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Usurpation   /jˌusərpˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Usurpation

noun
1.
Entry to another's property without right or permission.  Synonyms: encroachment, intrusion, trespass, violation.
2.
Wrongfully seizing and holding (an office or powers) by force (especially the seizure of a throne or supreme authority).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Usurpation" Quotes from Famous Books



... eighteenth dynasty. In the row to the left of the entrance are thirty-one names, and in that to the right are thirty, all of them predecessors of Thothmes. The Theban Kings who ruled in Upper Egypt during the usurpation of the Hyksos invaders are also exhibited among the lists. Over the head of each King is his oval, containing his ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... rightful sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to precipitate events. It was a piece of religion to defend the Mikado; it was a plain piece of political righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. To Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have arrived. He was himself still confined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelligence; but with that he sharpened a sword for the Shogun's minister. A party of his followers were to waylay the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... which he declares it to be his "intention that no violation whatever shall be offered to women, children, or private property, to sully the arms of Britons or freemen, employed in the glorious and righteous cause of rescuing and delivering this country from the usurpation of rebellion, and that no cruelty whatever be offered against the laws of humanity, but what resistance shall make necessary; and that whatever provisions and other necessaries be taken for the troops, shall ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... hereditary succession has taken so strong a hold of us English in later times that it is necessary constantly to insist that our old English kingship was elective. Alfred's title was based on election; and so little was the idea of usurpation, or of any wrong done to the two infant sons of Ethelred, connected with his accession, that even the lineal descendant of one of those sons, in his chronicle of that eventful year, does not pause to notice the fact that Ethelred left children. He is writing to his "beloved cousin Matilda," to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... For this reason the complainants felt that, although they could not but unite in the opinion with the American Convention of Abolition Societies as to the importance of educating the slaves for living as freedmen, they were compelled on account of a "domineering spirit of power and usurpation"[3] to direct attention to ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... degree, points back with all its memories to the imperial city patriciate that was so closely associated with the glorious era of the Holy Roman Empire; and Prussia's entire position seems to him a revolutionary usurpation, which has played the most material part in the destruction of the privileges of the Holzhausens. His wealth leads me to assume that the ties that bind him to Austria are merely ambitious tendencies—such as the desire for an imperial order or for the elevation of the family to the rank of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... believe me, you say—they will believe that a mother should know her own son. Then are your hours of usurpation numbered." ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... up for that oppressed child an avenger, or a supporter, or vindicator, if you prefer it. It happened that the reigning king, the usurper—you are quite of my opinion, I believe, that it is an act of usurpation quietly to enjoy, and selfishly to assume the right over, an inheritance to which a man has only ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... my prophetic fears are come to pass: Morat was always bloody; now, he's base: And has so far in usurpation gone, He will ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... thinking and activity, in order to develop self-confidence, courage, and devotion to a great unselfish ideal. These ideas became a national ideal, an active passion, under the pressure and stress of the Napoleonic usurpation and in the heat and fervor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... monopoly. How to restore the voice of the citizen in the government of his country; and how to put an end to those proceedings in some of the higher courts which are farce and mockery on one side, and a criminal usurpation ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... have not to learn that, though a stanch republican in America, he was the most abject courtier in France; and though a violent defender of liberty and equality on the other side of the Atlantic, no man bowed lower to usurpation, or revered despotism more, in Europe. Without talents, and almost without education, he thinks intrigues negotiations, and conceives that policy and duplicity are synonymous. He was called here "the courier of Talleyrand," ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... this voluntary sell-out of his all to his God. He does not by this degrade himself as a man; rather he finds his right place of high honor as one made in the image of his Creator. His deep disgrace lay in his moral derangement, his unnatural usurpation of the place of God. His honor will be proved by restoring again that stolen throne. In exalting God over all he finds ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer

... in the humour of Augustus, of granting amnesty to the proscribed. Usurpation granting amnesty to right! treason to honour! cowardice to courage! crime to virtue! He is to that degree embruted by his success that he ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... aware of what was around him, he saw the widow seated beside him, within four bare walls. Everything, except the bed he slept on, had been sold to support him in his illness. As soon as he could totter forth, Beck hastened to his crossing. Alas! it was preoccupied. His absence had led to ambitious usurpation. A one-legged, sturdy sailor had mounted his throne, and wielded his sceptre. The decorum of the street forbade altercation to the contending parties; but the sailor referred discussion to a meeting at a flash house in the Rookery that evening. There a jury was appointed, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... calculated the good or the harm that Madame de Maintenon had done France. He did not weigh in the balance of genealogy Monsieur de Maine and Monsieur d'Orleans. He felt that he must devote his life to those who had raised him from obscurity, and knowing the old king's will, regarded as a usurpation Monsieur d'Orleans' ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... principal works were De Regno et Regali Potestate, &c. (Paris, 1600), a strenuous defence of the rights of kings, in which he refutes the doctrines of George Buchanan, "Junius Brutus" (Hubert Languet) and Jean Boucher; and De Potestate Papae, &c. (London, 1609), in opposition to the usurpation of temporal powers by the pope, which called forth the celebrated reply of Cardinal Bellarmine; also commentaries on some of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... right. It is regulated by the constitution and laws of a State I grant, but it needs no argument, it appears to me, to show that a constitution and laws adopted and enacted by a fragment of the whole body of the people, but binding alike on all, is a usurpation of ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... bribe a number of the colleagues of Icilius to oppose his measure. This political perfidy was adopted by the senate with the desired effect. Icilius persisted in his proposition and declared he would rather see the Etruscans masters of Rome than to suffer for a longer time the usurpation of the domain lands on ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson

... from the Trojan Brute was acceptable to the British race. But amid much of fable there is the undoubted fact that Germanic tribes were gradually possessing themselves of the fairest parts of Britain—a progressive usurpation, far different from a sudden conquest. Amid the wreck of the social institutions left by Rome, when all that remained of a governing power was centred in the towns, it may be readily conceived that the rich districts of the eastern and southern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... a further removed ancestor of his father, as well, had stood high in the favour of the same monarch. Therefore the history of the troublous times of the preceding century, which were brought to a close by the usurpation of Henry VII., would naturally be a subject of talk in the quiet household, where books and amusements such as now occupy our boys, were scarce or wanting altogether. The proximity of such a past of strife and commotion, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... leaves New Orleans for home this evening. Want of respect for Governor Wells personally, alone represses the expression of indignation felt by all honest and sensible men at the unwarranted usurpation of General Sheridan in removing the civil officers of Louisiana. It is believed here that you will reinstate Wells. He is a bad man, and has ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... fellows. It needed only the spark, which the proper occasion would be sure soon to strike out, and the awful, earth-shaking explosion would follow. After the Revolution, during the First Empire, so called,—the usurpation, that is, of Napoleon Bonaparte,—literature was well-nigh extinguished in France. The names, however, then surpassingly brilliant, of Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, belong to ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... support only of habit and prejudice, which seldom consult experience and good sense. No action is so abominable that it is not, or has not been, approved by some nation. Parricide, infanticide, theft, usurpation, cruelty, intolerance, prostitution, have been allowed and even considered meritorious by some of the peoples of the earth. Religion especially has consecrated the most revolting ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... point of the law which is not involved in the word possession, appointed a Vicar Apostolic of Mongolia. The pope might, with equal impunity, have divided it into bishoprics—no meetings would have been hold to protest against the usurpation; and the mandarins of Pekin would certainly have proposed no law to prevent the Lamas of the western world from assuming what titles they pleased. But even in that case, the interests of the church ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... that have been made by South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has extended over her, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of the Union, by the only means by which she believes it can be long preserved—a firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. . . . Sir, if, acting on these high motives,—if, animated by that ardent love of liberty, which has always been the most prominent trait in the Southern character, we should be hurried beyond the bounds of a cold and calculating prudence; who is there, with one noble ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... of Life wherein the most able and fortunate Captain, before Your Time, declared he had lived enough both to Nature and to Glory; [2] and Your Grace may make that Reflection with much more Justice. He spoke it after he had arrived at Empire, by an Usurpation upon those whom he had enslaved; but the Prince of Mindleheim may rejoice in a Sovereignty which was the Gift of Him ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... judgment will be faulty and unlawful. First, when it is contrary to the rectitude of justice, and then it is called "perverted" or "unjust": secondly, when a man judges about matters wherein he has no authority, and this is called judgment "by usurpation": thirdly, when the reason lacks certainty, as when a man, without any solid motive, forms a judgment on some doubtful or hidden matter, and then it is called judgment by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... opposition to strong government and dislike of any but local authorities were {170} summoned to oppose an administration on the familiar ground that it was working against their liberties by corruption, usurpation, financial burdens, and gross partisanship ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... over your bodies, and owed his power to violence and usurpation. But I have from Nature an absolute dominion over the wit of all authors, who are subjected to me as the greatest ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... nations have not as yet presented any instance of such prudent sacrifices; those who should have made them have refused to do so; those who required them have forcibly compelled them; and good has been brought about, like evil, by the medium and with all the violence of usurpation. As yet there has ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... but that of Cabool, where, by accident, he had just nine points of the law in his favour. How then could we have supported him? "Because thou art virtuous," we must have said, are we to support future usurpation? Because the Dost is just to pedlars, "shall there be no more ale and cakes" for other Affghan princes? All Asia could not have held him upright on any throne comprehensively Affghan. Whether that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... planned, went to Scindia's camp to remonstrate against a heavy demand for money, on account of the expenses to which Scindia had been put; and to his astonishment he was, then and there, made a prisoner. Chimnajee positively refused to become a party to the usurpation of his brother's rights; but he was compelled, by threats, to ascend the musnud. On the day after his installation, Purseram Bhow wrote, proposing that Nana should come to Poona to meet Balloba, and to assume the civil administration of the new Peishwa's government; while ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... should be altogether got rid of; otherwise the liberty of Greece would never be secure. That it would have been much better never to have entered on the war than to drop it after it was begun; for this would be a kind of approbation of his tyrannical usurpation, and which would establish him more firmly, as giving the countenance of the Roman people to his ill-acquired authority, and that he would quickly spirit up many in other states to plot against the liberty of their countrymen." The wishes of ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... it is generally believed that the Revolution would have taken place, if the Lords of the King's Bedchamber had not in a body surrounded the throne and shown the most determined resolution not to abandon their posts but with their lives. The usurpation being defeated, Parliament was dissolved and loaded with infamy. Sheridan was one of the few members of it who were re-elected:—the Burgesses of Stafford, whom he had kept in a constant state of intoxication for near three weeks, chose him again to represent them, which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... English theatre. I believe the practice now survives nowhere except in Japan. This mode of representation has always been a great puzzle to students of Elizabethan drama.[17] Before, however, Pepys saw Shakespeare's work on the stage, the usurpation of the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... answered nothing; his sympathies were heartfelt with the Arabs, his allegiance and his esprit de corps were with the service in which he was enrolled. He could not defend French usurpation; but neither could he condemn the Flag that had now become his Flag, and in which he had grown to feel much of national honor, to take much ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... miraculous embellishment common in biographies of saints, need materially affect. The moral ideal of Christ conquered the ancient world when the Roman, mighty in character as well as in arms, was its master. It has lived through all these centuries, all their revolutions and convulsions, the usurpation, tyranny, and scandals of the Papacy. The most doubtful point of it, considered as a permanent exemplar, is its tendency, not to asceticism, for Christ came "eating and drinking," but to an excessive preference for poverty and antipathy to wealth which would arrest human progress and kill civilization. ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... is a living organism, and to substitute authority, or even long usage, for its innate genius and wisdom, and the requirements and practices that result from these, were to strike at its life, and to expose it to become subject to upstart usurpation, to deadening despotism. Worcester quotes from the Psalms the phrase, "They go astray as soon as they be born." We ask, Were not the translators of the Bible as liable to err in grammar as De Quincey, or Wordsworth, or Shelley? A writer in the English "National Review" ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... brethren have wisely laid down, and hold in contempt the voice of the public,[84] but, forgetting the subject which they have undertaken to criticise, they push the author out of his seat, quietly sit in it themselves, and fancy they entertain you by the gravity of their deportment, and their rash usurpation of the royal monosyllable 'Nos.'[85] This solemn pronoun, or rather 'plural style,'[86] my dear Philemon, is oftentimes usurped by a half-starved little I, who sits immured in the dusty recess of a garret, and who has never known the society ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... here the gift of fell ambition, Of usurpation and of treachery! Lo, here the harms that wait upon all those That do intrude themselves in other's lands, Which are not ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... buying liquor, denotes selfish usurpation of property upon which you have no legal claim If you sell it, you will be ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... credit of any one of them belongs, inasmuch as the philosophy and method of the policy of the one and the other are absolutely identical. We have space only to glance at unquestionable facts, and to trace them to their necessary motives. To maintain the supremacy of this usurpation, and the Draconic laws made under it, Mr. Pierce poured in the squadrons of the Republic, to dragoon the rebellious freemen into obedience to what their souls abhorred, and what their reason told them was of no more just binding force upon them than an edict of the Emperor of China. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... thought indeed, that Sargon, instead of cloaking his usurpation under some decent plea of right, took a pride in boldly avowing it. The name Sargon has been supposed to be one which he adopted as his royal title at the time of his establishment upon the throne, intending by the adoption to make it generally known that he had acquired the crown, not by birth ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... a period when ecclesiastical usurpation was beginning to produce some of its bitter fruits, and when religion was rapidly degenerating from its primitive purity. [372:2] His works, which treat of a great variety of topics interesting to the Christian student, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... Her influence and usurpation of power bore heavily upon every department of state; she appointed all the ministers, made all nominations, managed the foreign policy and politics, directed the army and even arranged the plans of battle. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... of authority, on the part of those states, has been effected gradually, and the usurpation on the part of Christian powers has only been perfected and secured by treaty in our own day. Great Britain, in her treaty with the emperor of Morocco (1760), agreed that 'if there shall happen any quarrel or dispute between an Englishman and a Mussulman, by which any of them shall ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... their arms; sullied, however, by superstition and cruelty. An allusion to the inhumanities of the Inquisition terminates this picture. The LAST PART of the Poem opens with the state of Spain previous to the unparalleled treachery of BUONAPARTE, gives a sketch of the usurpation attempted upon that unsuspicious and friendly kingdom, and terminates with the arrival of the British succours. It may be further proper to mention, that the object of the Poem is less to commemorate or detail particular incidents, than to exhibit a general and ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... of ours. That generation was a frugal and honest generation in the main, and they would have visited with the swiftest condemnation and punishment, every breach of public trust, whether through dishonesty or usurpation. But they did not send to England for Benedict Arnold. They did not restore the Tories to power. They did not go down on their knees to George III. and ask him to take them back into favor. They believed that if the Constitution could not be administered honestly by a majority ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... more that is tedious in narration, affected in style, and feeble in thought, than we have lately found in any large octavo volume of five hundred pages. We begin with four introductory chapters recounting the events which led to the usurpation of Bolingbroke, and the succession of Mr. Towle's hero to the English throne; we go on with two chapters descriptive of the youthful character and career of Henry the Fifth; we end with six chapters devoted to the facts of his reign. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... these fulminations at their true value. While continuing for twelve years to elect to the Presidency Jackson or his nominee, they finally dispossessed the Whigs from the control of Congress; and they were right. The American people have much more to fear from Congressional usurpation than they have from executive usurpation. Both Jackson and Lincoln somewhat strained their powers, but for good purposes, and in essentially a moderate and candid spirit; but when Congress attempts to dominate the executive, its objects ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... until Christianity should have applied its final revelation to the completion of this great idea-we could not possess it in its total effulgence, it is, however, certain that an immense advance was made, a prodigious usurpation across the realms of chaos, by the grand illuminations of the Hebrew discoveries. Too terrifically austere we must presume the Hebrew idea to have been: too undeniably it had not withdrawn the veil entirely which still rested upon the Divine ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... great European powers at length overshadowed the prosperity of Portugal, and the usurpation of her government by Spain sank her into a temporary depression. But the native gallantry of the nation at length shook off the yoke; and a new effort commenced for her restoration to the place which she was entitled to maintain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... various stories, all equally erroneous, have been propagated: maliciously representing it as a political bribe to Johnson, to desert his avowed principles, and become the tool of a government which he held to be founded in usurpation. I have taken care to have it in my power to refute them from the most authentick information. Lord Bute told me, that Mr. Wedderburne, now Lord Loughborough, was the person who first mentioned this subject to him[1106]. Lord Loughborough told me, that the pension was granted to Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... been as odious in France in a little time as were those of the Maire du Palais and the Comte de Paris. But by the providence of God, Cardinal Mazarin, who succeeded him, was not capable of giving the State any jealousy of his usurpation. As these two ministers contributed chiefly, though in a different way, to the civil war, I judge it highly necessary to give you the particular character of each, and to draw a parallel ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... fell alarm On Gallia's blood-stain'd ground, When Usurpation's giant arm Enslaved the nations round: The thunders of avenging Heaven To NELSON'S chosen hand were given! By NELSON'S chosen hand were hurl'd, To rescue the ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... empire," as a pretext for that wholesale measure of territorial spoliation in Northern Germany, which, from the umbrage it gave Russia, proved ultimately the cause of his downfall: but it was reserved for us of the present day, to hear a British minister avow and justify a violent and perfidious usurpation on the plea of political expediency. It must indeed be admitted that, in the early stages of the war, the utter iniquity of the measure met with but faint reprobation from any party in the state: the nation, dazzled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... parliamentarians. But the man who looks at the world with the terrible eyes of his first innocence can never see an unequal law as anything but an iniquity, or government divorced from the general will as anything but usurpation. ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... of gear, it is yet He who willed to be so absent, well knowing what results would supervene; if a power other than He and hostile to Him has usurped the place and title of Prince of this world, such usurpation would have been impossible but for His acquiescence, and personified Evil, playing with human happiness, would still be His licensed agent. Evidently, the solution of which we are in search does not lie along ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... live as becomes the rank due to my husband. The world need suspect nothing. There is no obligation to make it your confidante. If any one were wronged by the usurpation of the name you took it would be otherwise, but as it is you will lose nothing in the eyes of men; Society will not flatter you the less. The world will only believe that we are tired of one another, like so many. The ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... some other place, From your dominion won, th' Ethereal King Possesses lately, thither to arrive I travel this profound. Direct my course: Directed, no mean recompense it brings To your behoof, if I that region lost, All usurpation thence expelled, reduce To her original darkness and your sway (Which is my present journey), and once more Erect the standard there of ancient Night. Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge!" Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old, With faltering speech and visage incomposed, Answered: ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... been receded from in this country, since the increase of her commerce. During the time of the usurpation, when England was becoming commercial, an alteration was effected by the ordinance of 1649, which directed a restitution, upon salvage, to British subjects; and the same indulgent rule was continued afterwards, when this country became still ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson

... years after the usurpation of Hugh Capet, 240 years after the extinction of the race of Lothaire. Then, for 240 years your ancestors had already had a right to the throne before the Salic law was invented. Now, everyone knows that the law cannot have ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... to our bosoms, if we nobly defeat that fatal edict which proclaims a power to frame laws for us in all cases whatsoever, thereby entailing the endless and numberless curses of slavery upon us, our heirs, and their heirs for ever; if we successfully resist that unparalleled usurpation of unconstitutional power, whereby our capital is robbed of the means of life; whereby the streets of Boston are thronged with military executioners; whereby our coasts are lined, and harbours crowded with ships of war; whereby the charter ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... the depressed party in a state to indulge their sentiments safely, and probably at the same time, according to situation, to sound those of their companions, puns and other quibbles have been of notable service. The following is worthy of notice:—The cavaliers during Cromwell's usurpation, usually put a crumb of bread into a glass of wine, and before they drank it, would exclaim with cautious ambiguity, "God send this Crum well down!" A royalist divine also, during the Protectorate, did not scruple to quibble in the following prayer, which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... Senators to another view of this subject, which is not without weight in determining the obligations of this body to the State of Louisiana and in ascertaining the title of the claimant. If the assumption that the present government inaugurated in 1873 is without legal authority and usurpation is true, the remedy for the state of things was to be found in the exercise of Congress through the joint action of the two Houses of the powers conferred under the guaranteeing clause of the Constitution relative to republican forms of government ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... commits his cause into the hands of God; but at the same time, unwilling to fail in his essential obligations to guarantee the rights of his sovereignty, he has given orders to protest, as he protests daily, against every usurpation of his dominions, his will being that the rights of the Holy See should be ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... For years he was to be seen battling with Philip's empire by sea and land, plundering his merchantmen, storming his strongholds, bursting through his frontiers, and teaching Englishmen to think that sheer usurpation which for Spaniards was right divine. His own countrymen did not at first accept his leadership. They affirmed his principle, but preferred that others than he should have the primary honour of applying it. Gradually competitors ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... declared that the President's call for troops was only "adding insult to injury, and that the people of Arkansas would defend, to the last extremity, their honor and their property against Northern mendacity and usurpation." Governor Hicks for prudential reasons excused Maryland at the time from responding to the President's call, and when a month afterwards he notified the War Department of his readiness to comply with the request of the Government, he was informed that three-months' men were not needed, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... been known to be untruthful, this might be because there was not the slightest temptation to deceive. She was just as much the spoilt child, to all intents and purposes, as if she had been the heiress; perhaps more so, for Mrs. Brownlow had always been so remorseful for the usurpation as to be extra indulgent-lenient to her foibles, and lavish in gifts and pleasures, even inconveniencing herself for her fancies; whilst Allen had, from the first, treated her with the devotion of a lover. No stranger had ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... us. Though the Christian sentiment is opposed to it, obedience to this terrible law is essentially social and conservative. The daughter of James II., who seated herself upon her father's throne, must have caused him many a wound before that usurpation. Judas had certainly given some murderous blow to Jesus before he betrayed him. We have within us an inward power of sight, an eye of the soul which foresees catastrophes; and the repugnance that comes over us against the fateful being is the result of that foresight. Though religion ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... movement through his mind he came back to Science, Philosophy or Politics as the sole three justifications for the usurpation of leisure. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... therefore, they should not, for his coming, interrupt their debates, but proceed, and be covered. They did so. It is true that this has been done long ago, but it is now so old, that it is new, and so disused, that at any other but so bewitched a time as this, it would have been looked on as an high usurpation, and breach of privilege. He indeed sat still, for the most part, and interposed very little; sometimes a word or two. But the most discerning opinion was, that he did herein as he rowed for having had his face first to the Conventicle Bill, he turned short ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... was right. The truth of history, the law of this land, and of all lands where there is any law which marks a boundary between legal right and despotic usurpation, unite to denounce, and will forever condemn, the judicial magistrate whose great name is tarnished and whose "great office" is degraded by this political pronunciamento, uttered from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... of argument, that the mere will to separate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for separation, I beg to be informed whose will? The will of any knot of men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud, have got the reins of government into their hands? If the inmates of Parkhurst Prison were to get possession of the Isle of Wight, occupy its military positions, enlist one part of its inhabitants in their own ranks, set the remainder of them to work in chain gangs, ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill

... told that, to resist the usurpation of the French, the queen was rallying about her person all the foreigners she could. Her partiality for the English and Americans was well known; and this was an additional ground for our anticipating a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... expect from a people whose idol in philosophy, their pampered Nietschke, teaches and writes: "Morality is a symptom of decadence! There is no right other than that of theft, usurpation and violence!" It is in his book for all to read! What hope of an army, or hope of mercy from it, whose Kaiser confesses himself to be a liar or a lunatic by proclaiming: "The spirit of God has descended upon Me because I am the German ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... squarely against Congress and the people, while the House met his defiance by a concurrent resolution emphatically condemning his reconstruction policy, and thus opening the way for the coming struggle between Executive usurpation and the power of Congress. His maudlin speech on the 22d of February to the political mob which called on him, branding as traitors the leaders of the party which had elected him, completely dishonored him in the opinion of all Republicans, and awakened general ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... those of your own people? Speaking for my own parish, I can affirm to you that, simple souls as they are, poor in the extreme, and resigned to poverty, you will have trouble with them all if you take it on you to enforce the usurpation ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... See the acts 18 Cha. II. 6.3. and 80 Cha. II. ch. 2. against the border moss-troopers; to which we may add the following curious extracts from Mercurius Politicus, a newspaper, published during the usurpation. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... peril; the farmer-general, whose conduct was not criminally attacked, but appeared as one of the grounds of a public inquiry, is turned into a culprit before a court of justice, against whom everything is to be juridically made out or not admitted; and the members of an executive board, by usurpation and fraud, erect themselves into judges bound to proceed by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... and not to her individual citizens; and that, though the latter may, in a mere question of *meum* and *tuum,* resist through the courts an unconstitutional encroachment upon their rights, yet the final stand against usurpation rests not with them, but with the State of which they are members; and such act of resistance by a State binds the conscience and allegiance of the citizen. But there appears to be a general misapprehension as to the extent ...
— Remarks of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina on the bill to prevent the interference of certain federal officers in elections: delivered in the Senate of the United States February 22, 1839 • John C. Calhoun

... factions, which often have recourse to arms, even upon points of ceremonious precedence, and are reasoned into accommodation by our resident going among them unattended. At an earlier period our protection was convenient to them against the usurpation, as they termed it, of the Dutch, of whose attempts and claims they were particularly jealous. By an article of the treaty of Paris in 1763 these pretensions were ascertained as they respected the two European powers, and the settlements ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... down the standard of living, and turns to bad purposes the increased power of man over nature. We have abolished pestilence and famine in their grimmest shape; if we have not abolished war, it no longer involves usurpation or slavery or the permanent desolation of the conquered; but one result is just this, that great masses can be regularly kept alive at the lowest stage of existence without being periodically swept away by ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... ensuing week in vain endeavour to reconcile himself to a condition of things in which he, the first born of the policeman on the beat, and therefore by right of heredity a person of importance in the realm, should tamely submit to usurpation and insult on the part of this mushroom sprig of moneyed aristocracy, this sissy kid in velvet pants, this long-haired dummy of an Isaac Borrachsohn. Teacher could not have meant to cut him off from all hope of vengeance. If she had—then she must be shown that ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... notwithstanding possession was already fully taken by the building and occupation of Fort Good Hope, and there was no neglect from time to time in warning them, in making known our rights, and in protesting against their usurpation and violence, they have disregarded all these things and have seized and possessed, and still hold, the largest and best part of New Netherland, that is, on the east side of the North River, from Cape Cod, (by our ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... not necessary that he should hold his office; but it was necessary, that, whilst he hold it, he should obey his superiors, and submit to the law. Much more truly was his conduct a virtual resignation of his lawful office, and at the same time an usurpation of a situation which did not belong to him, to hold a subordinate office, and to refuse to act according to its duties. Had his authority been self-originated, it would have been wounded by his submission; but in this case the true nature ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... walked up to us. You will easily believe it was not difficult for me to recover my gravity; but what was my consternation, when this strange man, destined to be the scourge of my artifice, exclaimed, "Ha! My Lord Orville!-I protest I did not know your Lordship. What can I say for my usurpation?-Yet, faith, my Lord, such a prize was ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... a peculiar resolution was introduced to punish the usurpation of the executive authority of the government of the United States in carrying on correspondence with the government of any foreign prince or state. Gallatin thought this resolution covered too much ground. The criminality of such acts did not lie in their ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... in the matter, but I will believe, as I have said, that this dead Princess, for whose soul he prays, was certainly the wife of his boyhood, a child whom Richard II had wed just before that Lancastrian usurpation which is the irreparable disaster of English history. She was, I say, a child—a widow in name—when Charles of Orleans, himself in that small royal clique which was isolated and shrivelling, married her as a mere matter of state. It is probable that he grew to love her passionately, and ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc

... judgment of his Majesty's Government, be unworthy of its past and of the traditions of which it is the custodian and trustee if it allowed another day to pass without making it clear that it does not mean to brook the greatest indignity and the most arrogant usurpation to which for more than two centuries it has been asked to submit. We have advised the Crown to dissolve Parliament at ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... pronunciamentos swarmed about the town; men of the highest standing, such as Marheinecke and others, declared that protestantism and enlightenment were threatened in their very foundations in case such usurpation, hitherto unheard of in Prussia, were allowed to take its course. And even such expressions of opinion as reached a conclusion subservient to the ministerial view based their conclusion on the ground that the case in question ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... conversations with Scythrop, displayed a highly cultivated and energetic mind, full of impassioned schemes of liberty, and impatience of masculine usurpation. She had a lively sense of all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and the vivid pictures which her imagination presented to her of the numberless scenes of injustice and misery which are being acted at every moment in every ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... justification of the conduct of living men, object to the French Imperial view of his career. Mommsen, whose admiration of Caesar is as ardent as his knowledge of Roman history is great, speaks with well-deserved scorn of the efforts that are made to defend contemporary usurpation by misrepresentation of the history of antiquity. One of his remarks is curious, read in connection with that history which daily appears in our journals. Writing before our civil war began, he declared, that, if ever the slaveholding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... very first approaches of freedom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Deserters from principle, listed with fortune, they never see any good in suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... included the royal apartments, the harem, and the temple, with its great seven-stage tower or observatory. The very extensive and systematic explorations carried out by the French explorer M. Botta had restored the remains of one of the most beautiful of the Assyrian palaces. The usurpation of the Assyrian throne by Sargon the Tartar in B. C. 721 placed in power a new dynasty, who were lavish patrons of the arts and who made Nineveh a city of palaces. Probably on account of his violent seizure of the throne, Sargon was afraid to reside ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... of Christ, Donald Cargill. He stood near the scaffold, beheld his courageous and triumphant departure to glory, and heard the clear and powerful last words, in which he nobly testified for the crown-rights of the Redeemer, and against Erastian usurpation. "As to the causes of my suffering," said the dying martyr, "the chief is—not acknowledging the present Authority, as it is established in the Supremacy and Explanatory Act. This is the magistracy I have resisted, that which ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston

... saint! whose martyrdom is commemorated on June 15. It may not be generally known that a person afflicted with this species of dancing can run, although he cannot walk or stand still. Another and a more agreeable species is to lead the dance, an unjust usurpation which is practised in a thousand other places ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various

... rank, thinks himself the lord of creation; and, of course, regards woman only as his appendage. How can this lord of creation, being a slave himself, look upon the free development and demand of recognition of his appendage otherwise than as a nonsense, or usurpation of his exclusive rights? And among these lords of creation I heartily dislike that class which not only yield to the influence brought upon them by government, but who also possess an infinite amount of narrowness and vanity, united to as infinite servility to money and position. ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska

... In fact, since usurpation had filled Henry of Lancaster's mind with distrust and jealousy, his eldest son had been in no such enviable position as to be beyond the capacity of fellow-feeling for ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... no more, is fighting and groaning under that unjust invasion, resolving never to pay homage to the usurper, nor to obey his laws, nor so much as parley with him, or make peace, we cannot say, that the soul doth consent fully unto this usurpation. Nay, if the soul shall do this much, at such a time when Satan sets on with all his force, it will be a greater evidence of the strength of grace in the soul, than if the soul should do the same or a little more, at a time when the ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... of the United States, and who prey upon and plunder the government of the United States and the city and county governments thereof, and also upon private citizens, and who now are carrying into practice gigantic schemes of plunder through fraud, usurpation, and other villainy, in order to enrich themselves, bankrupt the nation, and destroy our government, and that their power is so great that they can and do obstruct the administration of public justice, corrupt its fountains, and paralyze to some extent the sovereign powers ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... caeperat. In French, therefore, post should be rendered by depuis, not, as it is commonly translated, apres." Bernouf. As dictator was the title that Sylla assumed, I have translated dominatio, "dictatorship". Rose, Gordon, and others, render it "usurpation". ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... reservations in the name of the absolute democratic principle; in the eyes of the absolute, outside these two rights, the right of man in the first place, the right of the people in the second, all is usurpation; but what we can say, even at the present day, that after making these reserves is, that to sum up the whole, and in whatever manner he is considered, Louis Philippe, taken in himself, and from the point of view of human goodness, will remain, to use the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... (c. 4.) for restoring the ancient gentry to their possessions, we have already canvassed. It were monstrous to suppose the parliament ought to have respected the thirty-eight years' usurpation of savage invaders, and to have overlooked the rights of the national chieftains, the plundered proprietors who lived, and whose families lived, to claim their rights. The care with which purchasers and incumbrancers were to be reprized we have already noticed; yet we cannot but repeat ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... he was chosen chief: restored the authority of the laws; established a university; and took such measures, both for repressing abuses and moulding the rising generation, that, if France had not interfered, upon its wicked and detestable principle of usurpation, Corsica might at this day have been as free, and flourishing and happy a commonwealth as any of the Grecian states in the days of their prosperity. The Genoese were at this time driven out of their fortified towns, and must in a short time have been ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... The whole of their usurpation is established upon this method of arguing. We do not make laws. No; we do not contend for this power. We only declare law; and, as we are a tribunal both competent and supreme, what we declare to be law becomes ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... armies, who could, if he would, write tragedies like Otway and Dryden, who was made to be an emperor—Barkilphedro had been reduced to permit this nobody to prevent him from dying of hunger. Could the usurpation of the rich, the hateful elect of chance, go further? They put on the semblance of being generous to us, of protecting us, and of smiling on us, and we would drink their blood and lick our lips after it! That this low woman of the court should have the odious power of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... and all other questions of a like nature, the Socialist can only give one answer, namely, that there is no such a thing as an "automatic democracy," that eternal vigilance will be the price of liberty under Socialism as it has ever been. There can be no other safeguard against the usurpation of power than the popular will and conscience ever alert upon the watch-towers. With political machinery so responsive to the popular will when it is asserted and an alert and vigilant electorate, political democracy attains its maximum development. Socialism ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... that this is the policy of doubt and apprehension, the evading and repelling caution of men who suspect themselves to be wrong and dread being forced to meet the proof. For the subjects of this execrable usurpation on the human understanding have, in general, the firmest assurance that all things in the system are right: it has itself secured them against knowing anything that could discompose their sense of certainty. ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... explain the origin and meaning of the movement of the great, southern clans and daimios against the Tycoon. It was in reality the assertion of the Mikado's imperial and historic claims to complete supremacy against the Shogun's or lieutenant's long usurpation. It was an expression of nationality against sections. The civil war meant "unite or die." Carleton naturally shared in the general wrong impressions and darkness that prevailed, and neither his letters nor his writing give much light upon the political problem, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... campaign with no flattering prospects. Since 1832 their opposition to "executive usurpation" had won for them a new party name, "Whig." But neither their opposition nor any other circumstance had given them party solidarity. National Republicans, anti-Masons, converted Jacksonians, state rights men—upon what broad and constructive platform could they hope to unite? They ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... of Valois was evidently and speedily approaching. Henry of Navarre, calm, sagacious, and energetic, was rallying around him all the Protestant influences of Europe, to sustain, in that event, his undeniable claim to the throne. The Duke of Guise, impetuous and fearless, hoped, in successful usurpation, to grasp the rich prize by rallying around his banner all the fanatic energies ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... vol. ii. p. 30, et seq., 78. et seq., and the note in my elementary book on the Industries, p. 313. With regard to the works best suited to give information on the framing and the form of these edicts, see Haubold, Institutiones Literariae, tom. i. p. 321, 368. All that Heineccius says about the usurpation of the right of making these edicts by the praetors is false, and contrary to all historical testimony. A multitude of authorities proves that the magistrates were under an obligation to publish these ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... Commonwealth, had instituted this Club [the Calves-head Club], as he was inform'd, in opposition to Bp. Juxon, Dr. Sanderson, Dr. Hammond, and other divines of the Church of England, who met privately every 30th of January; and though it was under the Time of Usurpation, had compil'd a private Form of Service for the Day, not much different from what we now ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various

... other; nor is it at all natural or necessary that one individual should question the sincerity of another's opinion on any subject, because it differs from his own. Intolerance in this particular has been the result mostly of interference and usurpation—the consequence of that theological despotism to which men have, in some form or other, in all ages, been more or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... as the foundation of their Constitution. That nation having for many ages groaned under the exercise of the pretended right claimed by their Kings and Nobles, until their very feelings as men were become torpid, at length suddenly awoke, from their long slumber, abolished the usurpation, and placed every man upon the footing of equal rights. "All men are born free and equal in rights," if I mistake not, is ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... from this statement that Erthai was the lawful lord of the Mordei. He had been deprived of his dominions for a time, probably through the usurpation of the "steel-clad commander," but at length succeeded in recovering them. Who Erthai was we know not; Llywarch Hen had a son, whose name bore some resemblance to the word: he is mentioned in ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin

... actual sovereignty, in other words, the Lord Protector's usurpation of the crown, was not done by violence: in his first royal procession he was unattended by troops; a fickle, intriguing, ambitious, and warlike nobility approved the change; Buckingham, Catesby, and others, urged it. No doubt he himself saw that the crown was not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... basis. By the end of the tenth century, however, what is known as the Feudal System had been established all over Europe. "No land without a lord" was the underlying principle of the whole Feudal System. Either by conquest or usurpation, or by more or less compulsory voluntary agreement, even the free primitive communities (die Markgenossenshaften) of the Teutonic races had been brought under the dominion of the lords, spiritual or ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... the poor colonists against becoming tenants, and the usurpation of the land, were clearly brought out by Bellomont in a letter written on Nov. 28, 1700, to the Lords of Trade. He complained that "people are so cramped here for want of land that several families ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... usurped the khalifate to the prejudice of Hakem's son, thought that his usurpation would be sustained if he put himself at the head of the orthodox party. He therefore had the library of Hakem searched, and all works of a scientific or philosophical nature carried into the public places and burnt, or thrown into the cisterns of the palace. By a similar court revolution Averroes, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... cruel and abominable tyranny that has been exercised over him? Consider, too, my Lords, for what object all this was done. Was Mr. Hastings endeavoring, by his arbitrary interference and the use of his superior power, to screen a people from the usurpation and power of a tyrant,—from any strong and violent acts against property, against dignity, against nobility, against the freedom of his people? No: you see here a monarch deposed, in effect, by persons pretending to be his allies, and assigning what are pretended to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... province, and Laval University. The whole matter came before the Dominion house of commons in 1888, when a resolution was proposed to the effect that the government should have at once disallowed the act as beyond the power of the legislature, because, among other reasons, "it recognizes the usurpation of a right by a foreign authority, namely his Holiness the Pope, to claim that his consent was necessary to dispose of and appropriate the public funds of a province." The very large vote in support of the action of the government-188 against 13-was chiefly influenced by ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... turned that scale in favor of American freedom. I read it with a prophetic eye, which is made for me too clear for error or misconception. Our avenging armies will henceforth go on conquering and to conquer, till the last vestige of British usurpation is swept ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... favour of the nominee of the king, and the bishops agreeing to support the crown were excommunicated.[458] The court of Rome had resolved to try the issue by a struggle of force, and the government had no alternative but to surrender at discretion, or to persevere at all hazards, and resist the usurpation. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... the life-giving element to the growing vegetation in the valley; but now it was master no more. The rain was pouring down on places which the river could not reach. No wonder the river seemed angry at such usurpation. ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... France. James on the other hand was bitterly angered at Frederick's action. He could not recognize the right of subjects to depose a prince, or support Bohemia in what he looked on as revolt, or Frederick in what he believed to be the usurpation of a crown. By envoy after envoy he called on his son-in-law to lay down his new royalty, and to return to the Palatinate. His refusal of aid to the Protestant Union helped the pressure of France in paralyzing its action, while he threatened ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... of usurpation to another, assisted by unprincipled, ambitious men, he proceeded, evidently aiming to secure the ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... friends to go away on a hunting excursion. When he reached a safe distance from the court of Polysperchon, he called his friends around him, and informed them that he had resolved not to submit to the usurpation of Polysperchon, who, in assuming the throne of Macedon, had seized what rightfully belonged, he said, to him, Cassander, as his father's son and heir. He invited his friends to join him in the enterprise of deposing ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... thing to utility and common-place. Avoid all towns and cities of white clapboard palaces and Grecian temples, studded with "Academics," "Seminaries," and "Institutes," which glisten along our bays and rivers; these are the strong-holds of Yankee usurpation; but if haply you light upon some rough, rambling road, winding between stone fences, gray with moss, and overgrown with elder, poke-berry, mullein, and sweet-briar, with here and there a low, red-roofed, whitewashed ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... formidably represented there. On the government? it suffers itself to be insulted and defied at home, and abroad it has shown itself incapable of maintaining the relations of peace and amity with its allies, so far has it been divested of power by the usurpation of the press. It is at peace with Spain, and it is at peace with Turkey; and although no government was ever more desirous of acting with good faith, its subjects are openly assisting the Greeks with men ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... interest the loyal and determined spirit manifested in resisting the violence and perfidy with which the dearest rights of the Spanish nation have been assailed. The kingdom thus nobly struggling against the usurpation and tyranny of France, can no longer be considered as the enemy of Great Britain, but is recognised by me as a natural friend and ally." It has been already mentioned that the British commanders in the neighbourhood of Spain did not wait for orders from home to espouse openly ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... the water beyond its appointed bounds. Given a new waterway in a barren land, and in three years the willows have fringed all its miles of banks; three years more and they will touch tops across it. It is perhaps due to the early usurpation of the willows that so little else finds growing-room along the large canals. The birch beginning far back in the canon tangles is more conservative; it is shy of man haunts and needs to have the permanence of its drink assured. ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... present day it is the Cabinet which has the largest control not only of patronage (much of it corruptly applied), but of certain penalizing devices by which monetary pressure can be brought upon those who thwart its will. By its practical usurpation of the Crown's right to decree a general election, and by its control of the party funds, from which parliamentary candidates are subsidized and assisted to the poll, it is able to hold over the heads of its supporters a financial threat to which very few can remain indifferent. And this ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... Government insisted that the power to impress supplies did not carry with it the power to fix prices. Worthy men, ridden by the traditional ideas of political science and unable to modify these in the light of the present emergency, wailed out their despair over the "usurpation" ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... leadership. General Canrobert, Commandant of the Guards, soon put down the revolt in blood. Order was speedily restored throughout Paris, and the victory of the President was complete. It only remained to submit his usurpation to the judgment of the people, and the decision in that case could, under existing conditions, hardly ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... honour it seemed. Edward IV. was firmly seated on the English throne. His right to it, by every test, was immeasurably superior to the Tudor claim, and Henry showed no inclination and possessed not the means to dispute it. The usurpation by Richard III., and the crimes which polluted his reign, put a different aspect on the situation, and set men seeking for an alternative to the blood-stained tyrant. The battle of Bosworth followed, and the last of the Plantagenets gave way to the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... God, master and leader of all mankind, in unending conflict with cruelty, disorder, folly and waste. To my mind, it follows immediately that there can be no king, no government of any sort, which is not either a subordinate or a rebel government, a local usurpation, in the kingdom of God. But no organised religious body has ever had the courage and honesty to insist upon this. They all pander to nationalism and to powers and princes. They exists so to pander. Every organised religion in the world exists only to exploit and divert ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... upon the durability of this institution—circumstances which seemed to portend that this monstrous innovation was destined on the whole to be a much shorter-lived one than the usurpation it had displaced—had not been wanting, indeed, from the first, in spite of those discouraging aspects of the question which were more immediately urged upon ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... marvelously patient generation!—the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our state archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional,—beyond its ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... that shame to his birth and caste, who holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work—work, pah!"—and the old patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... on the principles of virtue and justice. The Spanish king is therefore not only obliged to secure the liberty of the Indians because justice exacts this of him, but also because he is bound to prevent his Spanish subjects from acts of usurpation of the rights of others. Christian kings have greater duties than those which weigh upon heathen or heretical rulers, for they are bound to protect religion, favour its ministers, and spread the faith for the sanctification of the whole world. By securing ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... with ardour to store up this gold in their ships. Hitherto the relations with the natives had been peaceable, although these people were of fierce disposition. But after a time the cacique, irritated by the usurpation of the foreigners, resolved to murder them and burn their dwellings. One day the natives suddenly attacked the Spaniards in considerable force, and a very severe battle ensued, ending in the repulse of the Indians. The cacique had been taken prisoner with all his family, but he succeeded with ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... Francois Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and by that name he has since been known. Voltaire began to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of the church of the creed. He found that the religion of his time rested on the usurpation of the scriptures—the infallibility of the church—the dreams of insane hermits—the absurdities of the fathers—the mistakes and falsehoods of saints—the hysteria of nuns—the cunning of priests ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... opposite side, and in 1660 we find him assisting on horseback at the coronation of Charles II. He now resigned the Chief Justiceship, made himself very useful in settling legal difficulties consequent upon the usurpation, and became as loyal as any cavalier: the King, as a mark of his favour, {11a} bestowing a baronetcy upon his son in 1661. He possessed Henley Park, {11b} in Surrey, and an estate at Bicester, in Oxfordshire, ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone

... that something has been done at last to redress the injuries to our people and check the perilous tendency of the reckless waste of the national domain. That over 80,000,000 acres have been arrested from illegal usurpation, improvident grants, and fraudulent entries and claims, to be taken for the homesteads of honest industry—although less than the greater areas thus unjustly lost—must afford a profound gratification to right-feeling citizens, as it is a recompense for the labors ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... the valley as he had been up on the heights during his vision—of a world made better by his hand. In his darker moments he saw nothing but enmity and disloyalty about him—even, a little later, "usurpation" in the case of the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... the House of Commons exceeded its powers and its privileges in adding that the expelled man was incapable of sitting in the existing Parliament. Every blow that the royal party had struck at Wilkes had only aroused stronger sympathy for him; and this illegal act, this usurpation {126} by one House of powers that only belonged to Parliament, caused the liveliest indignation. It was resolved by the friends of Wilkes, and by all who were the friends of the principles with which Wilkes had come to be identified, to fight to the utmost ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... divine legislation. To a conformity in externals which did not require them to admit the right of the civil magistracy to enact laws for the church, they were willing to yield as far as was necessary to edification. But when the command issued from the ruling power, in usurpation of the prerogative of the great and only head of the church, and obedience was to be construed as acquiescence in such usurpation, their reply was kindred in tone and spirit to that which Luther here puts into the lips of a christian man ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... pleased Dr. Johnson, by producing a collection of newspapers in the time of the Usurpation, from which it appeared that all sorts of crimes were very frequent during that horrible anarchy. By the side of the high road to Glasgow, at some distance from his house, he had erected a pillar to the memory of his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... Danes in England after Knut's death, and to keep the scattered royal line at a distance. Harthaknut, whom the will of his father had called to the succession, was absent in Denmark, and Godwin caused his brother, Harold Harefoot, to be crowned in haste, though the Archbishop would not sanction the usurpation, placed the crown and sceptre on the altar, and forbade the bishops ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer at the hands of a government which in its need and haste must of course commit many errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly or indirectly help the enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the war. When the clamor against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes from those who have done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the attention it deserves. Doubtless ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... scandal; and that, not because the Archbishop had been guilty of any crime or heresy, or was obviously unfitted for his post, but because his conscientious judgment on a point of Church discipline and liberty differed from hers; and this state of things was made possible not by an usurpation of power, but by the deliberately ordered system of the Church of England. Anthony had at least sufficient penetration to see that this, as a fundamental principle of religion, however obscured it might be by subsequent developments, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... Kentucky should be treated as neutral territory. That agreement put that state into the position of a foreign country, like England or China, when the very purpose of the war was to insist that the United States was one nation. This act was a usurpation of authority, and further, it was diametrically wrong even ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... of attack, to the people that they might clearly understand in what particulars their institutions had been violated, and to the truth and certainty of our public annals. As the record now stands, whilst the resolution plainly charges upon the President at least one act of usurpation in "the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue," and is so framed that those Senators who believed that one such act, and only one, had been committed could assent to it, its language is yet broad enough to include several such acts, and so ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... the chiefs, so assuring the Governor against his neat venture. It hurled him, once more, through the fabric of the British constitution, a road to which he had grown familiar. What should he do but raise two regiments on his own mandate, a usurpation of the sovereign rights. It occurred in this fashion. Bombay had not taken the distemper, rife in such a large area of India. However, Lord Elphinstone learned that a Bombay rising had been arranged for a certain religious festival. He had ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... yet a moment longer," pleaded Fitz, placing himself in the centre of the room, with his hat under his arm. "This is a case of wrong and injustice, of oppression and usurpation. My mother is the rightful heir to a block of stores in this city, which the greed of avarice withholds from her. Me and father have taken up the matter. We have been foully wronged;" and Mr. Wittleworth threshed his arm, and waxed eloquent. ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic

... industrial usurpation takes toll of the family in other ways. The intense economic struggle and the long distance "to work" rob the boy of the father's presence and throw upon the mother an unjust burden. To return home late and exhausted, to be hardly equal to the economic demand, ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben



Words linked to "Usurpation" :   seizure, wrongdoing, capture, usurp, inroad, wrongful conduct, gaining control, actus reus, misconduct, violation



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