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Coerce   Listen
verb
Coerce  v. t.  (past & past part. coerced; pres. part. coercing)  
1.
To restrain by force, especially by law or authority; to repress; to curb. "Punishments are manifold, that they may coerce this profligate sort."
2.
To compel or constrain to any action; as, to coerce a man to vote for a certain candidate.
3.
To compel or enforce; as, to coerce obedience.
Synonyms: To Coerce, Compel. To compel denotes to urge on by force which cannot be resisted. The term aplies equally to physical and moral force; as, compelled by hunger; compelled adverse circumstances; compelled by parental affection. Coerce had at first only the negative sense of checking or restraining by force; as, to coerce a bad man by punishments or a prisoner with fetters. It has now gained a positive sense., viz., that of driving a person into the performance of some act which is required of him by another; as, to coerce a man to sign a contract; to coerce obedience. In this sense (which is now the prevailing one), coerce differs but little from compel, and yet there is a distinction between them. Coercion is usually acomplished by indirect means, as threats and intimidation, physical force being more rarely employed in coercing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Coerce" Quotes from Famous Books



... through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and carry ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... of faith, but can deceive neither God nor himself. The mind of even the worst of men is a court in which every cause is tried with rigid impartiality, with absolute honesty. A fool may mislead it, a child may convince it, but not even its possessor can coerce it; hence to command one to "believe," without first providing him with a satisfactory basis for his faith, were an idle waste of breath. A man is no more blamable for doubting the existence of Deity than for doubting aught ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the government of that country would agree to it. Mexico obstinately refused to recognize the independence of Texas. Lord Aberdeen was so anxious to prevent the annexation of Texas that he was ready, if supported by France, to coerce Mexico and fight the United States, but the French Government was not willing to go this far, ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... or any act of its Legislature to give it effect, should be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, or be regarded if appealed; and that, if the General Government should employ force to carry these acts into effect, or endeavor to coerce the State by closing its ports, South Carolina would consider the Union dissolved, and would proceed to organize a separate government. A union convention was called in South Carolina to endeavor to suppress the movement inaugurated by the ordinance ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... divines of Bremen, were expressed with more moderation than the others. The divines of Geneva stated, that, "if a person obstinately refused to submit to the just decisions of the church, he might be proceeded against in two ways; the magistrate might coerce him, and the church might publicly excommunicate him as a violator of the ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... persecution, to a freer home across the seas. No sooner had he found it, than the old oppression might again be clanking its chains at his heels. The stern Mother more than once stretched out her hand to coerce her freer children, forcing them ever to take new ground, and be, so to speak, clear of her clutches. The instance of America occurred during this second stage in the weft and woof of tribulation which was at the root of our growth. The same with the Boers of South Africa, who, by harsh regulations, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... who had betrayed her were clearly a medley of passion and of hatred. She loved him as she was able to love; and she wished, at the same time, to coerce and be revenged on him. The momentary sense of shame had altogether passed. It was Diana who, with burning cheeks, stipulated that while Fanny must not return to town, but must stay at Beechcote till matters were arranged, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... she can be satisfied to work regularly on a newspaper or a magazine she may often earn a large income. If money or fame is her object she must always sign her own name to everything she writes, as it takes genius to coerce the public ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... offer to assist the French. M14 Rome surrenders to the French. M15 Colonel Niel despatched to Gaeta with the keys of the city. M16 Letter of Pius IX. to General Oudinot. M17 General Oudinot repairs to Gaeta and invites the Pope to return to his Capital. M18 The French Republic tries to coerce the Pope.—Letter to Colonel Edgar Ney. M19 Address of Montalembert to the National Assembly of France. M20 The Municipality of Rome invites the Pope to return. M21 The Pope returns to Rome. M22 State of ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... looking, and looking in vain, for a victory over heresy in England. Vast in fact as Philip's resources were, they were drained by the yet vaster schemes of ambition into which his religion and his greed of power, as well as the wide distribution of his dominions, perpetually drew him. To coerce the weaker States of Italy, to command the Mediterranean, to keep a hold on the African coast, to preserve his influence in Germany, to support Catholicism in France, to crush heresy in Flanders, to despatch ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... them to despair. But at the same time he gives a warning against awakening any hope in them that their demands could ever be satisfied, for this would only make them more obstinate. And on no consideration should arms be put into their hands. 'We do not wish to kill them, we cannot coerce them, but we dare not trust them.' Nothing would be more dangerous than to assume a confidence which was not ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... process is even possible when the belligerents are separated by a neutral State, since the territory of a weak neutral will be violated if the object be of sufficient importance, or if the neutral be too strong to coerce, there still remains the possibility that his alliance ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... certainly justified in taking active measures to coerce his headstrong brother. The spoilt child of a brilliant society was not accustomed to being thwarted in his caprices, and beneath his delicate pale skin the angry blood boiled up to his face. He strode towards his brother as though he would have struck him, but something ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... then and there. But the Great Powers operated less with argument than with more forcible stimuli. Holding the economic and financial resources of the world in their hands, they sometimes merely toyed with reasoning and proceeded to coerce where they were unable to convince or persuade. One day the chief delegate of one of the states "with limited interests" said to me: "The unvarnished truth is that we are being coerced. There is no milder ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... directly upon a situation beyond their reach. Some of them can migrate, in one form or another, they can strike or boycott, they can applaud or hiss. They can by these means occasionally resist what they do not like, or coerce those who obstruct what they desire. But by mass action nothing can be constructed, devised, negotiated, or administered. A public as such, without an organized hierarchy around which it can gather, may refuse to buy if the prices are too ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... change of policy at home, it would appear that the efforts of commanders should be, to induce the tribesmen to assume the offensive. On this point I must limit my remarks to the flat-bottomed valleys of Swat and Bajaur. To coerce a tribe like the Mamunds, a mixed brigade might camp at the entrance to the valley, and as at Inayat Kila, entrench itself very strongly. The squadron of cavalry could patrol the valley daily in complete security, as the tribesmen would not dare to leave the hills. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... writing to the Times, says:—"If any one will tell the exact truth as to Irish matters at this moment, he must confess that landlords are utterly powerless to coerce their tenants; that the pockets of the tenants themselves are full of money formerly paid in rent; that the price of all kinds of cattle has risen largely; that the last harvest was an excellent one; and that the banks—savings banks, Post Office banks, and ordinary banks—are ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... connivance of governments which were nominally her foes. The Continental System, therefore, must first be repaired, and it was to convert a nominal acquiescence into a real one that Davout was despatched to hold the fortresses from Dantzic westward, while Oudinot was to coerce Holland. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... profoundest religious teacher ever born of woman; and no more eloquent testimony could well be offered to the sincerity of the royal convert than the well-nigh miraculous self-restraint with which he forebore to cajole or coerce those of his subjects whom his arguments failed to convince. Satisfied with the progress of the new religion in his native place, he despatched his son, Mahindo, to introduce it into Ceylon; and so successful were the young prince's missionary ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... people one morality is as good as another provided they are used to it and can put up with its restrictions without unhappiness; and in the maintenance of this morality they will fight and punish and coerce without scruple. They may not be the salt of the earth, these Philistines; but they are the substance of civilization; and they save society from ruin by criminals and conquerors as well as by Savonarolas and Knipperdollings. And as they know, very sensibly, that a little ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... lost your head because the outlook is rather bad. Your family, or rather your late husband's people, have attempted to coerce you in a way that I consider entirely unjustifiable. And you have allowed yourself to be bullied, and therefore, all unconsciously, have given them some hold over your ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... teeth! What do you think were the feelings of every man who looks upon Parliament in an higher light than that of a market-overt for legalizing a base traffic of votes and pensions, when he saw you employ such means of coercion to the crown, in order to coerce our Parliament through that medium? How much his Majesty is pleased with his part of the civility must be left to his own taste. But as to us, you declared to the world that you knew that the way of bringing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... character on the ground that the only sanction was a penalty designed to compel obedience. The Court then enunciated the principle that where a fine or imprisonment imposed on the contemnor is designed to coerce him to do what he has refused to do, the proceeding ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Ewing on the twenty-first of January, expressing regret that certain States had furnished men and money for the coercion of the seceded States, and requesting the Governor of Kentucky to notify such States that should attempts be made to coerce these commonwealths, Kentucky would join the South.[22] This resolution passed the House but did not pass the whole legislature as so many have said. A resolution for calling a convention to amend ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... there is a fourth form of monopoly which would be open to the same double attack, but it is one of which less has been heard in Great Britain than in the United States. It is possible under a competitive system for rivals to come to an agreement. The more powerful may coerce the weaker, or a number of equals may agree to work together. Thus competition may defeat itself, and industry may be marshalled into trusts or other combinations for the private advantage against the public interest. Such combinations, predicted by ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... no authority from you to do so, but thought it best to leave upon the Emperor the impression that you would sell your invention. Had I not done so he certainly would have demanded the reasons for your presence in Berlin, and had I dared to suggest that you had been sent by the United States to coerce him he would have been thrown into such a rage that he might have declared war on your country, which I understand is the last thing ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... which he himself alleged-to be unconstitutional. In truth, his chief purpose was to rid himself of any responsibility and to lay it all upon Congress. Yet he was willing to advise Congress as to its powers and duties in the business which he shirked in favor of that body, saying that the power to coerce a seceding State had not been delegated to it, and adding the warning that "the Union can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war." So the nation learned that its ruler was of opinion that to resist the destruction ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... of government, Mr. North," said I, "is the very best on earth if it goes well, and the worst if it goes ill. We have no standing army to fight for an administration as for a throne or dynasty; so that if a State secedes, the question is how to coerce that people, if it be best to attempt it. Citizens do not like to march against their brethren. Think of our taking up arms against our correspondents; against people that have gone from our churches and settled in that State; against ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... account of this shrunk from a marriage sanctioned by her parents. Eustasius reproached the father for his efforts to violate the solemn obligations of the virgin, and upon obtaining a formal renunciation of further attempts to coerce her into matrimony, the saint, by personal intercession, obtained a ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... literature as in life, a code of his own, which, if sometimes lax where others were stringent, was always stringent in higher matters, where others were lax. Even the friendship of Emerson could not coerce him into that careful elaboration which gives dignity and sometimes a certain artistic monotony to the works of our great essayist. Emerson never wilfully leaves a point unguarded, never allows himself to be caught in undress. Thoreau ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... number. Besides, in some of these cases, a majority of the stockholders might not sit idly by, and see the bank deprived of its share of government favour by the squeamishness of its officers, and might therefore either coerce them into compliance, or ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... "her Nevada way"—with the Rev. Arthur Poppleton, who appeared more frequently than had been his habit at the high teas. She played croquet with that gentleman and Mr. Barold day after day, upon the grass-plat, before all the eyes gazing down upon her from the neighboring windows; she managed to coerce Mr. Burmistone into joining these innocent orgies; and, in fact, to quote Miss Pilcher, there was "no limit to the ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... ago, upon what was then considered the "frontier" of Missouri, we chanced to be laid up with a "game leg," in consequence of a performance of a bullet-headed mule that we were endeavoring to coerce at the end of a corn stalk, for his "intervention" in a fodder stack to which he could lay no legitimate claim. About two miles from our "lodgings" was a store, a "grocery," shotecary pop, boots, hats, gridirons, whiskey, powder and shot, &c., &c., and the post office. About ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... could speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for me stronger and higher ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... about them; that the outbreak of the old Parisian ferocity might be no more than a sudden explosion, but if it should happen to be character rather than accident, then the people would need a strong hand like that of their former masters to coerce them; that all depended upon the French having wise heads among them, and upon these wise heads, if such there were, acquiring an authority to match their wisdom. There is nothing here but a calm and sagacious suspense of judgment. It soon appeared ...
— Burke • John Morley

... for Ireland. There is the land—there is the owner—there is the tenant. If the landowners had been a little wiser we might not have had before us to-night the difficulty that now perplexes us. Suppose, for example, they had not been tempted to coerce or to make use of the votes of their tenants; suppose they had not been tempted to withhold leases—undoubtedly the condition of Ireland would have been far superior to what it now is. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster has some scruples, I believe, on the question of the ballot, but I ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... before the firing of a single shot. I mean to say, I had looked so conscientiously after details, even to assuring myself that Cousin Egbert and the Honourable George would appear in evening dress, my last act having been to coerce each of them into purchasing varnished boots, the former submitting meekly enough, though the Honourable George insisted it was a ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the gentle slopes on either side of the Skelton Beck, and almost hide the modern mansion. The buildings include part of the ancient castle of the Bruces, who were Lords of Skelton for many years. It is recorded that Peter de Brus, one of the barons who helped to coerce John into signing the Great Charter at Runnymede, made a curious stipulation when he granted some lands at Leconfield to Henry Percy, his sister's husband. The property was to be held on condition that every Christmas Day he and his heirs should come to ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... sure, my dear girls, that wild horses will not drag the fact from me in the presence of the dragon, even if I am weary unto death. Does she coerce all her boarders ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... a robber depriving her of all these things. There is no fidelity in the body. Fidelity is a thing of the mind, always at war with and striving to coerce those instincts of the senses that are ever clamouring after the new and the unknown. Nature is ever driving us on to seek new mates. The mind with its trammels of affection, gratitude, pity, consideration, is ever dragging us ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... power that he possessed in the closing months of his term to mold the policy of the future was painfully evident. Like all who had intelligently and impartially studied the history of the formation of the Constitution, he held that the Federal Government had no rightful power to coerce a State. Like the sages and patriots who had preceded him in the high office that he filled, he believed that "our Union rests upon public opinion, and can never by cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. If it can not live in the affections of the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... just let me say a word on the matter. You say that there is some man who by means of the influence that he exercises over the Count and Countess, can coerce them into granting him Sabine's hand. But, my dear Gontran, an utter stranger to the family could not exercise this power. Now M. de Croisenois has never entered the doors of the house, and came to me to ask for ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... antecedent necessity to Mr. Mill are one and the same. But Law in Catholic terminology means the Will of God decreeing freely or not freely, according to the subject-matter; and is not opposed to Free-Will. It guides, it need not coerce or necessitate, though it may. Neither in one sense, is Law synonymous with Reason, for that is according to Reason, simply, which does not involve a contradiction, whether it be done freely or of necessity; and many things are possible, or non-contradictives, that Law does ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... able-bodied men of their means of livelihood, and would drive ten thousand more into other vocations. But the power of the ministry forced the bills through, though twenty-one peers joined in a solemn protest. "We dissent," said they, "because the attempt to coerce, by famine, the whole body of the inhabitants of great and populous provinces, is without example in the history of this, or, perhaps, of any civilized nations." This was in 1775, and the revolution in America had already begun. It was the policy of Lord North to force ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... of "No Home Rule"), "there are only two ways to deal with Ulster. It is for statesmen to say which is the best and right one. She is not a part of the community which can be bought. She will not allow herself to be sold. You must therefore either coerce her if you go on, or you must in the long run, by showing that good government can come under the Home Rule Bill, try and win her over to the case of the rest of Ireland. You probably can coerce her—though I doubt it. If you do, what will be the disastrous consequences ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... black and the white man; and the misfortune of always having the border districts in a state of excitement and alarm, would be avoided, whilst the expense and inconvenience of occasionally sending large parties of military and police, to coerce or punish transgressors that they can rarely meet with, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... fancy dropped into his Memoranda is fixed by the following passage in a letter to me of the 25th of August 1862. "I am trying to coerce my thoughts into hammering out the Christmas number. And I have an idea of opening a book (not the Christmas number—a book) by bringing together two strongly contrasted places and two strongly contrasted sets of people, with which and with whom the story is to rest, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... ought to have known that it would be so. But if she could look into his heart she'd see how much he loved her and how honestly. He wouldn't excuse himself; he had thought of marrying several times, but never had he loved any one as he did her. But he wouldn't coerce her; he would simply have to be content to accept ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... German and Slavonic provinces. The Government of Austria, after it had recovered its authority at the end of 1848, refused to accept this position, and published a new Constitution, binding all the provinces together in a closer union. The Assembly at Frankfort had no power to coerce the Emperor of Austria; they therefore adopted the other solution, viz.: that the rest of Germany was to be reconstituted, and the Austrian provinces left out. The question, however, then arose: Would Austria accept this—would she allow a new Germany to be created in which she had no part? Surely ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... a body of literature which it is not too much to pronounce not only a history of the dispute with the colonies, but a veritable political manual. He does not confine himself to a minute description of the arguments used in supporting the attempt to coerce America; he furnishes as he goes along principles of legislation applicable almost to any condition of society; illustrations which light up as by a single flash problems of apparently inscrutable darkness; explanations of great political failures; and receipts ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... with outside barbarians." While the Chinese officials had been both consistent and successful, the new English superintendent of trade had been both inconsistent and discomfited. He had attempted to carry matters with a high hand and to coerce the mandarins, and he was compelled to show in the most public manner that he had failed by his retirement to Macao. He had even imperiled the continuance of the trade which he had come specially to promote, and all ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... interesting to Mr. Russell, are not felt by pragmatists to constitute exceptions worth considering. Dialectical relations, they will say, are verbal only; that is, they define ideal objects, and certainty in these cases does not coerce existence, or touch contingent fact at all. On the other hand, such apprehension as seizes on some matter of fact, as, for instance, "I feel pain," or "I expected to feel this pain, and it is now verifying my expectation," though often true propositions, are not theoretical truths; they ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... tender-hearted over children's sufferings, it was her mother's custom to bribe rather than coerce when teeth had to be taken out. The fixed scale of reward was sixpence for a tooth without fangs, and a shilling for one with them. If pain were any evidence, this tooth certainly had fangs. But one does ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... contemptible artifices and intrigues of Peters, which, however intended, were beginning to be the means of exposing her to new trials, yet, till what took place at that party, she had entertained no serious apprehension that any attempt would be made to coerce her into a marriage which she had so ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... butcher, for whom it was known Mrs. McCockerell had destined the hand of her younger daughter. Mr. Brisket had been a great favourite with the old lady, and she had often been heard to declare that he should have the wife and money, or the money without the wife. This she said to coerce ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... saying that the environment moulds the man. Yet, much more than the philosophers have contended, there are chameleon tendencies in the strongest character, and one finely determining to coerce his surroundings is quite likely to end by realizing that the surroundings have appealed to unsuspected color-changings in himself. Thus it may chance that the fairest fighter, finding himself sufficiently kicked and cuffed in the rough-and-tumble, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... respecting "Southern rights" as induced even loyal Southrons to suppose that Slavery was to be openly recognized by the Constitution, and spread over the nation. The President of the United States, a Northern Democrat, gravely declared that there existed no right in the Government to coerce a seceding State, which was all that the most determined Secessionist could ask. Instead of doing anything to strengthen the position of the federal Government, the President did all that he could to assist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... not vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back into unwilling submission. I would say to her—'God speed in the memory of the kind associations which once existed between her and her ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... of this his richest possession for support against the Turks. The Diet thereupon called for religious freedom, and no interference with their spiritual affairs. The discussions that ensued seem to have led to no results. So we find one Habsburg after another on the throne of Bohemia, trying to coerce its people, and each one reducing the country to a state of greater discontent and disorder, until the crash came in 1618, when King Matthias had roused the Bohemian Estates to such a pitch of desperation that they proceeded to the act which precipitated ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... follows an eloquent passage about our friendly Colonies, "overarched by zodiacs and stars, clasped by many-sounding seas." Carlyle would apparently force emigration, and coerce the Australians, Americans, and Chinese, to receive our ship-loads of living merchandise; but the problem of population exceeds his solution of it. He everywhere inclines to rely on coercion till it is over-mastered by resistance, and to overstretch ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... of her displeasure. The Protestant was to turn Papist, not so much in fear of the heretic's hell, as on account of the comfort, the indulgence, the tenderness Holy Church offered: far be it from her to threaten or to coerce; her wish was to guide and win. She persecute? Oh dear ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... of the session before they act, this will be considered as a vote against reprisals, and then the law will be proposed and I think carried. But I ought not to conceal from you that the excitement is at present very great; that their pride is deeply wounded by what they call an attempt to coerce them by threats to the payment of a sum which they persist, in opposition to the plainest proof, in declaring not to be due. This feeling is fostered by the language of our opposition papers, particularly by the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... surprise was beyond question. "Why, what does all this mean? No one has sought to coerce or drive you; this was your own choice. Surely you have had ample ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... sitting on the warm side of the big rock a little while," said Jerome. He looked subdued before his mother's gaze, and yet not abashed. She always felt sure that there was some hidden reserve of rebellion in Jerome, coerce him into obedience as she might. She never really governed him, as she did her daughter Elmira, who stood washing dishes at the sink. But she loved Jerome better, although she tried not to, and would not ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... that the late refusal of the Jamaica legislature to fulfil its appropriate functions has no connection with the working of freedom, any further than it may have been a struggle to get rid in some measure of the surveillance of the mother country in order to coerce the labourer so far as possible by vagrant laws, &c. The immediate pretext was the passing of a law by the imperial Parliament for the regulation of prisons, which the House of Assembly declared a violation of that principle of their charter which forbids the mother-country to lay a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... One word more!" she implored. "Listen, Philippe, don't do this thing.... And, if you do not do it, well, I think I could.... Oh, it is horrible to coerce me like this!... Still, I won't have you go.... Listen, Philippe. You know my pride, the bitterness of my feelings and all that I have suffered, all that I am suffering because of Suzanne. Well, I will forget everything. I offer not only to forgive, but to forget. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... practice of translating {hot spot}s from an {HLL} into hand-tuned assembler, as opposed to trying to coerce the compiler into generating better code. Both the term and the practice are becoming uncommon. See {tune}, {bum}, {by hand}; syn. with v. {cruft}. 2. More generally, manual construction or patching of data sets that would normally be generated by a translation utility and interpreted ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... proceedings should be certified by the king and other persons as witnesses, in order that at a future time she should be replaced in her proper position. Perhaps, in ordinary circumstances, it would not have been possible for a country priest thus to coerce George III.; but Dr. Wilmot was in possession of a fatal secret. As is well known, King George was publicly married to Princess Charlotte in 1762; but, according to the showing of the petitioners, he had been previously married, in 1759, by this very Dr. Wilmot, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... will further suppose a Conservative Government in power, and confronted with a devastating strike—shall we say a railwaymen's strike? What more easy than to call out one-half of the strikers on service and oblige them, under pain of treason, to coerce the other half? Do you suppose that this nation will ever forget ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... government I could yield no obedience; and when every sacred constitutional barrier had been swept away by Lincoln—when the habeas corpus was abolished, and freedom of speech and press denied—when the Washington conclave essayed to coerce freemen, to 'crush Secession' through the agency of the sword and cannon—then I swore allegiance to the 'Seven States' where all of republican liberty remained. Henceforth my home is with the South; my hopes and destiny hers; her sorrows and ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... true that the majority of Irishmen had for centuries continued to act unanimously in their resistance to oppression; as was seen, they had been a people from the moment that the English kings and Parliaments strove to coerce their religious faith, and more particularly from the destruction of clanship. They were truly a nation, though without a government of their own, and for the greater part of the time bending under the most intolerable tyranny. Religion had given them one thought ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... himself with entire impartiality. Spain was in the wrong, he thought, but not so absolutely or wilfully in the wrong as to justify Portugal in standing out for too stringent terms of reparation. At one time it seemed almost probable that the English minister would have to employ force to coerce his own client into terms as well as the other party to the suit. But Walpole "put his foot down," as the modern phrase goes, and the danger was averted. Even Cardinal Fleury, who co-operated with Walpole in bringing about ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... him, never had he felt such bitterness of thwarted longing. Reared in a way to foster a disregard of all restraint and a contempt for other people's rights, he was in a fitting mood for any reckless project, and the mere thought that they should undertake to coerce an Anthony filled him with grim amusement. He had yielded to their left- handed customs out of courtesy; it was time now to show ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... vassals, that they should yield themselves faithful and obedient subjects to David their liege lord, and not only give due and prompt obedience to the ministers of the King in suit and service, as well as in the payment of taxes and public burdens, but that they would coerce and put down all others, and compel all who dared to rise against the King's authority to make due submission, or pursue them from their respective territories." For the fulfilment of these obligations, the Lord of the ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... fifteen years of age, is everything that I could wish him to be, except in one respect. He will not consent to enter the church. He wants to be a soldier, poor lad! Well, we cannot coerce him into a life of sanctity and self-denial. Such a life must always be a voluntary sacrifice. Neither do I wish to cross him, now that I am on my death-bed and doomed so soon ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... phantom aeroplane. Fanning's part in the mystery of the stolen jewels of Mrs. Bancroft, the mother of Jess and Jimsy, will likewise be probably held in memory by those who perused that volume. The elder Harding's part in the attempt to coerce the young Prescotts into parting with their aerial secrets, consisted in trying to foreclose a mortgage he held on the Prescott home, with the alternative of Roy turning over to him the blue prints and descriptions of ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... who knew him, been very uncertain whether the population at large would respond, even when he made the first call for 75,000 volunteers. Persons in positions of great influence were of the opinion that the North had no right to coerce the South. General Scott, the commander-in-chief, urged separation peacefully, and Horace Greeley, the most influential member of the press in the country, opposed coercion, while the mass of the Democratic party ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... beaux and offers. You may shake your head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than I, should your brother see cause to refuse his consent to your marriage with Mr. Chilton. He could, and probably would, coerce you into another alliance before you were twenty-one. There are so many ways of letting the life out of a woman's heart, when it is already faint from disappointment! The spirit is oftener broken ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... peaceful conference of seventeen independent American powers, in which all shall meet together on terms of absolute equality; a conference in which there can be no attempt to coerce a single delegate against his own conception of the interests of his nation; a conference which will permit no secret understanding on any subject, but will frankly publish to the world all its conclusions; a conference which will tolerate ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... months Scotland was kept in doubt; and this was done, no doubt, to enable the English to rivet their yoke upon our shoulders, and to intimidate and coerce all who ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... contrary to his nature. He was not a man who in the ordinary way of his life would probably lift his hand against another. Such liftings of hands on the part of other men he regarded as a falling back to the truculence of savage life. Men should manage and coerce each other either with the tongue, or with money, or with the law—according to his theory of life. But on such an occasion as this he found himself obliged to acknowledge that, if the worst should come to the worst, some attempt ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the Amazon. His temperament would have compelled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of England was, indeed, as appeared some years later, sufficient to coerce Scotland; but a large part of the English people sympathized with the religious feelings of the insurgents, and many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... success of their tyranny. And probably nothing short of revelation from Heaven, in shape of blinding light, would ever open their eyes to the fact that it is even more selfish to hold a generous spirit fettered hour by hour by a constant fear of giving pain than to coerce or threaten or scold them into the desired behavior. Invalids, all invalids, stand in deadly peril of becoming tyrants of this order. A chronic invalid who entirely escapes it must be so nearly saint or ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... from the point of view of artistic value, with an a priori acceptance of the general notions which gave birth to each. To dispute the author's right to produce a poetical work or a realistic work, is to endeavor to coerce his temperament, to take exception to his originality, to forbid his using the eyes and wits bestowed on him by Nature. To blame him for seeing things as beautiful or ugly, as mean or epic, as gracious or sinister, is to reproach him for not being made on this or that pattern, and for ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... his vast fortune was well-nigh resistless. Commanding both financial and political power, his money and resources were used with destructive effect against almost every competitor standing in his way. If he could not coerce the owners of a railroad, the possession of which he sought, to sell to him at his own price, he at once brought into action the wrecking tactics his ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... better for the wreck of Clerkenwell prison, or Ireland for the disestablishment of the Irish Church? Is there the smallest reason to suppose that the nation which sheepishly let Charles and Laud and Strafford coerce it, gained anything because it afterwards, still more sheepishly, let a few strongminded Puritans, inflamed by the masterpieces of Jewish revolutionary literature, cut off the heads of the three? Suppose the Gunpowder plot had succeeded, and set a Fawkes dynasty ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... love ever be other than perfectly free, and is not the attempt to bind it essentially "immoral"? Should it ever be exclusive or proprietary? Is not the "moral problem" really created, not by human nature, but by the attempt to bind what cannot be bound and to coerce what should be free? ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden

... President when he failed to succor the forts in Charleston Harbor. He was succeeded by Jeremiah S. Black, who, as attorney-general, had given to Buchanan an opinion that the Federal government had no power to coerce ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... me odd; but I made friends easily, and kept them. Though I could be "managed" by anyone who wanted to get something out of me, I was never put upon or bullied, because if attempts were made to coerce me, I was, like the immortal Mr. Micawber, not disinclined for a scrap. I stood erect before my fellow-boy, and when he tried to bully me I punched his head. Mr. Micawber's comment is too moving not to be recorded. "I and my fellow-man ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... and what not. In a word, Pen's greatest enemy was himself: and as he had been pampering, and coaxing, and indulging that individual all his life, the rogue grew insolent, as all spoiled servants will be; and at the slightest attempt to coerce him, or make him do that which was unpleasant to him, became frantically rude and unruly. A person who is used to making sacrifices—Laura, for instance, who had got such a habit of giving up her own pleasure ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... opposition will be continued in a more serious form. The passage of the bill, he declares, will be the signal for civil war. Ulster will fight. Parliament may pass the Home Rule Bill, but when it does so its troubles will have just begun. Where will it find the troops to coerce ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... you, within the last 12 years, met with cases of that sort, in which the proprietor endeavoured to coerce you to pay his rent?-Yes. I have had cases where the tenants came asking me for money, and I told them I could not advance them any further. They would then go away, and come back and tell me that the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... of the history of the Civil War which may be almost unknown to our younger readers. During the war the whole North was honeycombed with secret societies, whose members denounced Lincoln as a usurper and a bloody monster, and maintained that the government had no right to coerce the South. They resisted the draft, encouraged desertions, and embarrassed the Federal Government in every way possible. In secret many of the leaders plotted armed rebellion, the liberation of Confederate prisoners, ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... by another. But in obeying laws to which all men have agreed, all men, in reality, govern themselves. The monarch, who is instituted by the legislature to execute its will, ought to be armed with a force sufficient to coerce individuals, but not sufficient to control the majority of the people. He is responsible to the nation, and subject to the law; and the nation that appoints him, and assigns him his duties, has to see that he obeys the Constitution, and has to dismiss him if he breaks it. The rights of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... may end in starvation, crushing taxation, suppression of all freedom to try new social experiments and reform obsolete institutions, in snobbery, jobbery, idolatry, and an omnipresent tyranny in which his doctor and his schoolmaster, his lawyer and his priest, coerce him worse than any official or drill sergeant: no matter: it is respectable, says the German, therefore it must be good, and cannot be carried too far; and everybody who rebels against it must be a rascal. Even the Social-Democrats in Germany differ ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... be questioned, it is very plain that they should neither be allowed to devote to other subjects the time needed for the proper discharge of their official duties nor to use the authority of their office to enforce their own opinions or to coerce the political action of those who ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson

... in a series of Latin theses a double office of the Law, the ecclesiastical; and political—officium ecclesiasticum and officium politicum. The former is to give knowledge of sin; the latter, to coerce the old man and maintain order among the obstinate. He denied that the Law in any way serves Christians with respect to good works. Otto declared: "The Law is useful and necessary neither for justification nor for any good works. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... exploits most successfully are precisely those of which it does not "own" a foot. Even with the most characteristically colonial of all—Great Britain—the greater part of her overseas trade is done with countries which she makes no attempt to "own," control, coerce, or dominate—and incidentally she has ceased to do any of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... positive and negative gains. If, on the other hand, Bulgaria were recalcitrant and inexorable, the Tsardom which protected her might to some good purpose have become equally so, and displayed firmness and severity. It has been said that Russia cannot find it in her heart either to coerce Serbia or to punish Bulgaria. If this be a correct presentation of her temper—and in the past it corresponded to the reality—then the Allies are up against an insurmountable obstacle which must be looked upon as one of the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... broken laws are ne'er the worse; Nay, till th' are broken have no force. 280 What's justice to a man, or laws, That never comes within their claws They have no pow'r, but to admonish: Cannot controul, coerce, or punish, Until they're broken, and then touch 285 Those only that do make 'em such. Beside, no engagement is allow'd By men in prison made for good; For when they're set at liberty, They're from th' engagement too set free. 290 The rabbins write, when any Jew Did make to God, or man, a vow, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... many in those times who thought and felt as Hawthorne did. Douglas said in the Senate, "Even if you coerce the Southern States and bring them back by force, it will not be the same Union." A people does not necessarily mean a nation; for the idea of nationality is of slow growth, and is in a manner opposed to the idea of democracy; for if ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... in the morning, when they went back to the lunch-room and ate an enormous breakfast, Olga's sluggish blood was fired at last. It was a profane thought, but you could take the Fatal Sisters by the hair and coerce a change in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... interrupted Brigitte. "She was given a period of time to choose between Monsieur de la Peyrade and your son,—that's how we coerce her, if you please,—and she would not take Monsieur Felix, whose ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The army is used for two purposes—to coerce disturbers at home, and to get up a war at a distance, and thus distract attention from the troubles near at hand. Napoleon used to say that the only sure cure for internal dissension was a foreign war: this would draw the disturbers away, on the plea of patriotism, so they would win enough ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... a little care we can prevent matters going as far as knives. I have always found the people of this district easy to get on with, if they are reasonably treated. Of course, if you once begin to threaten or coerce a Romagnol he becomes unmanageable. But have you any reason for supposing a new ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... compared with which all that is told of the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta is tame and common-place. The English have prevented repetitions of those outrages on humanity, wherever it has been in their power to coerce the princes. They have pared the claws and drawn the teeth of these human tigers. They have acted humanely; yet it may be doubted if they would not have consulted their own immediate interests more closely, if they had acted the part ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... monarchical power had devised a variety of political means of oppression; the democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as entirely an affair of the mind, as that will which it is intended to coerce. Under the absolute sway of an individual despot, the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul; and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it, and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... army should not be used to coerce a state. If by this he means that the army should not be used to conquer a state, to compel her to be represented, to maintain the courts or post offices within her limits, to burn her cities or desolate her fields, he is entirely correct. I do not ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... large and notorious cases. Well, then, if they have, then at once falls to the ground this alleged overruling coercion a priori of the climate and the desert. Climate and desert do not necessarily coerce them, if in large and notorious cases they have failed to do so. So feels Gibbon; and, by an instinct of timidity, back he flies to the previous evasion—to the natural controlling power of climate and soil, admitting the Scriptural fact, but seeking for it an unscriptural ground, as before he ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... proper, Mr. Dodd; there is no wish to coerce you, believe me," said Fowler; "only, please consider our position. It is really dangerous; we were not the only people to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... gentle, loving disposition. His successes were in every case the result of suasion. He never sought to coerce men. Tomeo with childlike simplicity rebuked his own awkwardness, and humbly seated his huge body on a bank for another effort. In this position he got his legs easily into the trousers and drew them on, but when he stood up to complete the operation, it was found that they were ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... meant to leave the Jews—the racial instinct was strong in him, and the pride of his people colored his character to the last. But the attempts to bribe him and coerce him into a following of fanatical law, when this law did not appeal to his commonsense, forced him into a position that his enemies took for innate perversity. When an eagle is hatched in a barnyard ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... Mr. Saul," she said, with spirit, "no ulterior motive for worldly advancement has the power to coerce my afflections." ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... You do not know whether the people will support you. You grant that there is some justice in the contention of the South, and you claim for your own case only a balance of truth. You admit that to coerce the millions of the South back into the Union is a kind of task which has never been performed in the world before and one which the wise of all ages have pronounced impossible. And yet, for the sake of a narrow point, you are ready, if the need arises, to embark on a war which must be ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... imperial court, it followed the emperor about and was therefore hard to get at. Moreover, even if a decision was obtained from it, there was no way for the aggrieved party to secure the execution of the judgment, for the emperor had no force sufficient to coerce the larger states. The natural result was a resort to self-help. Neighborhood war was permitted by law if only some courteous preliminaries were observed. For instance, a prince or town was required to give warning ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... moment, the concentrated naval strength of England made it more than a match for its adversaries. A fleet of seventeen ships of the line sailed from Yarmouth on the 12th of March, under the command of Parker and Nelson, with orders to coerce the Danes and to prevent the junction of the confederate navies. The fleet reached the Sound. The Swedish batteries commanding the Sound failed to open fire. Nelson kept to the eastern side of the channel, and brought his ships safely past the storm ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... now determined that for all future time any State, or any cluster of States, that may attempt to coerce or bully a legal and constitutional majority by the threat of secession, shall be met with the answer: "You don't go out of this Union unless you are strong enough to fight your way out." I want to have ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... hours subsequent to that action the plausible, inner voice had whispered unceasingly, soothing his wounded self-esteem, rebuilding stone by stone the temple of his egotism; until at last when Chilcote, panic-stricken at his own action, had burst into his rooms ready to plead or to coerce, he had found no need for either coercion or entreaty. By a power more subtle and effective than any at his command, Loder had been prepared for his coming—unconsciously ready with an acquiescence before his appeal had been made. It was the fruit of this preparation, the inevitable ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... still fills them with its old monitions and reproaches. But it cannot enforce obedience. They feel it to be the truth, but at the same time they know it to be a lie; and though they long to be coerced by it, they find it cannot coerce them. Reason, which was once its minister, is now the tribune of their passions, and forbids them, in times of passion, to submit to it. They are not suffered to forget that it is not what ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... anxiously, to see what effect these arguments were having upon him. She did not fear disobedience. She knew that if she should make it a personal request, James was dutiful enough to follow her wishes; but she respected the personal independence of her children, and wanted to convince, rather than to coerce, them. ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... suffered, they conquered; and when they conquered, the whole world was taught the lesson—worth all the Dutchmen's agony to teach it—that the children of a heavenly Father are born free and equal, and that it is neither the province of nation or church to coerce them into any religious ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... preferred to coerce the European powers by retaliatory legislation. As early as April, 1806, a law had been passed forbidding the importation of certain British wares, but was suspended six weeks after it came into operation. In June, 1807, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... quarrel over the matter, Ruth," she said, in a conciliatory tone. "Of course I have no right to coerce you in such a matter, and you are too useful to me to be driven away by contesting the point. So we will drop the subject; and now if you will take this memorandum and go about the shopping I shall be obliged to you. I shall need all my strength for this evening, because I am to have a large company ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... walks into any school in this kingdom one is certain to meet a tall, thin, anaemic youth with a draggled moustache and a worried eye who is endeavouring to coerce a mass of indigestible, inelastic and unimportant facts into the heads of divers sleepy and disgusted children. If a small boy, on being asked where Labrador is, replies that it is the most northerly point of the Berlin Archipelago, he may be wrong in quite a variety of ways, but even ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... substitute new constructions for the old, all had been disintegration. French society was to be reorganized only after further pulverizing; cohesion would begin only under pressure from without—a pressure applied by the threats of erratic royalists that they would bring in the foreign powers to coerce and arbitrate, by the active demonstrations of the emigrants, by the outbreak of foreign wars. These were the events about to take place; they would in the end evolve from the chaos of mob rule first ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... growing handy beside the river, and I mean to prevent any more accidents of this kind in future. If your employer will not reimburse me, I will bear the cost myself. I would sooner spend my last dollar than allow any of these loafers to coerce me." ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... may a State, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionally larger subdivision of itself in the most ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... submarine warfare within the war-zone, because they regarded the right to make reprisals as a recognized part of the existing international law. Further, the American demand was regarded in Germany as a deliberate humiliation, as well as an attempt to coerce us unconditionally to renounce unrestricted submarine warfare once and for all. To have admitted that the submarine war was a breach of international law would have involved us in the same unpleasant consequences to which now, after our defeat, we are compelled ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... libitum. Neighboring potentates, Archbishop of Magdeburg and others, struck in also at discretion, as they had gradually got accustomed to do, and snapped away some convenient bit of territory, or, more legitimately, they came across to coerce, at their own hand, this or the other Edle Herr of the Turpin sort, whom there was no other way of getting at, when he carried matters quite too high. "Droves of six hundred swine"—I have seen (by reading in those old books) certain noble gentlemen, "of Putlitz," I ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... and the delay occasioned is only that required to enable the States and the people to consider and act upon the subject in the election of public agents who will carry out their wishes and instructions. Any attempt to coerce the President to yield his sanction to measures which he can not approve would be a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, palpable and flagrant, and if successful would break down the independence ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... was invested with extraordinary powers by the rescript of the duke himself, powers which warranted her interference with the liberty of young females who were denounced to her by their parents, guardians, or others who might have a semblance of a right to control or coerce them. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... accomplished fact in many states, and appeared on the verge of accomplishment in most of the others. Some states, however, were still holding out when the leaders of the movement, impatient of further delay and determined to coerce the recalcitrants, took the matter into the national arena and procured the proposal and ratification of an amendment to the ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... to hear me read The Bible's sacred page; though I, averse To what was good, would rather have been freed; And they were grieved to have me to coerce. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... course of the C. P. R., in dismissing Mr. Smith, has been warmly endorsed by the cowardly and murderous liquor gang in Brome, and is so open to the suspicion of being an attempt to coerce the conscience and abridge the liberties of the citizens to serve the liquor interests as to make it imperative that some member of the Commons, which has so largely subsidized that road, demand in the approaching session ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith

... many means of telling truth, has also many means of telling lies. He may be untruthful in his very theme, if he is lacking in sanity of outlook upon the things that are. He may be untruthful in his characterization, if he interferes with his people after they are once created and attempts to coerce them to his purposes instead of allowing them to work out their own destinies. He may be untruthful in his plotting, if he devises situations arbitrarily for the sake of mere immediate effect. He ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton



Words linked to "Coerce" :   squeeze for, steamroll, squeeze, bludgeon, dragoon, hale, turn up the heat, terrorize, obligate, sandbag, coercion, turn up the pressure, pressure, railroad



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