United States or Jersey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which, in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
The Livian laws, which released the proletarians from paying rent for their lands, were ratified by the people as readily as the Sempronian laws had been. The foundation of the despotism of Gracchus was thus assailed by the Senate uniting with the proletarians. An opportunity was only wanted to effect his complete overthrow.
Such was the first charter of James to the colony of Virginia. We will not now pause to consider it minutely either for praise or for blame. With some provisions that seem to be judicious, and which afterward proved themselves to be salutary, it embraces the most destructive elements of despotism and dissension.
The magistrate ceases to be elective, but he retains the rights and the habits of an elected officer, which lead directly to despotism. It is only in limited monarchies that the law which prescribes the sphere in which public officers are to act, superintends all their measures. The cause of this may be easily detected.
But it must also be confessed that the conduct and character of Paul I., his tyrannical acts, his violent caprices, and his frequent excesses of despotism, had rendered him the object of accumulated hatred, for patience has its limit.
But the Ptolemies, in raising this building of their own, were not at the same time crushing another. Their splendid monarchy had not been built on the ruins of freedom; and even if the Greek settlers in the Delta had formed themselves into a free state, we can hardly believe that the Egyptians would have been so well treated as they were by this military despotism.
This child was not only white, but she was the granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson, the man who, when speaking against slavery in the legislature of Virginia, said, "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.
Decidedly, the world will refuse to admire this horrible magnanimity which on the first impulse of resistance becomes savagery. Today the veil is torn away. German culture is shown to be a scientific barbarity. The world, which means in the future to rid itself of all despotism, will not compromise with the despotism of barbarity. But what a disappointment and what a grief!
Philip II. missed the fruits of a deed which cost him his royal honor, and perhaps, also, his self-respect. Liberty struggled on still with despotism in obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory, and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for the coming century.
Though it is hard to see what mental features are common to the dreamy Hindus and the practical Chinese, it may be true that throughout Eastern Asia for one reason or another such as political despotism, want of military spirit, or on the other hand a tendency to regard the family, the clan or the state as the unit, the sense of individuality is weaker than in Western Asia or Europe, so that pantheism and quietism with their doctrines of the vanity of the world and the bliss of absorption arouse less opposition from robust lovers of life.
Word Of The Day