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More "Usurpation" Quotes from Famous Books



... by a cruel abuse of legal forms—it is by an unjust usurpation—that the tacksman and the tenant of Sutherland are considered as having no right to the land which they have occupied for so many ages.... A count or earl has no more right to expel from their homes the inhabitants ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... though Lord Aberdeen admitted to their fullest extent the obligations created by the treaties existing between Britain and Portugal, he maintained that they gave no countenance to any demand made for interference in an internal revolution. He remarked: "It is assumed that the usurpation of the throne of Portugal by the infant Don Miguel has given to her most faithful majesty the right of demanding from this country effectual succours for the recovery of her crown and kingdom. But in the whole series of treaties there is no ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... been thought possible,' I said, 'that in the event of the Jerome dynasty being overset by a military revolution, it might be followed by a military usurpation; that Nero might be succeeded ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... to be found in print. These, however obtained, can scarcely have been imparted to him as one of those writers whom the Court of St. Petersburg hires to promote its views through the press of Western Europe. His sympathies are declared against Russian usurpation; and the tendency of his essay is to prove how little real progress it has yet made in subduing the Caucasus, the enormous waste of money and life with which its fluctuating successes have been bought, and the fallacy of expecting ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... Governor Rector 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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... after they have been collected. The question is, whether this war of aggression shall proceed, and we remain with folded arms, inattentive spectators; or whether we shall meet the aggressors at the threshold and turn back the tide of revolution and usurpation. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... assuring me that the capital never presented so melancholy a picture as: during those three months. No one felt any confidence in Napoleon's second reign, and it was said, without any sort of reserve, that Fouche, while serving the cause of usurpation, would secretly betray it. The future was viewed with alarm, and the present with dissatisfaction. The sight of the federates who paraded the faubourgs and the boulevards, vociferating, "The Republic for ever!" and "Death to the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... republic of America; may the sentiment that impelled her to resist a British tyrant's will, and the energy which rendered it effectual, prompt her to repel usurpation in whatever shape ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... 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 ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... of life is that Reason has taken charge of the administration of Justice, and by mere identification it has achieved the crown and sceptre of its master. But the imperceptible usurpation was recorded, and discriminating minds understand the chasm which still divides the pretender Law from the exiled King. In a like manner, and with feigned humility, the Cold Demon advanced to serve Religion, and by guile and violence usurped her throne; ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... enlightened profession of the bar there must be very many Irishmen who, like me, consider Repeal to be right, and best, and necessary for the public good. But, gentlemen, ever since the Union, by fraud and force and against the will of the Irish people, was enacted—ever since that act of usurpation by the English parliament of the sovereign rights of the queen, lords, and commons of Ireland—ever since this country was thereby rendered the subject instead of the sister of England—ever since the Union, but especially for about ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... strengthening of the hands of the reverend Assembly of Divines, and of our Commissioners in their asserting of the government of Christ, (which the more it be tried will be ever found the more precious Truth), and vindicating of the same from the usurpation of man, and contempt of the wicked. These all as they are so many testimonies of your Pietie, Loyaltie, and undaunted resolution to stand for Christ; So are they and shall ever be so many obligations upon us your Brethren, to esteem highly of you in the Lord, to bear you on ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... place at the works now that Beauchene had resumed his dissolute life, and daily intrusted the young man with more and more authority. Blaise's home was prospering too; Charlotte had now given birth to a second child, a boy, and thus fruitfulness was invading the place and usurpation becoming more and more likely, since Constance could never more have an heir to bar the road of conquest. Without penetrating her singular feelings, Mathieu fancied that she perhaps wished to sound him to ascertain if he were not behind Blaise, urging on the work of spoliation. She ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... Richard, now earl of A—, taking advantage of the nonage and helpless situation of his nephew, seized upon all the papers of the defunct, and afterwards usurped the title of Lord A—, to the surprise of the servants, and others who were acquainted with the affairs of the family. This usurpation, bold as it was, produced no other effect than that of his being insulted by the populace as he went through the streets, and the refusal of the king-at-arms to enrol the certificate of his brother's having died without issue. The first of these ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... pleased Dr Johnson, by producing a collection of news-papers 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 ingenious kinsman, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... 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 the ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... through the maze, and 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 ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... the interest of stockmen, largely for the purpose of controlling the sources of water supply."—"Unauthorized Fencing of Public Lands," U. S. Senate Docs., First Session, Forty-eighth Congress, 1883-84, Vol. vi, Doc. No. 127:2.] Murder after murder was committed. In this usurpation the august Supreme Court of the United States upheld them. And the grounds ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... and there remained with him only seventeen of his sixty companions. It was the calends of March in the year 1511 when Nicuesa set sail, intending to return to Hispaniola and there complain of the usurpation of Vasco Nunez and the violent treatment offered the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... 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 ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... the rule of the Directory would soon amount to nothing more than the rule of Bonaparte himself. The first debates in the new Chamber arose upon the laws relating to emigrants; the next, upon Bonaparte's usurpation of sovereign power in Italy. On the 23rd of June a motion for information on the affairs of Venice and Genoa was brought forward in the Council of Five Hundred. Dumolard, the mover, complained of the secrecy of Bonaparte's action, of the contempt ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... complete, for the tribunal of last resort was an English court sustained by ample physical force; nevertheless the great principle of coordinate departments of government was not yet understood, and substantial relief against legislative usurpation had to be sought in a foreign jurisdiction. To lawyers of our own time it is self-evident that the restrictions of an organic code must be futile unless they are upheld by a judiciary not only secure in tenure and ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... 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 ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... barbarian nations were organised on a tribal or village 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 temporal, claiming ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

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

... Tories like Walter Scott did not refrain from contributing to its pages. Scott's Marmion was somewhat sharply reviewed by Jeffrey in April, 1808, and in the following October appeared the article by Jeffrey and Brougham upon Don Pedro Cevallos' French Usurpation of Spain. The pronounced Whiggism of that critique led to an open rupture with the Tory contributors. Scott, who was no longer on the best terms with Constable, the publisher of the Edinburgh, declared that henceforth he could neither receive nor ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... suffrage to the masses, government by representatives, registration laws, the secret ballot, and the like. We need only discuss several reforms now being agitated and tried, whose aim is to make government more responsive to the real wishes and needs of the people, and more difficult of usurpation by ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... all who valued municipal liberty. Sforza—whose peasant father threw his axe into a tree, resolving, if it fell, to join, as a common soldier, the roving band which had just invited him; if it adhered to the wood, to remain at home a laboring hind—becomes Duke of Milan, and is encouraged in his usurpation by Cosmo Vecchio, who still gives himself the airs of first-citizen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... a tolerably fair representation of the whole nation. The people were well and worthily represented in the government of each city, and therefore equally so in the assembly of the estates. It was not till later that the corporations, by the extinction of the popular element, and by the usurpation of the right of self-election, were thoroughly stiffened into fictitious personages which never died, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... long, and each whatsoever its proportions securely budded on and growing from a spur, while frequently the valves of the large are bossed with limpets and other encumbrances. In appearance the shell represents a deformity in usurpation of a thin pencilate "growth" of coral a foot long, for the exterior colouration is that of the coral. Quite independent of their host for existence, these molluscs are not to be stigmatised as parasites, though the individual spur to which each is attached is invariably destroyed ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... of the age was all for theory in politics. Accordingly the democratic monarchy of 1791 had failed because, its framework having been built of empty visions, its constitution was entirely in the air. The same fate had now overtaken the Girondist experiment of 1792 and the Jacobin usurpation of the following year, which was ostensibly sanctioned by the popular adoption of a new constitution. With perfect confidence in Rousseau's idea that government is based on a social contract between individuals, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... 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

... of the "Religio Medici," the great body of the medical profession can, without usurpation, assume the name of Christians; for no monk of the desert convents of Asia Minor or religious knight of the middle ages, either in their care of the sick, or giving food and shelter to the weary, or protection of sword and shield to the oppressed pilgrim ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... expedients rather an ill-judged wasting of the public energy and diversion of the public mind than an adequate remedy for the true evil, the usurping of Congress, which (since that body will never construe down its own powers) can be checked, in our opinion, only by the action of States opposed to such usurpation." ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... he had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess him. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! "I do not understand," ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... authority. Protestants, on the other hand, pretend to place all religion in the interior life, directly generated in souls by the Holy Spirit, and it is for this reason that Catholicity impresses them as a tyrannical usurpation and a stupid formalism. In this they are deceived, as a close acquaintance with Catholics and with such writings as those of St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa soon proves to them. So, also, when they fancy that the authority ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... petition to authorize a criminal prosecution has been laid before the president of the Chamber. This petition states an extremely serious fact, namely: that Monsieur de Sallenauve has usurped the name he bears; and this usurpation, being made by means of an official document, assumes the character of forgery committed by substitution of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... The Jews professed to consider it holy, and by them it was proclaimed as the House of the Lord. Devoid though it was of the divine accompaniments of earlier shrines accepted of God, and defiled as it was by priestly arrogance and usurpation, as also by the selfish interest of traffic and trade, it was nevertheless recognized even by our Lord the Christ as His Father's House. (Matt. 21:12; compare Mark 11:15; Luke 19:45.).... For thirty or more years after the death of Christ, the Jews continued ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... of taxes, so ingeniously devised to sink the mass of the people in poverty and degradation, that princes and nobles might revel in voluptuous splendor. Indignation nerved her spirit as she reflected upon the usurpation thus ostentatiously displayed. The seclusion in which she lived encouraged deep musings upon these vast inequalities of life. Piety had not taught her submission. Philosophy had not yet taught her the impossibility of adjusting these allotments of our ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 power. It was not till this was made out that the men of New England ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... more settled, the Lady of Avenel would have willingly returned to her husband's mansion. But that was no longer in her power. It was a reign of minority, when the strongest had the best right, and when acts of usurpation were frequent amongst those who had much power and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... we are inclined to believe that the "anti-uniformists" would carry away the honors. We do not pretend that the State has no rights in matters of education. But its interference should be consistent with the prior and more fundamental rights of the individual and the family and not become a usurpation or abrogation of them. Otherwise it would be the wrong way of doing ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... representation. Divide Lear into three parts, and each would be a play with the ancients; or take the three AEschylean dramas of Agamemnon, and divide them into, or call them, as many acts, and they together would be one play. The first act would comprise the usurpation of AEgisthus, and the murder of Agamemnon; the second, the revenge of Orestes, and the murder of his mother; and the third, the penance and absolution of Orestes;—occupying a period ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... and with God's help never shall. However she might have suffered or failed through an occasional traitor, Ireland, as a whole, fought against English usurpation from the moment that she became aware of its ultimate aims, and felt its growing power within her borders. There was, besides, in the two races, those opposites of character—those natural antagonisms which repelled each other ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... I dare, without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian. Not that I merely owe this title to the font, my education, or the clime wherein I was born; but that having, in my riper years and confirmed judgment, seen and examined all, I ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... Commencement of the Viceroyalty of Blasco Nunnez Vela, and renewal of the civil war in Peru by the usurpation of Gonzalo Pizarro. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... (1182-1202) was a man of unusual physical and mental powers,calm and dignified, and wonderfully eloquent. Yet he was a war king, and the civil conflicts of his time were a misfortune for Norway, although he bravely defended the royal prerogatives and the land against the usurpation of temporal power by the Church of Rome, and put an end to ecclesiastical ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... general injunctions, too, he was directed to preach against the pope, and to expose his usurpation; but he could not bring himself to obey. He shrank from the pulpit; he preached but twice after the visitation, and then on other subjects, while in the prayer before the sermon he refused, as we find, to use the prescribed form. He only said, 'You shall pray for the spirituality, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... appropriations may remain on the mind, and it may even pass for an act of prudence and duty to negative a measure which was lately believed by ourselves, and may hereafter be misconceived by others, to encroach upon the powers of the House. Principles that bear a remote affinity with usurpation on those powers will be rejected, not merely as errors, but as wrongs. Our sensibilities will shrink from a post where it is possible they may be wounded, and be inflamed by the slightest ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... popular powers must be placed as a guard, a controul, a balance, to the powers of the monarch and the priest in every government; or else it would soon become the man of sin, the whore of Babylon, the mystery of iniquity, a great and detestable system of fraud, violence and usurpation. Their greatest concern seems to have been to establish a government of the church more consistent with the Scriptures, and a government of the state more agreeable to the dignity of human nature, than any they had seen in Europe: and to transmit such a government down ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... forth impetuously: "Why, Sloan, look at the thing! It is direct and absolute usurpation on the part of the general government of the functions of the State. Here's a road running from Chicago to Cairo, for instance. Its traffic is entirely within the State; its offices, road-bed, and rolling-stock—everything concerning it, in fact—within the limits of the State; ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... protect himself or to preserve his immunities. Or to avoid having his poll-tax and vingtiemes reduced. Or to obtain exemption from the militia for his domestics, to keep his own person, dwelling, dependents, and hunting and fishing rights from the universal usurpation which places all possessions and all privileges in the hands of "Monseigneur l'intendant" and Messieurs the sub-delegates. And the more so because he is often poor. Bouille estimates that all the old families, save two or three hundred, are ruined.[1317] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... heart's content. Men less astute than Chandler and Wade could not have failed to see where fortune pointed. Their opportunity lay in a combination of the two issues. Abolition and the resistance to executive "usurpation." Their problem was to create an anti-Lincoln party that should also be a war party. Their coalition of aggressive forces must accept the Abolitionists as its backbone, but it must also include all violent elements of whatever persuasion, and especially all those that could be wrought into fury ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... make known the arts by means of which her marriage with Claudius had been effected, and the adoption of Nero as Claudius's son and heir had been secured. She would confess the murder of Claudius, and the usurpation on her part of the imperial power for Nero her son. Nero would, in consequence, be deposed, and Britannicus would succeed him, and thus the base ingratitude and treachery toward his mother which Nero had displayed would be avenged. This plan, she declared, she would immediately carry into effect. ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... fourteenth chapter of Kinglake's book. The Emperor was at the summit of his power, fresh from Austrian conquest, viewed with alarm by England, whose rulers feared his strength and were distrustful of his friendship. Our Crown, our government, our society, had condoned his usurpation; he had kissed the Queen's cheek, bent her ministers to his will, ridden through her capital a triumphant and applauded guest. And now men read not only a cynical dissection of his character and disclosure of his early foibles, but the hideous details of his deceit ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... 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 ...
— 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

... 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 power. It was not till this was made ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... 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 not forces enough left him to overawe ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... 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

... necessity, in such a state of things, be certain duties inalienably connected with the position of man, others inalienably connected with the position of woman. For the one to assume the duties of the other becomes, first, an act of desertion, next, an act of usurpation. For the man to discharge worthily the duties of his own position becomes his highest merit. For the woman to discharge worthily the duties of her own position becomes her highest merit. To be noble the man must be manly. To be noble the woman must be womanly. Independently of the virtues required ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... to say, these very gentlemen waited on the Colonel in his apartment the very next morning, and set before him the state of the borough; Barnes Newcome's tyranny, under which it groaned; and the yearning of all honest men to be free from that usurpation. Thomas Newcome received the deputation with great solemnity and politeness, crossed his legs, folded his arms, smoked his cheroot, and listened moat decorously, as now Potts, now Tucker, expounded to him; Bayham giving the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... not be protected by primary legislation upon the part of Congress. Justice Harlan pointed out that it is for Congress not the judiciary, to say that legislation is appropriate, for that would be sheer usurpation of the functions of a coordinate department. Why should these rules of interpretation be abandoned in the case of maintaining the rights of the Negro guaranteed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... the British had become embroiled in war with the Afghans. The ostensible purpose was to depose Dost Mohammed Khan from his usurpation of the throne of Afghanistan. In reality this chieftain had aroused the ire of England by entering into negotiations with Russia, after Lord Auckland had declined to call upon Runjit Singh to restore Peshawar to Afghanistan. When it was learned that a ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... once to the mandates of the king, and acknowledged the authority of Pedrarias. This frank and honourable conduct was ill repaid by the new chief; he took advantage of the unsuspecting confidence of Vasco Nunez, and directed him to be prosecuted for usurpation and tyrannical abuse of power. Fortunately, the bishop was opposed to the conduct of the governor, and even his wife ventured to express her respect and sympathy for the discoverer. This alone saved him from ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

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

... government 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 ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... persuaded the Diet that to give the two sovereigns these titles would be merely a form, and that they would never become anything more than honorary. This might be so, but if Poland had possessed far-seeing statesmen they would have guessed that an honorary title would end in the usurpation of the whole country. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... constitution of. Commonwealth vs. Hunt, 4 Met. 111, case of cited. Communism, definition of (see Socialism). Company stores forbidden; so, tenements; company insurance. Compulsory labor (see Peonage). Compurgation, trial by. Concealed weapons (see Arms). Confirmation of charters. Congress, usurpation of powers by. Conscience, rights of (see Religion). Conscription (see Military Service), does not exist among English peoples. Consent, age of, in rape; in marriage; the age raised as high as twenty-one; in criminal matters. Conservation (see Forest Reserves); ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... as Americans do. They wish to bring the whole world under a liberal form of government—one that will bear the scrutiny of reason—one that in time may extinguish crime, and render poverty a thing of the past—one that is not a patent usurpation and a robbery—a robbery perhaps more criminal in the eyes of God than waylaying on the highroad, or piracy on the high seas—more criminal, because more extensive in its fatal effects. Anglo-Saxons wish to destroy despotism, lest they or their descendants ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... follows without doubt or question, then, that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. To usurp a usurpation—that is all it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... air. "Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! 'William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll

... genius has sent him to 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

... Feuerbach[67] were a step beyond even this skeptical usurpation. Religion is man's conduct to himself. Man, from time immemorial, has been buried in self-love, and become so far carried away by it that his religion is now one monstrous hallucination. Religion springs not from his intellect but from his imagination. He wishes to get to heaven; he desires ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... she did not wish to inflict upon her physical pain. For though this pretty young woman had rendered impossible any reparation which Lodge might have made Rhoda for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious usurpation had quite passed away from ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... and that the French and English quarrelled about the boundaries of their settlements, about grounds and rivers, to which, I am afraid, neither can show any other right than that of power, and which neither can occupy but by usurpation, and the dispossession of the natural lords and original inhabitants. Such is the contest, that no honest man can heartily wish ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... 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

... exercise, in the most arbitrary manner, over the persons and properties of their fellow subjects: and although many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty, and may be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them. The authors and promoters of this desperate conspiracy have, in the conduct ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

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

... otherwise employed, and choose to contribute out of their stock for paying their defenders, rather than leave their affairs to be neglected in their absence. The art of making soldiery a trade, and keeping armies in pay, seems in Europe to have had two originals. The first was usurpation, when popular men destroyed the liberties of their country, and seized the power into their own hands, which they were forced to maintain by hiring guards to bridle the people. Such were anciently the tyrants in most of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... England. Nobody was hurt; but in less than two months blood was to be shed on both sides. "The two characteristics of this people, religion and humanity, are strongly marked in all their proceedings," John Adams had said. "Resistance by arms against usurpation and lawless violence is not rebellion by the law of God or the land. If there is no possible medium between absolute independence and subjection to the authority of Parliament, all North America are convinced of their independence, and determined ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... as if his authority were of a more regular character. The audacity and decision of his air and conduct, aided by the consummate mariner in which he worked the boat, might alone have achieved this momentary usurpation, had not the general feeling against impressment been so much ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... Provence, the brother of Louis XVI.; and this regency, that had devolved on a prince of the blood by emigration, whilst the king maintained a struggle at Paris, greatly humiliated Louis XVI. and the queen. This usurpation of their rights, although clothed in the dress of devotion and tenderness, was even more bitter to them than the outrages of the Assembly and the people. We always dread most that which is nearest to us, and the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... order, took no steps for that purpose. The States General, for their own protection, were therefore obliged to place their militia under the command of a Committee. The Prince filled the courts of London and Berlin with complaints at this usurpation of his prerogatives, and, forgetting that he was but the first servant of a Republic, marched his regular troops against the city of Utrecht, where the States were in session. They were repulsed by the militia. His interests now became marshaled with those of the public enemy, and against ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... left two sons, Numitor and Amulius. Amulius, the younger, seized the kingdom; and Numitor, who was of a peaceful disposition, made no resistance to his brother. Amulius, fearing lest the children of Numitor might not submit so quietly to his usurpation, caused his only son to be murdered, and made his daughter, Rhea Silvia, one of the vestal virgins, who were compelled to live and die unmarried. But the maiden became, by the god Mars, the mother of twins. She was, in consequence, put to death, because she had broken ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... nearly a year. While in prison he changed his name from 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 and the stupidity of the people. He found that the Emperor Constantine, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... he) "with the liveliest 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 ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... the battle of the Union, in the bosom of the non-slaveholding States. If, however, no consideration of prudence or patriotism can restrain the majority from the non-slaveholding States in their headlong career of usurpation and wrong, and should they repeal or essentially modify the fugitive slave law, the most prompt and decisive action 'will be required at your hands'. In either event, I would earnestly recommend that a Convention of the people be called at once to take into consideration ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... on August 25 of Sultan Hamid bin Thwain, the ruler of Zanzibar, the attempted usurpation by Seyyid Khalid, and the bombardment of the palace by the British warships, have directed public attention to this comparatively little known but important city on the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... sentiment used to be a popular one with some of the greatest tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, "Ancient Greece," ch. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... what he calls THEIRS, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either. ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine

... course he himself should pursue. At length he formed a small party of his 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 Polysperchon, ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... is a military despotism. It has usurped all other power within the limits of the rebellion, and the United States Government is seeking to overthrow it, in order that the Constitution may be restored, in all its benignity, to the people of the South, whom the usurpation has deprived of it. Is it, then, for the United States Government to propose to the authors of this usurpation to cease seeking its total overthrow? The question recurs, moreover, what 'cessation' have we to propose? It is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... liberating from a faithless, imbecile government, your paternal soil. Spaniards, Frenchmen, Italians, and British; whether settled, or residing for a time in Louisiana, on you also, I call to aid me in this just cause. The American usurpation in this country must be abolished, and the lawful owners of the soil put in possession. I am at the head of a large body of Indians, well armed, disciplined, and commanded by British officers, a good train of ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... much the erudition of those who have read the dismal story of his cruelties, and settled their ideas of his tyranny and usurpation, I declare I am not going to write a vindication of him. All I mean to show, is, that though he may have been as execrable as we are told he was, we have little or no reason to believe so. If the propensity of habit ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... futile effort of the year before, the English of New York, still distracted by the political disorders that followed the usurpation of Leisler, had fought only by deputy, and contented themselves with hounding on the Iroquois against the common enemy. These savage allies at length lost patience, and charged their white neighbors ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... clear 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

... Tammany Hall, or a powerful Tramway or Railway Company. The consequence is, that not only the individual citizen, but a whole community submits to high-handed oppression, to administrative and judicial corruption, to impudent usurpation and flagrant illegalities, such as the greatest of English corporations would never dream of attempting. Perhaps the most oppressive and insolent exactions, to which living Englishmen have as yet ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... is equivalent to every other man. Destroy the equivalent, and what is left? "So God created man in his own image—male and female created he them." This is a death-blow to all claims of superiority, to all charges of inferiority, to all usurpation, to all ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... Audience a true Idea of the Filial Piety of the young Prince, and of his virtuous Character; for we are hereby informed of his fixed and strong Grief for the Loss of his Father: For it does not appear, that the Usurpation of the Crown from him, sits heavy on his Soul, at least, it is not seen by any Part ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... army less distinguished indeed for discipline than for numbers and valor, [19] Albinus braved the menaces of Commodus, maintained towards Pertinax a stately ambiguous reserve, and instantly declared against the usurpation of Julian. The convulsions of the capital added new weight to his sentiments, or rather to his professions of patriotism. A regard to decency induced him to decline the lofty titles of Augustus and Emperor; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... not have been made, for Stephen was a man who by sheer weight of learning and holiness of life had risen to the dignity of Cardinal, and whose after career placed him in the front rank of English patriots. But in itself the step was an usurpation of the rights both of the Church and of the Crown. The king at once met it with resistance. When Innocent consecrated the new Primate in June 1207, and threatened the realm with interdict if Langton were any longer excluded from his see, John replied ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... can proceed that usurpation of sovereign authority you take upon you over the women, who favour ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... which his favorite daughter had possessed, and her early death had left a lonely place in the good man's heart. Miss Prince's life at Oldfields must have been very dull, especially since her boarding-school days were over. For himself he had a great prejudice against the usurpation of men's duties and prerogatives by women, and had spoken of all such assumptions with contempt. It made a difference that this attractive young student had spoken bravely on the wrong side; but if he had thought much about it he would have made himself surer and surer that only time was needed ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... setting forth that the mountaineers had held unauthorized treaties with the Indians, and had trespassed on their lands, and even murdered them. He closed by drawing a strong picture of the evils sure to be brought about by such lawless secession, and usurpation of authority. He besought and commanded the revolted counties to return to their allegiance, and warned them that if they did not, and if peaceable measures proved of no avail, then the State of North Carolina would put down the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... predestined chancellors, or wreck upon the rocks of glory the inebriate souls of youthful ensigns—dreams from which Rood Hall emerged crowned with the towers of Belvoir or Raby, and looking over subject lands and manors wrested from the nefarious usurpation of Thornhills and Hazeldeans—dreams in which Audley Egerton's gold and power—rooms in Downing Street, and saloons in Grosvenor Square—had passed away to the smiling dreamer, as the empire of Chaldaea passed to Darius the Median. Why visions so belying the gloomy and anxious thoughts that preceded ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... at peace with all the world. It was universally admitted that Napoleon was the great pacificator. He was the idol of France. The masses of the people in Europe, every where regarded him as their advocate and friend, the enemy of aristocratic usurpation, and the great champion of equality. The people of France no longer demanded liberty . Weary years of woe had taught them gladly to relinquish the boon. They only desired a ruler who would take care of them, govern them, protect them from the power ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... of cruelty. Hence the constant repetition of such phrases as "cruel tyranny" and "usurping tyrant"; and the numerous interpolations of the Viceroy himself are so obvious that I have put them in italics within brackets. He goes back as far as the first Inca to make out the usurpation, and he is always harping on illegitimacy. If we go back as far as Sancho IV the title of Philip II to Spain was voided by the grossest usurpation, while we need only go back to Henry II to see how Philip's title was vitiated by illegitimacy. As for cruelty, it ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa

... which he kept concealed in a large drawer, under the stock of heads and religious images. It is probable that he felt some slight qualms at the free-and-easy manner in which he had taken possession of the post office, and recognised the desirability of getting his usurpation confirmed as far as possible. At all events, he had thought it well to call upon Rougon, who was ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... all the appearance of a lawless usurpation of some intruder of the kind. He had possessed himself forcibly of the fortress, and consequently of the town. He had issued extravagant licenses injurious to the government, and apparently intended only to make partisans ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... thus set itself up in isolated usurpation against such other activities as imagination, intuition, will or taste; it can also divide itself against itself and emerge in completely contradictory functions. In the form of mathematical logic, for instance, it can dispose most drastically of that ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

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

... The strongest friendship yields to pride, Unless the odds be on our side. Vain human-kind! fantastic race! Thy various follies who can trace? Self-love, ambition, envy, pride, Their empire in our hearts divide. Give others riches, power, and station, 'Tis all on me an usurpation. I have no title to aspire; Yet, when you sink, I seem the higher. In Pope I cannot read a line, But, with a sigh, I wish it mine: When he can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six, It gives me such a jealous fit, I cry, 'Pox take him and his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Burgundy, was entertained for some time, but died away, and the opposite, or Orleans party in France, was afterward supported by the English Crown. At length Henry the Fourth, on the eve of an expedition to the Holy Land, undertaken, it is said, in expiation of his usurpation of the throne, was struck with apoplexy; and a tale, in regard to his death, is current among the historians of the period, on which Shakespeare has founded one of the most beautiful scenes in his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... enjoys his proximity to the Boston library. He is now reading the twelve or fourteen volumes of the life and diary of John Q. Adams. It is a history of our country through all the period of slavery usurpation that led to the war. The industry of the man in writing is wonderful. Every day's doings in the house are faithfully daguerreotyped,—all the mean tricks, contrivances of the slave-power, and the pusillanimity of the Northern members from day to day recorded. ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... 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 ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith

... appear to any reasoning mind, the man really believed he had a natural right to prevent people from crossing that strip of wood where his pheasants were sitting. His ancestors had assumed it from time immemorial, and by dint of never being questioned had come to regard the absurd usurpation as quite fair and proper. He placed himself straight across the narrow path, blocking it up with his short and stumpy figure. "Now look here, young man," he said, with all the insolence of his caste: "if you try to go on, I'll stand here in your way; and ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

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

... led into revolution and sedition from the side of his ambition. He saw before him the traditional cunning, quick-witted merchant of Media, pale-faced and easily frightened; no more capable of a daring stroke of usurpation than a Jewish pedlar of Babylon. He was evidently a mere tool in the hands of the queen; and Darius stamped impatiently upon the floor when he thought that he had perhaps been deceived after all—that the queen had really written ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... quantity of fair hair, and was particularly dexterous in the use of all weapons which were then employed in battle. Wallace, like all Scotsmen of high spirit, had looked with great indignation upon the usurpation of the crown by Edward, and upon the insolencies which the English soldiers committed on his countrymen. It is said, that when he was very young, he went a-fishing for sport in the river of Irvine, near Ayr. He had caught a good many ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... case no concert of action, no resources behind the insurrection, and no military 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

... always in the power of a party politician to distort and misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other lawyers on his side to attack the composition of Durham's council. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... rest and peace of the realm "; "yea, and so much as in him was, utterly to destroy the same." The nobles and council, he said, for their own sake as well as for the sake of the kingdom, had entreated him to put an end, once for all, to the pope's usurpation; and to invite the Protestant princes, for the universal weal of Christendom, to unite in a common alliance. In his present situation he was inclined to act upon this advice. "As concerning his own realm, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... when Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, in 987 assumed the title of king of France, basing his act partly on an election by nobles, partly on force of arms, the transaction elicited little opposition from the rival lords who might have been expected to resent his usurpation. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... indirectly counteracted the torrent of partiality in favor of France, and was immediately assailed with intemperate violence in many of the public journals. The right of the executive to issue any proclamation of neutrality was fiercely and pertinaciously denied as a usurpation of legislative authority, and in that particular case it was charged with forestalling and prematurely deciding the question whether the United States were bound, by the guarantee to France of her West India possessions in the treaty of alliance, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... "1. Quavant L'Usurpation faite par les Anglois, toute Cette Coste jusqu'au 35e Degre s'appelloit Nouvelle france, laquelle Comprenoit outre plusieurs autres provinces, l'Etechemains, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... society was only provisionally organized, inasmuch as they had not yet found the Mere Supreme. The law on marriage must emanate conjointly from the Supreme Father and the Supreme Mother, and it would be irregular and a usurpation for the Supreme Father to undertake alone to legislate on the subject. Bazard would not submit, and went out and shot himself. Most of the politicians abandoned the association; and Pere Enfantin, almost in despair, dispatched twelve apostles ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... accession to the throne, by the rarest of fates the Emperor Claudius died in his bed at Sirmium, the capitol of Pannonia. His brother Quintilius who had a great command at Aquileia, immediately assumed the purple; but his usurpation lasted only seventeen days, for the last emperor, with a single eye to the public good, had recommended Aurelian as his successor, guided by his personal knowledge of that general's strategic qualities. The army of the Danube confirmed the appointment; ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... prowess as a warrior and a great captain. 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 dropped off; ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... For such a denial destroys the authority of the Church herself both in doctrine and discipline for all subsequent time. If the Church, in declaring St. Leo to be entrusted by our Lord with the guardianship of the Vine, erred; if she asserted a falsehood, or if she favoured an usurpation, how can she be trusted for any maintenance of doctrine, for any administration of sacraments, for any exercise of authority? This consideration does not touch those who believe in no Church at all. They are in the position of that individual whom the great Constantine recommended to ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... different. The hen had become a trespasser. She had no business with kittens. There was no hypothesis by which she could claim them as her own. Kittens are not hereditary in the family of fowls, and she knew it. It was an usurpation without any pretext of justification. What would become of us if such a precedent could be extended to the genus Mammalia? Hundreds of rapacious old maids would be seizing all sorts and all sizes of babies from agonized mothers, and asserting for themselves the hallowed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... held that Pridgin was merely forcing the pace in order to punish Crofter for his usurpation. It may have been so; but, whatever the motive, it quite upset the normal flow of things ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... display of power but the will. But a fleet requires only one commander, and a feeling is fast spreading in the country that we ought to be all commanders; unless the spirit of unconstitutional innovation, and usurpation, that is now so prevalent, at Washington, be controlled, we may expect to hear of proposals to send a committee of Congress to sea, in command of a squadron. We sincerely hope that their first experiment may be made on the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... pole, in his learned and able speech in Congress, 1852, said:—"The true principles of our political system, the history of the National Convention, the natural interpretation of the Constitution, all teach that this Act is a usurpation by Congress of powers that do not belong to it, and an infraction of rights secured to the States. It is a sword, whose handle is at the National Capital, and whose point is every where in the States. A weapon so terrible to personal liberty ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child

... stronger. There was a good deal of apprehension, therefore, when Secretary of State Lansing resigned, and the published correspondence showed that the President had regarded his action in calling Cabinet meetings as a usurpation of Presidential authority. It was evident from the correspondence that another and perhaps stronger reason for the President's disapproval had been the action of the Secretary in conducting a Mexican Policy on ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... as condemnatory as excommunication in the case of the living. Meanwhile the Roman see boldly asserted the independence of the Church, and protested against the action of the Emperor in setting aside the decree of Chalcedon as usurpation and tyranny. This is most clearly set forth by Gelasius, in his epistle to the Emperor Anastasius. The schism finally came to an end in 519, in accordance with the ecclesiastical policy of Justinian, and at that time the Formula of Hormisdas (514-523) ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... smooth-tongued, slippery demagogue, the first bloody, conquering soldier, grasps them, and is the King, Dictator, Emperor, of Rome! Never yet in the history of nations, has despotism sprung out of oligarchic sway! Never yet has democracy but yielded to the first despot's usurpation! They have not read in vain the annals of past ages, if you ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... of the fugitives a myriad of the feathered tribes fled away into the topmost branches, protesting by their outcries against this flagrant usurpation of their domicile. These birds, who themselves had taken refuge in the solitary OMBU, were in hundreds, comprising blackbirds, starlings, isacas, HILGUEROS, and especially the pica-flor, humming-birds of most resplendent colors. When they flew away it seemed as though a gust of wind had blown ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... that the legislative department was "everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex,"—that the people "never seem to have recollected the danger from legislative usurpation which by assembling all power in the same hands must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpation." Washington in his Farewell Address, after much experience with, and observation of, legislative action, ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery

... National Union; no warrant for it save in the preservation of the Constitution, which is the palladium and safeguard of the Nation. The Southern rebellion has usurped the functions and powers of various State Governments: when it is overthrown, the victims of its usurpation will be restored to their former rights. Their allegiance is still perfect. Nothing but their own act can ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... if longing for solitude, into the heart of the woodlands, and there winds slowly and solemnly under the overshadowing branches; there are no fences here, and the sharp lines of separation between road-bed and forest were long ago erased in that quiet usurpation of man's work, which Nature never fails to make the moment she is left to herself. The ancient spell of the woods is unbroken in this leafy solitude, and no traveller in whom imagination survives can hope to escape it. The deep breathings of primeval ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... 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)

... usurpation We needs must strike a blow, Our hardy avocation Shall fit us for the foe; Then let the despot's strength compete Upon the open sea, And on the proudest of his fleet Our ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... with them till Henry was one-and-thirty, and then the tidings of Bosworth Field came north. The great tragedy of Plantagenet was complete, and the ambitious and blood-stained house of York, who had avenged the usurpation of Henry of Lancaster, had perished, chiefly by the hands of each other, and the distantly related descendant of John of Gaunt, Henry ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... freedom of soul, and intellectual light. It cultivated unworldliness without superstition and happiness without illusion. It was tender toward simple and honest things, scornful and bitter only against pretence and usurpation. It thus marked a first halting-place in the retreat of reason, a stage where the soul had thrown off only the higher and more entangling part of her burden and was willing to live, in somewhat reduced circumstances, on the remainder. Such a philosophy expresses well the genuine sentiment ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... 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

... the imperial beast of the sea, (ch. xiii. 14;) yet the leaven of the Romish religion pervades all the Christian community, so far as allegiance to the beast or his horns is either enjoined or tolerated. This usurpation of the royal prerogatives of Christ over the churches and nations in the eastern hemisphere by the kings of the earth, and a similar usurpation in the western hemisphere, whether by individual despots or by the body politic, is the great crime ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... or under its control. We believe that no such state of things ever existed in the societies commonly cited as theocratic. There is no reason to think that in any of them, the king, or chief of the government, was ever, unless by occasional usurpation, a member of the priestly caste.[18] It was not so in Israel, even in the time of the Judges; Jephtha, for example, was a Gileadite, of the tribe of Manasseh, and a military captain, as all governors in such an age and country needed to be. Priestly rulers only present themselves ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... 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

... President of tyranny, usurpation, illegal acts, of abused power, of misused advantages, of favoritism, stupidity, frauds in administration, timidity, sluggish inaction, oppression, the willful neglect of suffering and the willful refusal to hear the cry of the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... and arming men at their leisure; above all, they acquired a prestige, and accustomed men's minds to the thought of disunion, not only as possible, but actual. They began to grow insolent, and, while compelling absolute submission to their rebellious usurpation at home, decried any exercise of legitimate authority on the part of the General Government as Coercion,—a new term, by which it was sought to be established as a principle of constitutional law, that it is always the Northern ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... itself, and were a constant menace to the independence of its bishops. Pope Stephen III. resorted to Pipin for help against these aggressive neighbors; and, in 754, Stephen solemnly repeated, in the cathedral of St. Denis, the ceremony of his coronation. The Carlovingian usurpation was thus hallowed in the eyes of the people by the sanction of the Church. The alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, so essential to both, was cemented. Pipin crossed the Alps in 754, and humbled Aistulf, the Lombard king; but, as Aistulf still kept up ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

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

... pretty beast without a soul that is given to man to bear his burdens. Among savage, barbarous, and half-civilized people, woman's inferiority is never questioned. The idea is entertained in its bald usurpation and black injustice without a questioning thought. Among us it is covered over a little with cotton beauty and rolled up in sugar-plum sweetness so the woman will bear it a little better. Our women ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... was a diplomatic contest on the part of Great Britain aiming at peace and to safeguard her possessions and prestige, while the Afrikaner Bond, on the other part, continued active in the work of sedition and preparing for a war of usurpation. Every one must admit that the demand of the British Ministry for an immediate and adequate representation proceeded from the necessity and the desire to overcome the South African crisis in a just and pacific way. The measure was counted upon to effect conciliation ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... looked upon you as dead for years, and my father had died before the news of your supposed murder reached us." Katherine could hardly steady her voice; she was burning to get away. "I beg you will not resent the fact of my most unconscious usurpation. I would not do anything unjust." She stopped, remembering what she had done. Surely the punishment was coming quick ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... great troubles of life is that Reason has taken charge of the administration of Justice, and by mere identification it has achieved the crown and sceptre of its master. But the imperceptible usurpation was recorded, and discriminating minds understand the chasm which still divides the pretender Law from the exiled King. In a like manner, and with feigned humility, the Cold Demon advanced to serve Religion, and by guile and violence usurped her throne; but the pure ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... of Bobadilla bore all the appearance of a lawless usurpation of some intruder of the kind. He had possessed himself forcibly of the fortress, and consequently of the town. He had issued extravagant licenses injurious to the government, and apparently intended only to make partisans among the people; and had ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

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

... assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws,—but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea-tax and stamp-act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the king's prerogative, but the king's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional, beyond its power. It was not till this was made out ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... God. We trust there will be found no man, or set of men in the country, to defend such outrageous conduct, and that even the minions of England, employed around the Federal presses of our country, will be ready to join with us, on this occasion, in denouncing British aggression and British usurpation.' There, sir, I trust that ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... degree of credence, of which I can safely acquit the originator of the calumny. I give the sentences, as they stand in the sermon, premising only that I was speaking exclusively of miracles worked for the outward senses of men. "It was only to overthrow the usurpation exercised in and through the senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed to. REASON AND RELIGION ARE THEIR OWN EVIDENCE. The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his glories are still under veil, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... of Feuerbach[67] were a step beyond even this skeptical usurpation. Religion is man's conduct to himself. Man, from time immemorial, has been buried in self-love, and become so far carried away by it that his religion is now one monstrous hallucination. Religion springs not from his intellect but from his imagination. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... that State, in hostility to the Union, when the body acting as a Legislature there was avowedly acting against this Government, neither he nor I would have received Representatives from it. That was a usurpation which, by force of arms, we have put down. Now the question arises, Has a State government since been inaugurated there entitled to representation? Is not that a fair subject of inquiry? Ought we not to be satisfied upon that point? ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... "An usurpation unparalleled in the history of the world.... If these be the principles to which the Emperor of Russia has inviolably attached himself ... deeply does His Majesty [George III.] lament a determination by which the sufferings ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... members. The Committee was composed mainly of honorable men, deservedly high in the community, in every walk and relation of life. They doubtless acted from a conscientious sense of duty, and neither intended usurpation of the law, violence to justice, nor any wrong whatever. They believed it incumbent upon them to reform what they regarded as the maladministration of public affairs, and to cleanse the city of the corruption which existed—as ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara

... therefore, no man has a right to bestow upon himself; and added, that he might with equal propriety style himself a volunteer lord or volunteer baronet. It cannot be denied that the remark was just; but Savage did not think any title, which was conferred upon Mr. Cibber, so honourable as that the usurpation of it could be imputed to him as an instance of very exorbitant vanity, and, therefore, continued to write under the same title, and received every year ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

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

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

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

... incensed by her usurpation of the knot-hole as he would have been, at ordinary times, by theft of watch or pocket-book, and tapped ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... A village demagogue named Hung-tsne-Shuen caught the idea, after reading the papers referred to, that he was inspired; that he was God, King, Emperor, and that he ought to rule; so, puffed up with pride and insatiable ambition, he began raising an army; and aimed at nothing less than the usurpation of the "Dragon Throne." Some thought him mad; but he gathered about him some 20,000 men whom he had influenced to believe in him as the "Second Celestial Brother," and gave out he was a seer of visions, a prophet of vengeance and freedom; a champion of the poor and ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... thorax, making him appear as if in momentary danger of a fit. His manner struck me as not pleasing, but it was not assuming, unembarrassed, yet not easy, unpolished, yet not coarse; there was no kind of usurpation of the conversation, no tenacity as to opinion or facts, no assumption of superiority, but the variety and extent of his information were soon apparent, for whatever subject was touched upon he evinced the utmost familiarity with it; quotation, illustration, anecdote, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... court, which he soon compelled to submit on the terms he chose to dictate. From the occurrence of this open rupture we may date the annihilation of the little power Tamasp had ever enjoyed. Nadir continued to treat him with respect till he deemed the time mature for his usurpation of the throne; but we discover that, as early as his first expedition into Khorasan, he began to prepare the minds of his countrymen for his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... laws, had his seat in the capital of the nation, while the priests of his tribe were scattered among the other tribes, and were hereditary. The Hebrew priests simply interpreted the laws; the priests of Egypt made them. Their power was chiefly judicial. They had no means of usurpation, neither from property, nor military command. They were simply the expositors of laws which they did not make, which they could not change, and which they themselves were bound to obey. The income of a Levite was about five times as great as an ordinary man, and this, of course, was ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... themselves, us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only to transmit these—the former unprofaned by the foot of an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation—to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task, gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, all imperatively require us faithfully ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

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

... upon your political methods and appliances, and not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes of taking the sense of the community, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Congress as illustrated in its inability to raise money to pay the public debt and meet the current expenses of government, and from the popular dread of military usurpation which went along with the uneasy consciousness of that weakness, we have now to turn to another group of affairs in which the same point is still further illustrated and emphasized. We have seen how the commissioners of the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... may be rare. Still, it is better to attack than to be invaded; and let us remember that the surest way to check the spirit of conquest and usurpation is to oppose it by ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... favour of the people, they answered, We cannot tell, meaning, It is inconvenient to express an opinion. As they could not venture to pronounce whether a ministry which had left its impress deep on the whole land, was a human usurpation or a divine mission, they had obviously no right to sit in judgment on the credentials of Jesus. When on this point they were condemned out of their own lips the Lord, rising now more into the stern dignity ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... well and worthily represented in the government of each city, and therefore equally so in the assembly of the estates. It was not till later that the corporations, by the extinction of the popular element, and by the usurpation of the right of self-election, were thoroughly stiffened into fictitious personages which never died, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... a narrow compass, which few are able to extend by the mere force of curiosity.' He next points out what Cromwell 'owed to the private condition in which he first entered the world;' and continues:—'The King of Prussia brought to the throne the knowledge of a private man, without the guilt of usurpation. Of this general acquaintance with the world there may be found some traces in his whole life. His conversation is like that of other men upon common topicks, his letters have an air of familiar elegance, and his whole conduct ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... raise up for that oppressed child an avenger, or a supporter, or vindicator, if you prefer it. It happened that the reigning king, the usurper—(you are quite of my opinion, I believe, that it is an act of usurpation quietly to enjoy, and selfishly to assume the right over, an inheritance to which a man has only the right of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

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

... turn made counter accusations, setting forth that the mountaineers had held unauthorized treaties with the Indians, and had trespassed on their lands, and even murdered them. He closed by drawing a strong picture of the evils sure to be brought about by such lawless secession, and usurpation of authority. He besought and commanded the revolted counties to return to their allegiance, and warned them that if they did not, and if peaceable measures proved of no avail, then the State of North Carolina would put down the rebellion by ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... Protestants were with him; France, in dread of Mary's kinship with the Emperor, offered support to his plans. Jane therefore was at once proclaimed Queen on Edward's death, and accepted as their sovereign by the Lords of the Council. But the temper of the whole people rebelled against so lawless a usurpation. The eastern counties rose as one man to support Mary; and when Northumberland marched from London with ten thousand at his back to crush the rising, the Londoners, Protestant as they were, showed their ill-will by a stubborn silence. "The ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be, in any particular, wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance, in permanent evil, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

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

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

... for the security of their Trade, and legal employment, and far beyond whatsoever any Corporation of Apothecaries in all, or in any forreign part enjoy, yet nothing would ever content them, but an unlawful, unreasonable, dangerous, and destructive Usurpation of liberty to some pretended practice, that thereby they might ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett

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

... to be a popular one with some of the greatest tyrants, who abused it into a pretext for unlimited usurpation of power. Dion, Caligula, and Domitian were particularly fond of it, and, in an extended form, we find the maxim propounded by Creon in the Antigone of Sophocles. See some important remarks of Heeren, "Ancient ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... the Pope from his legitimate sphere in the hierarchy of the Church. The history of the United States with the Presidents left out would be more intelligible than the history of the Church to the exclusion of the Vicar of Christ. How, I ask, could such authority endure so long if it were a usurpation? ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. For this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of God. All these questions fall within a man's natural right, which he cannot abdicate ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... had been adopted, almost at the first dash, on the proposal of M. de Lafayette. Each of the articles was an infringement of the constitution, and an usurpation of sovereign authority. The Emperor at once foresaw all the consequences. "I was right in thinking," said he with vexation, "that I ought to dismiss those fellows, before I departed. It is all over; they are on the point of ruining ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... whiskered, sallow, and, upon the whole, rather piratical-looking young man, of about five and twenty. I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers—ambition and indigestion. The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs, such as the original drawing up of legal documents. The indigestion seemed betokened in an occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

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

... opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... effectually commanded the little vessel as if his authority were of a more regular character. The audacity and decision of his air and conduct, aided by the consummate mariner in which he worked the boat, might alone have achieved this momentary usurpation, had not the general feeling against impressment been ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... subterraneous granary; it had two grates to let in the air; it appeared perfectly dry, but no one was in it. The Comte observed that it was far preferable to the prison where he was confined in France, during the reign or usurpation of Robespierre. The air of Salee and Rabat, and the adjacent country, 115 is strongly perfumed, morning and evening, with the sweet odour of the orange-flower, of which they make immense quantities of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... quickly be satisfied, there was never so much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding English. If he think it not worth while to examine his works all thro', let him make an experiment in that part, where he treats of usurpation; and let him try, whether he can, with all his skill, make Sir Robert intelligible, and consistent with himself, or common sense. I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman, long since past answering, ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... than five years, this peninsula remained unnoticed by the Spaniards. Then Cortez left Mexico, which he had already subjugated, for a journey of discovery to Honduras, and for the purpose of calling to account, for insubordination and usurpation of authority, Cristoval de Olid, whom he had previously sent to that region from Vera Cruz. He received from the princes of Xicalanco and Tobasco maps and charts, giving the natural features of the country, and the limits of the various States. His march lay through ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... this and subsequent tyrant's reign, they found it their duty (a duty which they had too long neglected) to advance one step higher, by casting off their authority altogether, and that as well on account of their manifest usurpation of Christ's crown and dignity, as on account of their treachery, bloodshed and tyranny. And yet as all these faithful witnesses of Christ did harmoniously agree in promoting the kingdom and interest of the Messiah, in all his threefold ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... task of fabricating election laws for securing a preference to a favorite class of men? Would they not be likely to prefer a conduct better adapted to their own immediate aggrandizement? Would they not rather boldly resolve to perpetuate themselves in office by one decisive act of usurpation, than to trust to precarious expedients which, in spite of all the precautions that might accompany them, might terminate in the dismission, disgrace, and ruin of their authors? Would they not fear that citizens, ...
— The Federalist Papers

... powers, in which the movement at Amboise was branded as a conspiracy directed against the king and the royal authority, called forth a host of replies vindicating the political Huguenots, and setting their project in its true light, as an effort to overthrow the intolerable usurpation of the Guises. The tyrants were no match for the patriots in the use of the pen; but it fared ill with the author or printer of these libels, when the strenuous efforts made to discover them proved successful.[868] The politic Catharine de' Medici, fearing a new and more dreadful ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... that, to resist the usurpation of the French, the queen was rallying about her person all the foreigners she could. Her partiality for the English and Americans was well known; and this was an additional ground for our anticipating a favourable reception. Zeke had informed us, moreover, that by the queen's counsellors ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... correctest writers. I shall, therefore, since the rules of style, like those of law, arise from precedents often repeated, collect the testimonies on both sides, and endeavour to discover and promulgate the decrees of custom, who has so long possessed, whether by right or by usurpation, the sovereignty ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... weak but financially strong minority of Democrats, and by supporting a compromise ticket that gave most prominence to the minority sought to preserve harmony. But the efforts of such men have proved unavailing to stem the tide of political usurpation, now rampant at ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... More, still Under-Sheriff of London, is said to have written his "History of the Life and Death of King Edward V., and of the Usurpation of Richard III." The book, which seems to contain the knowledge and opinions of More's patron, Morton, was not printed until 1557, when its writer had been twenty-two years dead. It was then printed from a MS. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... it in the wealthier kingdom of Sweden. Here the clergy and part of the nobility were favourable to the Union; but the vast majority of the people hated it as a foreign usurpation. Matters were still further complicated by the continual interference of the Hanseatic League; and Christian I. (1448-1481) and Hans (1481-1513), whose chief merit it is to have founded the Danish fleet, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... government of the Prince against whom they have rebelled. And respecting the interest of the Highlands in particular," he added, "I crave Sir Duncan Campbell's pardon for my plainness; but it seems very clear to me, that the only effect produced by the present usurpation, will be the aggrandisement of one overgrown clan at the expense of every independent Chief ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... combined, of a clan claiming a foreign origin and asserting a marriage with the heiress of a Highland family whose estates they possessed and whose followers they led, they must invariably have been the oldest cadet of that family, who, by usurpation or otherwise, had become de facto chief of the clan, and who covered their defect by right of blood by denying their descent from the clan, and asserting that the founder had married the heiress of its chief." ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... I said, 'that in the event of the Jerome dynasty being overset by a military revolution, it might be followed by a military usurpation; that Nero might be succeeded ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... fact a casting off of an unjustifiable usurpation in temporal as well as in spiritual things, and a violent reaction against that course of events which, from the eighth century downwards, had been tending to reduce the different sovereigns of Western Christendom to the rank of vassals of ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... old, dim, silent servitor of some sort came back with him and took from a sort of cupboard, where it was kept in a glass box, the embalmed head of the Duke of Suffolk, which he lost for his part in the short-lived usurpation of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. Little was left to suggest the mighty noble in the mummy-face, but the tragedy of his death was all there. It seemed as if the thoughts of the hideous last moment ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

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

... bygone, as having any right, title to, or interest in the said Crown of Scotland for government, as forfeited several years since by his perjury and breach of Covenant both to God and His Kirk, and usurpation of His Crown and Royal Prerogatives therein." That courageous act of those twenty patriots proclaimed the doom of the House ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... consecrates civil authority, clothes it with a religious character, and makes civil disobedience, sedition, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, civil turbulence of any sort or degree, sins against God as well as crimes against the state. For the same reason she makes usurpation, tyranny, oppression of the people by civil rulers, offences against God as well as against society, and ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... JOHN BRIGHT is said to while away the time, in his retirement, by knitting garters. It seems very strange that such a usurpation of Woman's Rights should be carried into effect by one of the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various

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

... Confederation might have been mitigated and perhaps averted. In their enthusiasm over the Declaration of Independence the people—by whom is meant the articulate class consisting largely of the governing and commercial elements—would probably have accepted such a usurpation of authority. But with their lack of experience it is not surprising that the delegates to Congress did not appreciate the necessity of such radical action and so were unwilling to take the responsibility for it. They ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... o'clock Grant Adams had signed a counter proclamation declaring that the proclamation of martial law in a time of peace was an usurpation of the constitutional rights of American citizens, and that they must refuse to recognize any authority that abridged the right of free assemblage, a free press, free speech and a trial by jury. Amos Adams sent the workers an invitation to meet ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... been expected, the Emperor Henry IV., King of the Romans, was not long in protesting against so decided an infringement of his secular claims. From the synods of Worms and Piacenza came the Imperial decree of deposition against Gregory, which was addressed by "Henry, not by usurpation but by God's holy ordination, King, to Hildebrand, no longer Pope, but false monk." Gregory, strong alike in virtue and in resolve, and aided by the might of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany and of Robert Guiscard, answered by pronouncing a solemn anathema upon ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... been assured that this effect of the approach of the whites is often felt at two hundred leagues' distance from their frontier. Their influence is thus exerted over tribes whose name is unknown to them; and who suffer the evils of usurpation long before they are acquainted with the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... observed by the English living to the eastward; for notwithstanding possession was already fully taken by the building and occupation of Fort Good Hope, and there was no neglect from time to time in warning them, in making known our rights, and in protesting against their usurpation and violence, they have disregarded all these things and have seized and possessed, and still hold, the largest and best part of New Netherland, that is, on the east side of the North River, from Cape Cod, (by our people in 1609 called ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... to give Cato the command of the navy, which consisted of no less than five hundred ships of war, besides a vast number of light galleys, scouts, and open boats. But presently bethinking himself, or put in mind by his friends, that Cato's principal and only aim being to free his country from all usurpation, if he were master of such great forces, as soon as ever Caesar should be conquered, he would certainly call upon Pompey, also, to lay down his arms, and be subject to the laws, he changed his mind, and though he had already mentioned it to Cato, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... water in the city." Again, on the other hand: "Whatever is valid in a smaller matter ought to be valid also in a greater one. One may convert the preceding example." Also, "That which is valid in a parallel case ought to be valid in this which is a parallel case." As, "Since the usurpation of a farm depends on a term of two years, the law with respect to houses ought to be the same." But in the law houses are not mentioned, and so they are supposed to come under the same class as all other things, the property in which is determined by one year's use. Equity then must prevail, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... topics, till, happening to fall upon tithes, the squire struck in, and by dint of loudness of voice, and truculence of brow, fairly overwhelmed both his guests, and proved to his own satisfaction that tithes were an unjust and unchristianlike usurpation on the part of the Church generally, and a most especial and iniquitous infliction upon the Hazeldean estates ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... have defenders against foes foreign or domestic. A well-trained militia may be depended upon to fight with valor against a foreign foe, and may at the same time serve as a check upon usurpation. ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

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

... family, under Cromwell's usurpation, was the principal cause of all those misfortunes in which Britain has been involved, as well as of many of those which have happened to the rest of Europe, during more than ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... scanned the frequent revolutions of the time with a calm and investigating eye, trusted that he should be enabled to avoid both these errors: and, as the reader has already seen, he had formed the profound and sagacious project of consolidating his usurpation by an utterly new race of nobles, who, serving him by the feudal tenure of the North, and ever ready to protect him, because in so doing they protected their own interests, should assist to erect, not the rotten and unsupported fabric of a single tyranny, but ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons,[466] not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the beneficiary, than with the anger of my ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... though he has made himself steward by an act of usurpation. Just at this time he belongs to my household," said she, with mock dignity. "And, when at home, he is a very important person at Craiggyside, a place unknown to your geography, but a very important and ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... of the Magus in their hands, and exhibiting everywhere this proof at once of the death of the late king and of his imposture, they proceeded to authorize and aid in carrying out, a general massacre of the Magian priests, the abettors of the later usurpation. Every Magus who could be found was poniarded by the enraged Persians; and the caste would have been well-nigh exterminated, if it had not been for the approach of night. Darkness brought the carnage ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... counteracted the torrent of partiality in favor of France, and was immediately assailed with intemperate violence in many of the public journals. The right of the executive to issue any proclamation of neutrality was fiercely and pertinaciously denied as a usurpation of legislative authority, and in that particular case it was charged with forestalling and prematurely deciding the question whether the United States were bound, by the guarantee to France of her West India possessions in the treaty of alliance, to take ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... on a keystone, hangs the arch of life, Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form, 155 And all that makes the age of reasoning man More memorable than a beast's, depend on this— That Right should fence itself inviolably With Power; in which respect the state of England From usurpation by the insolent commons 160 Cries for reform. Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies Opposing factions,—be thyself of none; And borrow gold of many, for those who lend 165 Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus Keep the fierce spirit ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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

... the world to provide this transit in the shape of a canal—the resolution of the Pan-American Congress was practically a mandate to this effect. Colombia was then under a one-man government, a dictatorship, founded on usurpation of absolute and irresponsible power. She eagerly pressed us to enter into an agreement with her, as long as there was any chance of our going to the alternative route through Nicaragua. When she thought we were committed, she refused to fulfil the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... much confided, the annihilation of the English power in that remote region of the Canadas, and the consequent destruction of all his hopes of retrieving his race from the hated thraldom of American tyranny and American usurpation. Such was the first feeling of that noble Warrior, but his was not a soul to despond under the infliction of even a worse trial than that just recorded, and in proportion as the danger and difficulty increased, so rose his energy and his desire to ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... comply with the demands of Caesar, but still managed to retain their old Church and King principles. Leslie reserved his wrath for the Tillotsons and the Tenisons and the Burnets, who first, to use his own words, swallowed 'the morsels of usurpation' and then dressed them up 'with all the gaudy and ridiculous flourishes that an Apostate eloquence ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

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

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

... husband of Messalina;" but, whatever Claudius may have imagined, all the rest of the world knew the marriage to be real, and regarded it not only as a vile enormity, but also as a direct attempt to bring about a usurpation of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... usurped all other power within the limits of the rebellion, and the United States Government is seeking to overthrow it, in order that the Constitution may be restored, in all its benignity, to the people of the South, whom the usurpation has deprived of it. Is it, then, for the United States Government to propose to the authors of this usurpation to cease seeking its total overthrow? The question recurs, moreover, what 'cessation' have we to propose? It is for them to offer to yield: they are the aggressors, threatening ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... be valid; and occasion for it was found in the danger of a foreign interference, resulting from the subversion of Spanish authority by a revolutionary movement. By Great Britain it was regarded as a usurpation, to effect which advantage had been taken of the embarrassment of the Spaniards when struggling against Napoleon for national existence. On May 14, 1812, being then on the verge of war with Great Britain, the ally of Spain, an Act of Congress declared ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... prowess, and were reduced to making war by stealth instead of openly carrying off their slaves in fair battle. It seems probable that they now creep into a nest of the far more powerful slave ants, poison or assassinate the queen, and establish themselves by sheer usurpation in the queenless nest. 'Gradually,' says Sir John Lubbock, 'even their bodily force dwindled away under the enervating influence to which they had subjected themselves, until they sank to their present degraded condition—weak in body and mind, few in numbers, and apparently ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

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

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

... who were dissatisfied with the usurpation of supreme authority by Harold, took refuge in England, where Alfred had recently settled many of the vanquished Danes and Nordmen in the northern part of his dominions, which had been almost entirely depopulated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... when the examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Caesar, Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France and England, at the commencement of the French consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedants' ignorance, to fear a repetition of usurpation and military despotism at the close of the enlightened eighteenth century! Even so, in the very dawn of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reformers Marius, Caesar, &c., and the direful effects of the levelling ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

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

... stand or fall. Congress, by giving the power of granting amnesty to Mr. Lincoln, evidently conceived that it was not a power given to him by the Constitution; by taking it away from Mr. Johnson, it as evidently conceived that it could not be exercised by him except by usurpation. In usurping this power, Mr. Johnson must have known that his act belonged, in the opinion of Congress, to the class of "high crimes and misdemeanors," for the commission of which the Constitution expressly provides that Presidents may be impeached; and he must also have known that Congress, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... confederate states. Were he to have too great influence over one, this would alarm the rest. Were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation." ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... the nation. There, in the unified and unifying purpose of nations like America, and of each of her federate States, the power is being safeguarded for the community and for its members severally by political devices which render public servants incapable of prolonged usurpation. ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit

... fight, And rent the eagles of invading Rome, Whose power had changed a hundred nations' doom. In vain the Empress of the Northern Zone, With arts on arts high piled her ill-gained throne: Stern Engelbert trod Usurpation down, And from the thirteenth Eric tore the crown. Yet may my country fall—earth's works decay, And heaven's high laws ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... over an area of 12,000 square miles, slavery only exists by the usurpation of the cotton aristocracy of the lowland districts of the State.' In all of them, slaves, though in a greater proportion than in the rest of Alleghania, are very greatly in the minority, as ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession, in case of the King's death, with the legitimate heir, Arthur Duke of Brittany, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, the elder brother of John. This usurpation, it is well known, he afterwards effected. His own character being light, profligate, and perfidious, John easily attached to his person and faction, not only all who had reason to dread the resentment of Richard for criminal proceedings during his absence, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... authority than the constitution allows him: that power is to be watched in its very first encroachments; nor is any thing ever gained by timidity and submission: that every concession adds new force to usurpation; and at the same time, by discovering the dastardly dispositions of the people, inspires it with new courage and enterprise: that as arms were intrusted altogether in the hands of the prince, no check remained upon him but the dependent condition of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... this got to the ears of the Archbishops they would be more than justified in calling him to account, for every act he performed relating to the army after he knew that his monarch had refused to sanction his nomination was an act of rebellion and usurpation punishable by death. The Empress was well aware of the jeopardy in which her attache stood, but she implored him not to give up the position, although helpless to make his appointment regular. She hoped her husband's religious ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... not because I am afraid of your disclosing my family secrets, although, for your own sake, I warn you to beware how you do so. Your agency and intermediation can be of little consequence to one who will win or lose all, as lawful right or unjust usurpation shall succeed in the struggle that is about to ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

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

... been governed for thirty years by the usurpation of three brothers, keeping the lawful king a state prisoner, and ruling according to their own pleasure, shewing the king only once a year to his subjects. They had been principal officers under the father of the king whom they now held a prisoner, who was very young when his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

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

... life, and daily intrusted the young man with more and more authority. Blaise's home was prospering too; Charlotte had now given birth to a second child, a boy, and thus fruitfulness was invading the place and usurpation becoming more and more likely, since Constance could never more have an heir to bar the road of conquest. Without penetrating her singular feelings, Mathieu fancied that she perhaps wished to sound him to ascertain if he ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... are the same as the rights of individuals composing a majority. A man may elect a representative; but he cannot be bound by a representative elected by others. Children should be educated, not by force or authority, but by attraction. The assumption of authority over a child by a parent is usurpation; the use of authority over a child is tyranny. The individuality of a child is its life, and life is sacred. To destroy individuality is murder. We have no right to take Nature's place, and make a human being something different from what she has formed him. Solomon's rod and Paul's authority ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

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

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

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

... engaged, Cooper lugged in a discussion of the political question that was agitating the nation. He remarked, in the course of it, that if the Union were ever destroyed by errors or faults of an internal origin, it would not be by executive but by legislative usurpation. In order apparently to have neither of the two parties in full sympathy with him, he criticised the appointing power of the President, and his action in filling embassies. It is by the most strained interpretation of the danger to our institutions from imitation of those found in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess him. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... he inveighed, in his lectures, against the pope—his usurpation—his infallibility—his pride—his avarice—and his tyranny. He was the first who termed the pope Antichrist. From the pope, he would turn to the pomp, the luxury and trappings of the bishops, and compared them with the simplicity of primitive bishops. Their superstitions ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... Solomon's signet. The tale is that Solomon, when he washed, entrusted his signet-ring to his favorite concubine, Amina. Sakhar one day assumed the appearance of Solomon, got possession of the ring, and sat on the throne as the king. During this usurpation, Solomon became a beggar, but in forty days Sakhar flew away, and flung the signet-ring into the sea. It was swallowed by a fish, the fish was caught and sold to Solomon, the ring was recovered, and Sakhar was thrown into the sea of Galilee with a great ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... searching your ships—that favourite word, as it was called, is not omitted, indeed, in the preamble to the convention, but it stands there as the reproach, of the whole—as the strongest evidence of the fatal submission that follows. On the part of Spain, an usurpation, an inhuman tyranny, claimed and exercised over the American seas; on the part of England, an undoubted right, by treaties, and from God and nature, declared and asserted in the resolutions of Parliament, are referred ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... Campbell leaves New Orleans for home this evening. Want of respect for Governor Wells personally, alone represses the expression of indignation felt by all honest and sensible men at the unwarranted usurpation of General Sheridan in removing the civil officers of Louisiana. It is believed here that you will reinstate Wells. He is a bad man, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... mothers a long, long time to become reconciled to the complete usurpation of all their former rights by this new parent whom their boys are bound to serve,—this anything but Alma Mater,—the war school of the nation. As for Miss Nan, though she made it a point to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... for Kioto to put another affront upon the rightful sovereign. The circumstance was well fitted to precipitate events. It was a piece of religion to defend the Mikado; it was a plain piece of political righteousness to oppose a tyrannical and bloody usurpation. To Yoshida the moment for action seemed to have arrived. He was himself still confined in Choshu. Nothing was free but his intelligence; but with that he sharpened a sword for the Shogun's minister. A party of his followers were to waylay the tyrant at a village ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... take a loftier view of the struggle, and to grasp the full compass and grandeur of the issues involved. It was no mere feud between two rival states, but a great national conflict, which was to end in the downfall of a wide-spread usurpation, and the deliverance of a hundred cities from bondage. The whole naval and military forces of Athens lay crippled and helpless within their grasp; they would shatter to pieces the instrument of tyranny, and win an immortal ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... of this," he said. "I have often told him that it was our duty to protect the inferior princes against the usurpation of this islander; but he answers me ever with cold respects of their relations together as suzerain and vassal, and that it were impolitic in him to make an open breach at ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... jealous. If I speak to any other boy he rushes at him and drives him away, and while black Khayr was in the house, he suffered martyrdom and the kitchen was a scene of incessant wrangle about the coffee. Khayr would bring me my coffee and Achmet resented the usurpation of his functions—of course quite hopelessly, as Khayr was a great stout black of eighteen and poor little Achmet not bigger than Rainie. I am really tempted to adopt the vigilant ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... to the law, it rested with the six councillors of the Doge and a majority of the Grand Council to insist upon the abdication of a Doge. The action of the Ten was an usurpation of powers to which they were not entitled by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... Constantinople and died. With him were slain his sons Ardabures and Patriciolus, the one long a Patrician, and the other styled a Caesar and son-in-law of the Emperor Leo. Now Olybrius died barely eight months after he had entered upon his reign, and Glycerius was made Caesar at Ravenna, rather by usurpation than by election. Hardly had a year been ended when Nepos, the son of the sister of Marcellinus, once a Patrician, deposed him from his office and ordained him bishop at the Port ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes

... successors were confirmed in the title of "Supreme Head of the Church in Ireland," with power of reforming and correcting errors in religion. All appeals to Rome were prohibited, and the Pope's authority declared a usurpation. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... same stone, the gum-worker builds her nest at the same period as the mud-worker; but there is no fear of mutual encroachments, for the two Bees, working next door to each other, watch their respective properties with a jealous eye. If attempts at usurpation were to be made, the owner of the Snail-shell would know how to enforce her rights as ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre









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