United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Have we not found, are we not still finding every day, that the brain-dizziness Xenophon calls it kephalalgeia+ induced by sudden promotion has transformed the abject suppliants at the Downing Street backstairs into the arrogant defiers of the opinions, and violators of the rights, of the populations whose subjection to the British Crown alone could have rendered possible the elevation of such folk and their impunity in malfeasance?
But these defiers of sleep seem not to remember that though it must be granted them that they are crawling about before the break of day, it can seldom be said that they are perfectly awake; they exhaust no spirits, and require no repairs; but lie torpid as a toad in marble, or at least are known to live only by an inert and sluggish loco-motive faculty, and may be said, like a wounded snake, to "drag their slow length along."
But the enforcement of the Prohibition law is something quite different: it is not a work of administration but of strategy; not a question of seeing that the law is obeyed by everybody, but of carrying on a campaign against the defiers of the law just as one would carry on a campaign against a foreign enemy.
If they come the other way, we can get through the door if our job is done, or hide behind these window curtains if it is not. Do you understand?" I nodded and stood by the door. My first feeling of fear had passed away, and I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the defenders of the law instead of its defiers.
To the old Puritan, scowling to the last at any shade of difference from the faith to which he would willingly have been a martyr, a "Libertine" included all blasphemous doubters and defiers of current beliefs Quakers, Antinomians and other pestilent people who had already set the Colony by the ears and were soon to accomplish much more in this direction.
"I am ready enough to allow," answered Mr Monckton, "that an eccentric genius, such, for example, as yours, may murmur at the tediousness of complying with the customs of the world, and wish, unconfined, and at large, to range through life without any settled plan or prudential restriction; but would you, therefore, grant the same licence to every one? would you wish to see the world peopled with defiers of order, and contemners of established forms? and not merely excuse the irregularities resulting from uncommon parts, but encourage those, also, to lead, who without blundering cannot even follow?"
Should the latter of these ingredients at present predominate in the temper which throws off the fume of this high style, it will not leave much faculty in the defiers of all revolution, for explaining what it is they have to trust to as security against such consequences as we should anticipate from the progress of disapprobation and aversion in the people; unless indeed the security mainly relied on is just that plain, simple expedient force, for all nations on earth downright force.
Bright defiers of rest and change, rolling for ever above our petty sea of mortality, as, wave after wave, we fret forth our little life, and sink into the black abyss; can we look upon you, note your appointed order, and your unvarying course, and not feel that we are indeed the poorest puppets of an all-pervading and resistless destiny?
Yet they call him the 'fechtin' fool' in these parts. The boy has never had a chance, that is all. His ambition and facility have given him the leading-place among these smugglers and defiers of the press-gang, because no other career opened itself to him. We shall see when the Good Intent comes in the spring. In the meanwhile, never tutor had such a pupil!"
If they come the other way, we can get through the door if our job is done, or hide behind these window curtains if it is not. Do you understand?" I nodded, and stood by the door. My first feeling of fear had passed away, and I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the defenders of the law instead of its defiers.
Word Of The Day