Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
The spiteful Carthaginian oligarchs, who sent letter after letter to Rome to denounce to the national foe the hero who had overthrown them as having entered into secret communications with the powers unfriendly to Rome, were contemptible, but their information was probably correct; and, true as it was that that embassy involved a humiliating confession of the dread with which the simple shofete of Carthage inspired so powerful a people, and natural and honourable as it was that the proud conqueror of Zama should take exception in the senate to so humiliating a step, still that confession was nothing but the simple truth, and Hannibal was of a genius so extraordinary, that none but sentimental politicians in Rome could tolerate him longer at the head of the Carthaginian state.
Parliament is always wrong: look at The Jupiter, and see how futile are their meetings, how vain their council, how needless all their trouble! With what pride do we regard our chief ministers, the great servants of state, the oligarchs of the nation on whose wisdom we lean, to whom we look for guidance in our difficulties! But what are they to the writers of The Jupiter?
As the recent $7 billion investment by British Petroleum proves, Russia and, by extension, central and east Europe is Europe's growth zone and natural economic hinterland. Yet, it is America that captures the imagination of Russian oligarchs and lesser businesses. Russia aims to become the world's largest oil producer within the decade.
By this they had brought shame and disaster upon the nation, in precisely the same manner that the same results had been produced by the same means, when these were used by the oligarchs of the Dutch Republic, prior to the downfall of the Netherlands.
The armies of Pompeius and Crassus still lay before the gates of the city. This reason now existed no longer; but still the dissolution of the armies was postponed. In the turn taken by matters it looked as if one of the two generals allied with the democracy would seize the military dictatorship and place oligarchs and democrats in the same chains. And this one could only be Pompeius.
They were the head and front of the junto of oligarchs who formed the Vehmgericht known as the Family Compact, and for all practical purposes their judgment in matters relating to the dispensing of patronage and the disposal of Crown property was final and conclusive.
In this the great gentry were more in the position of Napoleonic marshals than of Norman knights, but their position was worse; for the marshals might be descended from peasants and shopkeepers; but the oligarchs were descended from usurers and thieves. That, for good or evil, was the paradox of England; the typical aristocrat was the typical upstart.
It is, therefore, a class fit and willing to support the Whigs in their favourite scheme of centralisation, without which the Whigs can never long maintain themselves in power. Now, centralisation is the death-blow of public freedom; it is the citadel of the oligarchs, from which, if once erected, it will be impossible to dislodge them.
But such fierceness against the bulwarks of aristocracy, and such keenness in cutting through its heavy arguments, carried him farther. Logic forced him to pass from the attack on aristocracy to the attack on slavery, just as logic forces the Confederate oligarchs of to-day to pass from the defence of slavery to the defence of aristocracy.
The Whig oligarchs had their faults, but utter lack of sympathy with liberty, especially local liberty, and with their adventurous kindred beyond the seas, was by no means one of their faults. Chatham, the great chief of the new and very national noblesse, was typical of them in being free from the faintest illiberality and irritation against the colonies as such.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking