are we to turn over to the cruel despotism of their bloody and relentless masters, the millions of loyal people of the South, to whom we have given the most sacred pledge of the protection of the Union? And, last of all, are the two millions of slaves, as Jefferson ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a prey to anarchy and civil war, were continually threatened with foreign invasion. Almost all the south presented the melancholy spectacle of one-vast arena of conflicting factions. The nation groaned beneath the yoke of tyrannical laws; despotism was systematically established; the law of hostages struck a blow at personal liberty, and forced loans menaced every man's property. The generality of the citizens had declared themselves against a pentarchy devoid of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... They had splendid physique; they had great fidelity and loyalty to their chiefs; they had many of the qualities of the soldier, but like men who had been recruited under the slave whip, and who had been accustomed to the methods of despotism, they had not that courage which can only be obtained by freedom and by united military training. [Cheers.] What they lacked has been supplied to them, and the Egyptian army, as it has issued from the hands of Sir Evelyn Wood, Sir Francis Grenfell, and the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... But it's a benevolent despotism. Well, mother wants Adela to accept him. In fact, she asked me if I didn't think you'd help us. Of course ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... reverence to all who love order. The Roman Republic was aristocratical in its polity, and all that is great in Roman history is due to the ascendency of the Senate in the government; and when the Forum populace began to show its power, the decay of the commonwealth commenced, and did not cease till despotism was established,—the natural effect of the resistance of the many to the government of the few being the formation of the government of one. England's polity is, and for ages has been, aristocratical. Not even the passage of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... has been induced to accept the responsible office of Minister of Finance. Nubar Pacha has been recalled to office, and he must regard with pride the general confidence occasioned throughout Europe by his reappointment. The absolute despotism hitherto inseparable from Oriental ideas of government has been spontaneously abrogated by the Khedive, who has publicly announced his determination that the future administration shall be conducted by a ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... beak of a bird of prey, the black and crinkled lids of the yellow eyes, the prominent bones of a hollow face, the rigidity of the wrinkles, the disdain expressed in the lower lip, were all expressive of ambition, despotism, and power, the more to be feared because the narrowness of the skull betrayed an almost total absence of intelligence, and a mere brute courage devoid of generosity. The face was horribly disfigured by a large transversal scar which had the appearance of a second mouth ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... heard to declare that the Christians were most worthy of trust in the administration of Persia. "The Moslems," said he, "will abuse their present fortune; the Magians regret their fallen greatness; and the Jews are impatient for their approaching deliverance." [216] But the slaves of despotism are exposed to the alternatives of favor and disgrace. The captive churches of the East have been afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry of their rulers; and the ordinary and legal restraints ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... vivify them all into a new and happier existence. But now, when Theos most strongly desired to speak, he remained dumb as stone! ... vainly he struggled against and contended with the invisible, mysterious, and relentless despotism that smote him on the mouth as it were, and deprived him of all power of utterance, ... his tongue was stiff and frozen, ... his very lips were sealed! Trembling violently, he gazed beseechingly at Sah-luma, who held his arm in a firm and friendly ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... greater the injustice a husband does to his wife, the less he is willing to submit to from her; the oftener he becomes unfaithful to her, the stricter he is in demanding faithfulness from her. We see that despotism nowhere denies its own nature: the more a despot deceives and abuses his people, the more submissiveness and faithfulness he demands ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... procession through narrowed lids. In theory he condemned equally the blind obstinacy of the authorities, who went on tightening the screw, and the foolhardiness of the men. But—well, he could not get his eye to shirk one of the screaming banners and placards: "Down with Despotism!" "Who so base as be a Slave!" by means of which the diggers sought to inflame popular indignation. "If only honest rebels could get on without melodramatic exaggeration! As it is, those good fellows yonder are ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... secure the blessings of a free Government to the succeeding generations of this land, but will give a stimulus to free principles in every part of the globe. If 'Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell' at the hands of despotism, a longer and sadder wail would mark the fall of American republicanism, wounded and slain in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... war prepared with cunning stealth and carried out with rapid triumph, are among the greatest feats for which praises and deifications are due to him and which testify to his merit. I cannot forget that to his efforts we owe the ruin of Austrian despotism, and of Napoleonic Caesarism; the re-establishment of Hungarian independence; the return of Italy's long lost provinces to her bosom; the end of the Pope's temporal power, and the fortunate occasion ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... history to no purpose, they will not desire to do so. Time and again some nation, boastful of its strength, has thought itself invincible, but the ruins of these mistaken and misguided nations line the pathway along which the masses have marched to higher ground. Despotism has in it the seeds of death; the spirit that leads a nation to aspire to a supremacy based on force is the spirit that destroys its hope of immortality. Only those who are unacquainted with the larger influences can place their sole reliance on the weapons used in physical warfare. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... gradual effort, by progressive trials, and beneficial tendency. But they know that when you make a step forward you keep it. They know that there is reality and honesty, strength and substance, about your proceedings. They know that you are not a monarchy to-day, a republic to-morrow, and a military despotism the day after. They know that you have been happily preserved from irrational vicissitudes that have marked the career of the greatest and noblest among the neighbouring nations. Your fathers and yourselves ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... in the ensuing pages is this: That the new philosophy which strikes out from the Court—from the Court of that despotism that names and gives form to the Modern Learning,—which comes to us from the Court of the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts,—that new philosophy which we have received, and accepted, and adopted ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... as lieutenants for the Empire in the Marches of Ancona, down to their final subjugation by the Papacy in the age of the Renaissance, is made up of all the vicissitudes which could befall a mediaeval Italian despotism. Acquiring an unlawful right over the towns of Rimini, Cesena, Sogliano, Ghiacciuolo, they ruled their petty principalities like tyrants by the help of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, inclining to the one or the other as it suited their humour or their interest, wrangling ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... against the despotism of public opinion, whether it be of the many or of the few, is enlightened individual freedom and purity of personal character. Without these there can be no vigorous manhood, no true liberty in a nation. Political rights, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... highest Bidder. Thus, as the same Posts and Honours were equally attainable by the Citizen and Gentleman, there was no material Distinction betwixt them. The Government which had flourished as Monarchical, was become an absolute Despotism. And whereas the King in all important Transactions, was dependant on the Assembly of the States, who were look'd upon as the Defenders and Interpreters of the Laws; both Laws and States were now only mere Phantoms, which he could raise or annihilate at ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... institutions of this country have already produced a deep impression upon the world we inhabit. What but our example has stricken the chains of despotism from the provinces of South America—giving, by a single impulse, freedom to half a hemisphere? A Washington here has created a Bolivar there. The flag of independence, which has waved from the summit of our Alleghany, has now been answered by a corresponding signal from the heights ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... been on the look-out to take advantage of every rash movement of the helpers in God's cause in Spain. It ought always to be borne in mind that though nominally a constitutional country, Spain is governed by despotism the more infamous and dangerous as it decks itself in the garb of liberty. Whenever a native becomes obnoxious to the Government, he is instantly seized and imprisoned, though perhaps guilty of no crime which can be punished by law; foreigners ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... kind, in quite a different manner. The forger of the Annals had much too acute a discernment not to know this;—he was also well aware that he had a very strong forte. We know the department in which he excelled,—dealing with despotism, servility and bloodshed. But then, if he was to do this, he would do that, which would be a very strong proof that his work was a forgery; for if he was to do this, he could not take up the continuance of history as Tacitus intended to go on with it namely, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... nothing less than to govern; and clerical education means a clerical government, with a despotism as its summit and ignorance as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... explain to him that a Parliamentary regime, whatever its advantages may be, necessarily produces political parties and political conflicts, and is not nearly so suitable for grand sociological experiments as a good paternal despotism. You may try to convince him that, though it may be difficult to convert an autocrat, it is infinitely more difficult to convert a House of Commons. But all your efforts will be in vain. He will assure you that a Russian Parliament would be something quite different from what Parliaments commonly ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... to recall such pictures to your imaginations? Can you look abroad and not behold them? Are not the vices of unequal distribution to be met with in every corner, nook, and alley? Is not the despotism of wealth, that is, of that property which the folly of man so much reveres and worships, every where visible? Does it not varnish vice, generate crime, and trample virtue and the virtuous in the dust? Is ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... Britain. Though an England which was ruled by a George III or a Prince Regent—an England of rotten boroughs, of an ignorant and oppressed peasantry, and of a social organization in which caste was almost as definitely drawn as in an Oriental despotism—could hardly appeal to the enthusiastic democrat as embodying all the ideals of his system, yet the England of 1800 did represent modern progress when compared with the mediaeval autocracy of Napoleon. If we take this broad view, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... ever had in the palmy days of the Empire. The citizens made him master of everything, and Bonaparte filled the role to the full. Provided with guards and servants, he surrounded himself with all the gaud and glitter of a military despotism, and, in default of continents to capture, he kept his hand in trim as a commander by the conquest of such small neighboring islands as nature had placed within reach, but it could hardly be expected that he could long remain tranquil. His eyes soon wearied of the ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... about the same time to the same correspondent, he says: "As for tears, I have not shed anything of the kind since my last flogging under the birchen despotism of the Nadir Shah of our village school. I have sometimes wished I could shed tears—especially when angry with myself or with the world. There is an iron fixedness about my heart on such occasions which I would ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... mind that for the present he would yield to his despotism, but afterwards, in the future, what was ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... and both were generous and lenient masters. He was the embodiment of the slave power. All its brute force, pious pretenses, plausibility, chivalry, all the good and bad of the Southern character; all the weapons of the army of despotism were concentrated in this man, the friend of my friends, the man who stood ready to set me on the pinnacle of social distinction by his recognition. Across the body of the prostrate slave lay the road to wealth, and many good men had shut ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... troops over opponents of any kind was a fact. The Abyssinians had fought as bravely against us as they had formerly fought against European troops. Their equipment, discipline, and training, upon which despotism had brought all its resources to bear for many years, left, according to European ideas, nothing to be desired; and these dark-skinned soldiers had repeatedly shown themselves to be a match for equal numbers of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... the early beams of the torrid sun. Light fogs rose reluctantly from the river's bosom and dispersed in delicate vapors of opal and violet. The tangled banks of dripping bush shone freshly green in the misty light. The wilderness, grim and trenchant, reigned in unchallenged despotism. Solitude, soul-oppressing, unbroken but for the calls of feathered life, brooded over the birth of Jose's last day on the Magdalena. About midday the steamer touched at the little village of Bodega Central; but the iron-covered warehouse and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the skill to construct, nor would find worth the possession if they had them, would concentrate their claims in a demand for the habeas-corpus, and the abolition of the conscription, they would relieve themselves from the two heaviest burdens of despotism, and obtain for themselves the two ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... one of the ironies of history that the chief leader in a war marked by a passion for liberty was a member of a society in which, as another of its members, Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, said, there was on the one hand the most insulting despotism and on the other the most degrading submission. The Virginian landowners were more absolute masters than the proudest lords of medieval England. These feudal lords had serfs on their land. The serfs were attached to the soil and were sold ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... government of the world—wholesome to man, as a punishment of sins which he never committed, and to liquidate the long arrearages of Ham's everlasting debt! and avowing that, under favorable circumstances, he would buy and own slaves! A Southern volcano in New-Hampshire, pouring forth the lava of despotism in that incorrupt, and noble old fortress of liberty! What a College to educate our ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... as well as in theory, the only weapon in the armoury of the legalist. It is also clear that there will be much work for that one weapon to do. The central tendencies of Man's nature, besides being ex hypothesi evil, are antagonistic de facto to the galling despotism and the irrational requirements of the Law; and the lawgiver, far from being able to enlist those tendencies under his banner by appealing to the highest of them—the natural leaders of the rest,—must be prepared ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... to be a republic," replied Boswell. "There are too many clever and ambitious politicians among us for the place to go along as a despotism much longer. If the place were filled up with poets and society people, and things like that, it might go on as an autocracy forever, but you see it isn't. To men of the caliber of Alexander the Great and Bonaparte and Caesar, and a thousand ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs

... constitutional rights, ended—owing to the ambition, fanaticism, and determination to override all rights and all opinions save their own, of a numerically insignificant minority of the Commons, backed by the strength of the army—in the establishment of the most complete despotism England ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... is a record of the achievements of the Assyrian kings, Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib, and others. It would not be profitable to go over them. The Babylonian monarchy was before Assyria was founded. The government was a despotism with nothing to soften it, and the religion was the worship of many gods. Its history dates back from 913 to 659 years before the birth of Christ, though there are tablets which carry it back to 2330 A.D. The empire began to decay in the reign of Sardanapalus, when the governor ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... of the year 1770, about libels, says: 'Their excess was shocking, and in nothing more condemnable than in the dangers they brought on the liberty of the press.' This evil was chiefly due to 'the spirit of the Court, which aimed at despotism, and the daring attempts of Lord Mansfield to stifle the liberty of the press. His innovations had given such an alarm that scarce a jury would find the rankest satire libellous.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... most ingenious constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the bosom of the republic, we yet stand before the world an object of respect and fear to those who hate us and wish us evil, while the masses of men in all countries, who love liberty and desire to escape from despotism, still seek our shores as the very Canaan of promise and the asylum of freedom, even in the midst of our grand struggle for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... there to leaven it and justify his high office before Him that consigned the trust; and ever deeper and deeper we sank in the slough of corruption, until was brought about this pass—that naught but some scourging despotism of the Church should acquit us of the fate of Sodom. That such, at the eleventh hour, was vouchsafed us of God's mercy, it is my purpose to show; and, doubtless, this offering of a loop-hole was to account ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... round a banner which was never raised except to be swept contemptuously down by the disciplined and overwhelming strength of the ministerial phalanx. Argument and oratory were alike unavailing under a constitution which was indeed a despotism of privilege. The county representation of England was an anomaly, and the borough representation little better than a scandal. The constituencies of Scotland, with so much else that of right belonged to the public, had got into Dundas's pocket. In the year 1820 all ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... teeters for a short period on the crest of the Revolutionary wave. Men are mad with the joy over the new thought of universal brotherhood. Little do Danton and the other Utopians realize that the Pageant of Brotherhood is but the prelude of a new Despotism. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... stupidity, and despotism reign not in bourgeois houses and prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature, in the younger generation.... That is why I have no preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for writers, or for the younger generation. I regard trade marks and labels as a superstition. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... love developed themselves from this relation—a relation inwardly and mutually binding lord and vassal, and resulting in holding together all the members of the state—so on the other hand, where there is no restraint to insolence and arbitrary despotism, except that found in the mere sense of moral obligation, they transcend all bounds, and find their natural reaction in the resistance of the subject, destroying the very idea of a state. In the feudal system, however, it is not the state which guarantees, secures, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... end of March 1554, probably, Knox left Dieppe for Geneva, where he could consult Calvin, not yet secure in his despotism, though he had recently burned Servetus. Next he went to Zurich, and laid certain questions before Bullinger, who gave answers in writing as ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... turn to the Florentines, we find that at the same epoch, 1494, their ancient republican constitution had been fatally undermined by the advances of the family of Medici towards despotism. Lorenzo de'Medici, who enjoyed the credit of maintaining the equilibrium of Italy by wise diplomacy, had lately died. He left his son Piero, a hot-headed and rash young man, to control the affairs of the commonwealth, as he had previously controlled them, with a show of burgherlike equality, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds



Words linked to "Despotism" :   one-man rule, autocracy, ascendancy, Stalinism, ascendency, absolutism, dominance, ascendence, ascendance, control, autarchy, police state



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