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More "Commons" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother having been Mrs. Siddons's dearest friend. Indeed, for many years of her life, Mrs. F—— seems to me to have postponed the claims even of her husband and children upon her time and attention, to her absolute devotion to her celebrated idol. Mr. F—— was a dutiful member of the House of Commons, and I suppose his boy was at school and his girl too young to demand her mother's constant care and superintendence, at the time when she literally gave up the whole of her existence to Mrs. Siddons during the London season, passing her days in her society and her ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the Oldinport family, and in that giddy elevation had enunciated a contemptuous opinion of boiled beef, which had been traditionally handed down in Shepperton as the direct cause of his ultimate reduction to pauper commons. His calves were now shrunken, and his hair was grey without the aid of powder; but he still carried his chin as if he were conscious of a stiff cravat; he set his dilapidated hat on with a knowing inclination towards the left ear; and when he ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... seemed to me that even with the aid of this fine, bright fire, the dinner took an unconscionable time to cook; but cooked it was, at last, and truly might the good woman stare at the travellers' appetites we had brought with us. She did not know what short commons we had been on ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... gravity of the position, he led them to seek the remedy in audacity and in union. He familiarized them with his theory, that the legal, historical government of the provinces belonged to the states-general, to a congress of nobles, clergy, and commons, appointed from each of the seventeen provinces. He maintained, with reason, that the government of the Netherlands was a representative constitutional government, under the hereditary authority of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... two-edged sword drawn, whereupon Hector seeing him called out to John that he would rather be burned where he was than face Donald Dubh. John called the latter away, and Hector rushed out into his nephew's arms and embraced him. That same night John and Hector, without "Dysman," saving God and such commons as were then present, agreed and condescended that Hector should have the estate till John was twenty-one years of age, and that John should live on his own purchases till then, Hector was to set the whole estate immediately, as tutor to John, which next day ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... hopelessly scotched although obviously not slain, and that Freethinkers should now devote themselves to cultivating the fields they had won instead of raiding into the enemy's territory. Alas for the illusions of hope! They were rudely dispelled by a few "scenes" in the House of Commons, and barred from all chance of re-gathering by the wild display of intolerance outside. I saw, in quite another sense than Garth Wilkinson's, the profound ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... inevitable under our system of competition for trade and markets. What a cry went up from the manufacturers of Great Britain when a bill to check the ruthless exploitation of babies in the cotton mills was introduced into the House of Commons. The very same arguments of interference with trade, despotic control over the right of the employe to bargain as an individual, are urged today, no matter how often their futility and ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... in the action in the Basque Roads, the admiralty went so far as to forge charts, and so to show that the admiral could not come to Cochrane's assistance, and Gambier was not only acquitted, but received a vote of thanks from the House of Commons for the victory in which he had taken no part. For four years Lord Cochrane received no appointment, but at the close of 1813 his uncle, Sir Alexander Cochrane, was selected for the command of the fleet on the North American station, and nominated ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... among them that of Cormantin, taking great quantities of goods belonging to our Company; he then sailed to Barbadoes, where he was beaten off by the forts. Then he captured twenty of our ships off Newfoundland, and so returned to Holland, altogether doing damage, as the House of Commons told His Majesty, to the extent of eight hundred thousand pounds. All this time the Dutch had been secretly preparing for war, which they declared in January, which has forced us to do the same, although we delayed a month in hopes that some accommodation ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... I know it!' she retorted. 'I was reading the life of Randolph Churchill the other day, and I came across a paragraph of filial admiration about the hold Lord Randolph had contrived to get so early in life over the House of Commons. It occurred to me to wonder just how much of a boy Lord Randolph was at the time. I was going to count up when I was saved the trouble by coming to a sentence that said he was then "an unproved stripling of thirty-two." You shouldn't laugh. It ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... House of Commons, Monday, July 21.—RITCHIE got another Bill through; not a measure of high imperial policy; nothing to do either with Heligoland or Zanzibar; only proposes to improve in various ways the dwellings of the industrial classes. Still, as JOKIM has shown in connection with one or two of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... comprised of House of Lords (consists of approximately 500 life peers, 92 hereditary peers and 26 clergy) and House of Commons (659 seats; members are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms unless the House is dissolved earlier) note: in 1998 elections were held for a Northern Ireland Assembly (because of unresolved disputes among existing parties, the transfer of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... you back, Tregellis, but you must really be more careful what you bring in upon your skirts. It was only yesterday that we had an infernal Dutchman here howling about some arrears of interest and the deuce knows what. 'My good fellow,' said I, 'as long as the Commons starve me, I have to starve you,' and so the ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... consequences were, that I myself, and the rest of my uncle's host, laboured with Clifford and his army to rebuild this same Dangerous Castle; and feeling no stomach for the cheer that the Douglas had left us, we suffered hard commons, though I acknowledge we did not hesitate to adopt for our own use such sheep and oxen as the miserable Scots had still left around their farm-houses; and I jest not, Sir Minstrel, when I acknowledge in sad earnest, that we ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Indeed it is difficult to see why the fellow does a thing so nameless and yet so formidable to look at, unless on the theory that he likes it. I suspect that is why; and I suspect it is at least ten per cent of why Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone have debated so much in the House of Commons, and why Burnaby rode to Khiva the other day, and why the Admirals courted war like ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nothing about that. 'He will probably be at the House of Commons, or too busy somewhere to come to me then. But why do you ask? Do you wish to ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university; and more home truths are to be learnt from listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending a formal one in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing anecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and gossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Chief-Justice Scroggs, for his arbitrary and illegal proceedings in the court of King's bench; and when the king declared his resolution not to sign the bill for excluding the duke of York, afterwards James II., he moved in the House of Commons that a bill might be brought in for the association of all his majesty's Protestant subjects. He also openly denounced the king's counsellors, and voted for an address to remove them. He appeared in defence of Lord Russell at his trial, at a time when it was scarcely more criminal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Weird-Eyed Wanton from the Crusty North, who can sing in five languages "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary." Ignoring the monotony of experience suffered by the ribs, and noting the obtrusiveness of one collar-bone, we may, with slight variation from a formula in use by the SPEAKER in the House of Commons, declare "The Nose has it." Happily no one regarding Lord CHARLES'S cheery countenance would guess that its most prominent feature had ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... non-resistance, was resolutely against war for any reason, good or bad. Other colonies often raised the more sordid objection that they were too poor to help in war. The colonial legislatures, indeed, with their eternal demand for the privileges and rights which the British House of Commons had won in the long centuries of its history, constitute the most striking of all the contrasts with Canada. In them were always the sparks of an independent temper. The English diarist, Evelyn, wrote, in 1671, that New England was in "a peevish and touchy humour." Colonists who go ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... advised their immediate restoration, and condemned the whole series of the measures of the President of the United States in relation thereto. A gentleman happening to be present who had heard Canning, Brougham, and Sir Robert Peel from the hustings and in the House of Commons, declared that the speech of Mr. Tazewell fully equalled their grandest efforts on such occasions; and all who heard it pronounced it a wonderful work of argument, eloquence, and declamation combined. A few days after the meeting, Mr. Tazewell was ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... London, and he didn't know when you'd come back, and he didn't know the name o' the place where you lived in London, though he said he thought it was in one o' them law courts, such as Westminster Hall or Doctors' Commons, or somethin' like that. So what was I to do? I couldn't send a letter by post, not knowin' where to direct to, and I couldn't give it into your own hands, and I'd been told partickler not to let anybody else know of it; so I'd nothing to do but to wait and see if you come back, and bide my time ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... midst of a political crisis. The House of Lords opposes a reform unanimously voted by the House of Commons. Great demonstrations are being held all over the country, to insist on the popular will being carried into effect, and there is a growing cry of "Down with the Lords." A spectator from another planet might wonder at all the fuss. He might marvel how forty millions of people needed to stamp ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... discouraging news which had prevailed, was heralded all over England by the ringing of the bells, and public thanksgiving. Bonfires blazed through the length and breadth of the land, it was a national victory which King, Peers and Commons could not sufficiently extol, and still what has been the ultimate result? By removing the French power from Canada—the only counterpoise to keep down the restless and thriving New England colonies, New England, from being strong got to be defiant. The surrender of Canada hastened the American ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... sole balance of State-business. Here, with great prudence, discourse is held of the importantest State-affairs, and of the supreamest persons in authority; and in their own imaginations know more then both the Houses of Lords and Commons. Although they never sate in Councel with any of their Footmen. Nay they know to the weight of an ace, and can give a perfect demonstration of it, which of the three Governments is best, Monarchy, Anarchy, or Democracy. Which many times takes such a deep root ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... evil cometh good, is strongly illustrated by these establishments at home; as the records of the Prerogative Office in Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove. Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady, surrounded by needy relatives, makes, upon a low average, a will a-week. The old gentleman or lady, never very remarkable in the best of times for good temper, is full of aches and pains from head to foot; full of ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... and kind friend. I was happy to see him. He may be considered now as the head of the religious party in the House of Commons, a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a difficult situation; for the adaptation of religious motives to earthly policy is apt—among the infinite delusions of the human heart—to be a snare. But I could ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mere view of their comparative distances from this country. I understand that a gentleman of great experience and respectability in the commercial world, has presented a calculation to the committee of the House of Commons, which is now occupied with an inquiry into the state of this colony, from which it appears that a family, consisting of a man, his wife and two children, with five tons for their accommodation and for the reception of their ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... shelter had he for his head, Whatever winds might blow; A neighb'ring commons was his bed, Tho' ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... sat at tea in Armstrong's family dining-room, which adjoined the school commons, we were made aware of the return of the swimming party by the constant shuffle and tramp of feet through the hall and the noise of feeding in the next room. At our table were present Mrs. Armstrong, her sister (who ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... weather off the Horn, an' short-handed, an' the house full o' lashin' water—not a dry spot, fore an' aft. 'Gad! we had it sweet down there. Freezin', too, an' th' sails hard as old Harry. Ah! a fine voyage, wi' rotten grub an' short commons at that!" ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... at our parting was so suffocating that I clung to the shelter of my new friend, the stranger of that House of Commons dinner. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... first consul was not as good as he, was quite enough to provoke her into making the consul her emperor, and doing her best to chastise her insulters. Charles James Fox, in Parliament, pronounced the royal answer "odiously and absurdly wrong"; but the squires and borough-mongers of the House of Commons supported the action of the king by a majority of 265 to 64. It is for such infamies as this that Newfoundland has even to-day to bear all the inconveniences of the French claims on their shores. I do not blame the French for insisting that England shall scuttle out of Egypt before she yields ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... Commons hath he pil'd with greeuous taxes And quite lost their hearts: the Nobles hath he finde For ancient quarrels, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... like, I am free to confess that so far as related to GOOD LIVING, I never passed three months more satisfactorily than while I was on board the Mary of Newbern. I often compared it with my wretched fare on board the Schooner John, or with my "short commons" in the Liverpool Infirmary, and the result was decidedly in favor of the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... again, and let the[1] sound From one pole to another pole rebound; The earth and sky each be a battledore, And keep the sound, that shuttlecock, up an hour: To Doctors' Commons for a licence I Swift as an arrow from ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... foreign service. As his heir, I inherit the claim, which has been formally recognized by the present Ministers. My petition for a settlement will be presented by friends of mine who can advocate my interests in the House of Commons." ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... in the Commons Mr. BOTTOMLEY made bitter complaint to the SPEAKER that he had been evicted from his favourite corner-seat by the Member for South-East St. Pancras. Mr. LOWTHER administered chilly consolation. Those little contretemps were apt to occur at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... matter we worked round the intention of the Act more successfully. We have never been able to understand why the Liberal party in the House of Commons should object to Local Self-Government taking place in public-houses. The objection implies a distrust of the people. And it so happens that down here we always take a glass of grog before inaugurating an era; we should as soon think of praetermitting this ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be enough to answer to these critics that Parnell could never hold the place he does in history, that he could never have overawed the House of Commons as he did, nor could he have emerged so triumphantly from the ordeal of The Times Commission were he not superabundantly endowed with all the elements and qualities of greatness. But apart from this no dispassionate student of the Parnell period can deny that it was fruitful ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Thomas Babington Macaulay, (1800-1859), an active and versatile man, who won splendid success in many fields of labor. He was prominent in public life as one of the leading orators and writers of the Whig party. He sat many times in the House of Commons, as member for Calne, for Leeds, and {281} for Edinburgh, and took a distinguished part in the debates on the Reform bill of 1832. He held office in several Whig governments, and during his four years' service in British India, as member of the Supreme Council ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... long forgotten that he initiated, drafted and carried through the House of Commons when he sat in that assembly as member for Exeter a Bill emancipating married women from the cruel conditions of servitude whereby their own earnings could legally be taken from them ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... tract, Dryden does not confine himself to answering his friend's arguments. He ridicules, what Shadwell had ridiculed before, Howard's coxcombical affectation of universal knowledge, makes sarcastic reference to an absurdity of which his opponent had been guilty in the House of Commons, mercilessly exposes his ignorance of Latin, and the uncouthness and obscurity of his English. The brothers-in-law afterwards became reconciled, and in token of that reconciliation Dryden cancelled ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... before been there, and had frequently met Mr. Edgeworth at Mrs. Ruxton's. In 1795 my father was presented to the living of Collon, in the county of Louth, where he resided from that time. His vicarage was within five minutes' walk of the residence of Mr. Foster, then Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, the dear friend of Mr. Edgeworth, who came to Collon in the spring of 1798 several times, and at last offered me his hand, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... constitution allows any share of power, though small, to an order of men who possess a large share of property, it is easy for them gradually to stretch their authority, and bring the balance of power to coincide with that of property. This has been the case with the House of Commons in ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... unlike than a soldier and a sailor? the children of fashion that stroll in St. James's and Hyde Park, and the care-worn hirelings, that recreate themselves, with their wives and their brats, with a little fresh air on a Sunday near Islington? The houses of lords and commons have each their characteristic manners. Each profession has its own, the lawyer, the divine, and the man of medicine. We are all apes, fixing our eyes upon a model, and copying him, gesture by gesture. We are sheep, rushing headlong ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... man with a heart and a brain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest house, the biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social homage, public honours, political power, is ready at his command. Does he fancy a seat in the British House of Commons, the best club in London, as it has been truly called? All other claims, those of the public service included, at once give way. I remember a question arising about a nomination for a certain constituency (a working ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... reformers. There had arisen in England a system of patronage, under which it had become gradually necessary for politicians to use their influence for the purchase of political support. A member of the House of Commons, holding office, who might chance to have five clerkships to give away in a year, found himself compelled to distribute them among those who sent him to the House. In this there was nothing pleasant to the distributer of patronage. Do away with ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... heart's content; for Aubrey House was their head-quarters, and all were out in full force. It was cheering to our spinster to find that things had moved a good deal since a former visit, five or six years before, when Mill had carried into the House of Commons a Woman's Rights petition that filled both arms. People laughed then, and the stout-hearted women laughed also, but said, 'Our next petition shall be so big it will have to go in a wheel-barrow.' Now the same people talked over the question soberly, and began to think something besides fun might ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... strengthened and improved both in bodily and mental powers, that he soon eclipsed in his oratorical efforts all his competitors for public favour. So popular a talent speedily gained him the suffrage of the Commons; and, being sent to Sicily as Quaestor, at a time when the metropolis itself was visited with a scarcity of corn, he acquitted himself in that delicate situation with such address as to supply the clamorous wants of the people without oppressing the province ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... returned, and reported that King Louis, with a small army, was within fifteen leagues of Peronne. He had quickly assembled the three estates at Paris, all of whom promised the king their aid. In the language of the chancellor, "The commons offered to help their king with their bodies and their wealth, the nobles with their advice, and the clergy with their prayers." This appalling news set Peronne ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Franchise Union. Last year Miss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him by a blow from her hunting-crop. This year his wife, Lady Victoria Threlfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... been republished continually. What novelist of our time would not give much to have so splendid a public recognition as was provided when Lord Beaconsfield, then Mr. Disraeli, after the Abyssinian Expedition, pictured in the House of Commons "the elephants of Asia dragging the artillery of Europe ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Quaker family, and himself a member of the Society of Friends, he has never used the Quaker thee and thou, nor persisted in wearing his hat where other men take off theirs. In the House of Commons he conforms to the usages of the place, and speaks of "the noble lord opposite," and "my right honorable friend near me," just as though the Quakers never had borne their testimony against such ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... committed. Every man is innocent until condemned by a legal tribunal; and the fate of even the greatest of criminals, if he is withdrawn from the law, ought to make good people tremble in common, with others. But, as is the custom in the English House of Commons, when an opposition member goes out, he requests a ministerial member to pair off with him, not to alter the strength of either party, Bonaparte never struck the jacobins or the royalists without dividing his blows equally between them: he thus made friends of all those whose vengeance he served, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... predictions. His proceedings were deemed of sufficient importance to be twice made the subject of a parliamentary inquiry; and even after the Restoration—when a little more scepticism, if not more wisdom, might have been expected—we find him examined by a Committee of the House of Commons, respecting his fore-knowledge of the great fire of London. We know not whether it 'should more move our anger or our mirth,' to see an assemblage of British Senators—the cotemporaries of Hampden and Falkland—of Milton and Clarendon—in an age which roused into action ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... London earned the honourable distinction of being the only body of men in the realm who dared to resist the king's systematic abuse of the royal power. Henry had revived the unconstitutional practice of imposing taxes without the consent of the Commons; but the citizens opposed his illegal demands with such resolution that he was compelled to desist for the time and to proceed with greater caution for the future. Another distinguishing feature of this reign was the profuse extravagance of the citizens ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... brisk march over a scorched and rugged country, which had already been ransacked of all that could have supplied us with fresh provisions; it was many days since we had heard the creak of a commissary's wagon, and we had been on very short commons. There was no reason to expect much in the village we were now ordered to. The French, who had just marched out, would, of course, have helped themselves to whatever was portable, and must have previously pretty well drained the place. We made a search, however, judging that, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... class whom Mackintosh designates as "a few freeholders then accounted wealthy," [1]) by the exclusion of all others than such freeholders from all voice in the election of knights to represent the counties in the House of Commons, that a repetition of these confirmations of Magna Carta ceased to be demanded. ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... let me live in fashion, in fulness, and abundance of worldly glory; and I did not to his glory improve, as I should, that his good dispensation to me. But when I lived in full and fat pasture, I did there lift up the heel (Deut 32:15). Therefore he will now turn me into hard commons, that with leanness, and hunger, and meanness, and want, I may spend the rest of my days. But let him do this without murmuring and repining; let him do it in a godly manner, submitting himself to the judgment of God. 'Let ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The Commons at Westminster absurdly passed a vote of thanks to Herbert. James, not less absurdly, ordered bonfires to be lighted, and a Te Deum to be sung. But these marks of joy by no means satisfied Avaux, whose national ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a water-hole on one side, and three or four fine trees of large girth on the other, we unsaddled our horses and made up our fire. We had provisions enough for the evening, but should have to go on short commons the next day, unless we could shoot a paddy-melon or ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... without any such charges and exactions, as are before limited, whereby it is to be thought that more plentie of fish shall come into this Realme, and thereby to haue the same at more reasonable prices: Be it therefore enacted by the king our soueraigne Lord, and the lords and commons in this present parliament assembled, and by authoritie of the same, that neither the Admiral, nor any officer, or minister, officers or ministers of the Admiraltie for the time being, shall in any wise hereafter exact, receiue, or take by himselfe, his seruant, deputie, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... is visited now chiefly by old ladies whose husbands—to judge by the black lace caps—have left Lombard Street for heaven. At the hotel where I stopped, which was at the top of the Commons outside the thicker town, I was the only man in the breakfast room. Two widows, each with a tiny dog on a chair beside her, sat at the next table. This ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... understands everything but gaming and music. In the House of Commons I sometimes think him only the second man in England; out of it he is always the first.' Prior's Burke, p. 484. See ante, ii. 450. Bismarck once 'rang the bell' to old Prince Metternich. 'I listened quietly,' he said, 'to all his stories, merely jogging the bell every now and then till ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the English Premier declared in the House of Commons that it was one of England's principal tasks to prevent food for the German population from reaching Germany via neutral ports. Since March 1 England has been taking from neutral ships without ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... that's what we're going to do—with Sir Wilfrid Lang. He's one of this brutal Cabinet that keeps women in prison—one of the strongest of them. His speeches have turned votes against us in the House of Commons, time after time. We mean to be ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made possible the despotism of Louis. Richelieu and Mazarin had labored with great success to strengthen the crown at the expense of the nobles and the commons. The nation had no Parliament to represent it and voice its demands, for the Estates-General [7] had not been summoned since 1614 A.D. It did not meet again till 1789 A.D., just before the outbreak of the French Revolution. In France there was no Magna Carta to protect the liberties of the people ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the only marked quality of Coriolanus. His pride was equally great. He was a noble of the nobles, so haughty in demeanor and so disdainful of the commons that they grew to hate ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... unutterable stupidity.' Lord Althorp is 'a thick, large, broad-whiskered, farmer-looking man.' O'Connell, 'a well-doing country shopkeeper with a bottle-green frock and brown scratch wig.... I quitted them all (the House of Commons) with the highest contempt.' Of Thomas Campbell, the poet, it is written that 'his talk is small, contemptuous, and shallow; his face has a smirk which would befit a shopman or an auctioneer.' Wordsworth, 'an ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... building, four stories high, with green trimmings, standing on the last promontory of some grassy commons beloved of geese and billygoats. The short, black cedars, which appear to be a species of vegetable crape, give a stubby look of grief to the region round the poor-house, and, thickest at the Congressional ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... purchase; and, simply for officiating in the service of his religion, any Catholic priest was liable to be imprisoned for life. Some of these penalties had fallen into disuse; but, as Mr. Dunning stated to the English House of Commons, "many respectable Catholics still lived in fear of them, and some actually paid contributions to persons who, on the strength of this act, threatened them with prosecutions." Lord Shelburne stated in the House of Lords "that even the most odious part of this statute had been recently acted ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... "certainly he was not, although I don't think that he quitted the House of Commons, which he always loved, without a pang of real regret. Amongst the many kind congratulations he received—for no man ever had more friends—was a very pretty one from his old friend, Mrs. Proctor, in ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... me down in a chaise—sad chap—always reading Orme's History of India—wanted marry Frenchwoman. He wondered Mrs. Newcome didn't leave Tom anything—'pon my word, quite s'prise." The events of to-day, the House of Commons, the City, had little interest for him. All the children went up and shook him by the hand, with awe in their looks, and he patted their yellow heads vacantly and kindly. He asked Clive (several times) where he had been? and said he himself ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... swains, 'tis a tale most profane, How all the tyrannical powers, Kings, Commons and Lords, are uniting amain, To cut down this guardian of ours; From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms, Through the land let the sound of it flee, Let the far and the near, all unite with a cheer, In defense ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... definitely to establish the place of grazing in the administration of the national forests, properly subordinated to their functions of producing timber and conserving the water supply. Over 180,000,000 acres of grazing lands are still pastured as commons in the public domain with little or no regulation. This has made their use so uncertain that it has contributed greatly to the instability of the livestock industry. Very little of this land is suited to settlement or private ownership. Some plan ought to be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the proposal met with universal approval. It was at once agreed that Adrian Pauw, the now aged leader of the anti-Orange party in Holland, should go to London to intercede for the king's life. He was courteously received on January 26 o.s., and was granted an audience by the House of Commons, but the decision had already been taken and his efforts were unavailing. The execution of the king caused a wave of horror to sweep over the Netherlands, and an address of condolence was offered by the States-General to the Prince of Wales; but, to meet the wishes of the delegates of ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... are better than his speeches, and indeed his speeches are writings. But he seemed to feel himself more at ease, to have a fuller possession of his faculties in addressing the public, than in addressing the House of Commons. Burke was raised into public life: and he seems to have been prouder of this new dignity than became so great a man. For this reason, most of his speeches have a sort of parliamentary preamble to them: there is an air of affected modesty, and ostentatious trifling ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... hurt the oppressor. But the English (never having had a real revolution since the Middle Ages) find it very hard to understand this steady passion for being a nuisance, and mistake it for mere whimsical impulsiveness and folly. When an Irish member holds up the whole business of the House of Commons by talking of his bleeding country for five or six hours, the simple English members suppose that he is a sentimentalist. The truth is that he is a scornful realist who alone remains unaffected by the sentimentalism of the House of Commons. The Irishman is neither ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to uphold slavery; but allowing plebeian representation, to some extent, to the non-slaveholding classes. Others in the South had preference for constitutional monarchy, with a class of privileged legislators, and House of Commons, composing a government of checks and balances, analogous to the English government. Whatever the plan adopted, the leading idea was to institute a government that should be impervious, through one branch, to the future influence ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... look with favour on the expedition. I have had to point out to him that a Field Ambulance is not, as he would say, the House of Commons, and that there is a certain propriety binding even on a chauffeur and a limit to the freedom of the speech you may apply to your Commandant. This afternoon Tom has exceeded all the limits. The worst of Tom ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... the correspondent of PUNCHINELLO, I was on the floor of the House of Commons when Mr. GLADSTONE made his short speech, on the 25th, about England and possessions. I was standing by the O'DONOHUE when the Minister said, "A free and voluntary contract is the only basis for continued union." ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... affairs, and gifted with an excellent judgment was Thomas Fell. He was as popular now, in the autumn of his days among his country neighbours, as he had been in former times in Parliament, and among the Puritan leaders. Thrice had he represented his native county in the House of Commons, and had been a trusted friend of Oliver Cromwell himself. It was only latterly, men said, since Oliver showed a disposition to grasp more and ever more power for himself that the good Judge, unable to prevent that of which ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... 1672, was very short-lived. Indeed it barely lasted in force a twelvemonth. Granted on the 15th of March of that year, it was withdrawn on the 9th of March of the following year, at the instance of the House of Commons, who had taken alarm at a suspension of the laws of the realm by the "inherent power" of the sovereign, without the advice or sanction of Parliament. The Declaration was cancelled by Charles II., the monarch, it is said, tearing off the Great Seal with ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... for all offices except the one charged under the Constitution with the framing and execution of the laws of the land. Aristocracy decrees that in the House of Lords the Bishops shall have a voice; but in the House of Commons no clergyman can hold a seat, and for members of Parliament no woman votes. Would any Suffragist hold that a clergyman was the inferior of men who do sit in the House of Commons? They are excluded for the same reason that woman has not the ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... Parliament. I feel convinced that sooner or later the influence which every English Government has at its command—the powerful and demoralizing influence—sooner or later will sap the best party you can return to the House of Commons.'" ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil, Wake thy wild voice anew, Summon Clan Conuil. Come away, come away, Hark to the summons! Come in your war-array, Gentles and commons. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... boetram; and for being, generallie, daintie at his sizes, which she sayth is an ill example to soe manie young people, and becometh not one with soe little money in's purse: howbeit, I think 'tis not nicetie, but a weak stomach, which makes him loathe our salt-meat commons from Michaelmasse to Easter, and eschew fish of y'e coarser sort. He cannot breakfaste on colde milk like father, but liketh furmity a little spiced. At dinner, he pecks at, rather than eats, ruffs and reeves, lapwings, or anie smalle birds it may chance; but affects ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... justices the authority and power to impress any men they might select, with the exception of those who possessed a vote for members of parliament, was passed with the approval of parties on both sides of the House of Commons. ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... higher law the Americans professed the purest Whiggism, and they claimed that their resistance to the House of Commons and the jurisprudence of Westminster only carried forward the eternal conflict between Whig and Tory. By their closer analysis, and their fearlessness of logical consequences, they transformed the doctrine and modified ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... I am dazed, bewildered by his genius, his audacity, his marvellous courage and resource. Do you know, Stafford, I think it would be an excellent idea to abolish the House of Lords, the House of Commons, the monarchical government, and place the whole business in the hands of a Board to be presided over ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... 1563 extended the lines of restriction so that the oath of supremacy must be taken by a much greater number of officials—by all school-masters, lawyers, and petty officers of court, and by all members of the House of Commons; and so that the first refusal of any person to take it, as well as the first occasion on which any one should in writing or speech support the claims of the pope, should be punished by confiscation and outlawry, the second offence by the penalties of treason. [Footnote: Eliz., ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... earth's vast unknown of air, Out of all summer, from wave to wave, He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair, Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave, And take his commons there— ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... kings were poor and all those schemes unknown Which drain the people to enrich the throne; Ere yet a yielding Commons had supplied Those chains of gold by which themselves are tied, Then proud Prerogative, untaught to creep With bribery's silent foot on Freedom's sleep, Frankly avowed his bold enslaving plan And claimed a right from God to trample man! But Luther's schism had too much roused mankind For Hampden's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... is ever done in the House of Commons," says a Labour speaker. He forgets that the cleaners are at work in the building ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... would be hard if this were done without their consent. Accordingly they despatched Agesilaus as ambassador to the Mantineans, choosing him as the recognised ancestral friend of that people. When the ambassador arrived, however, the chief magistrates had no inclination to summon a meeting of the commons to listen to him, but urged him to make a statement of his wishes to themselves. He, on his side, was ready to undertake for himself and in their interests that, if they would at present desist ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... way our Hero got safely to college, Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge; A reading-machine, always wound up and going, He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing, Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat of satin, To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin That Tully could never have made out a word in it (Though himself ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... prominently, such as the new public-house opposite the Fleet, the "Fox Under the Hill," Sarjeants' Inn Coffee House, the public-house, opposite the Insolvent Debtors' Court, the Horn Coffee House in the Doctors' Commons and the "Spaniards," Hampstead Heath. Of these the "Fox Under the Hill," casually referred to by Mr. Roker as the spot where Tom Martin "whopped the coach-heaver," was situated on the Thames water-side in the Adelphi, at the bottom of Ivy Lane. The incident he related was no doubt a recollection ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... the subuersion of cathedrall churches to fill their owne cofers, not to ferret out concealed lands for the supporte of their owne priuat lordlines; not to destroy whole towneships for the erection of one statelie manour; not to take and pale in the commons to inlarge their seueralles; but like good and gratious common-wealth-men, in all things to preferre the peoples publike profit before their owne gaine and glorie, before their owne pompe and pleasure, before the satisfieng ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... thirtieth of November Durham landed at Plymouth, and by the middle of the following January he had finished his Report. Early in February it was printed and laid before the House of Commons. The {20} curious legend which credits Buller with the authorship is traceable to Brougham's spite. Macaulay and Brougham met in a London street. The great Whig historian praised the Report. Brougham belittled ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... still endures in England. The Commons pursue their project; there are massacres in Ireland. The Earl of Strafford ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... sway—though not his uncontested sway—over our weariness and our fears. The moral sentiment, after high tension, has undergone a corresponding relaxation. All liberal measures are for the time at a discount. The Bill for the Abolition of Church-Rates, once carried in the House of Commons by large majorities, is now lost. The nominal leaders of the Liberal party themselves have let their principles fall into abeyance, and almost coalesced with their Tory opponents. The Whig nobles who carried the Reform Bill have owned once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Punch,—I am told that Mr. ASQUITH considers that this has been a most unsatisfactory election. So do I. As you know, the principal function of the House of Commons nowadays is to provide amusing "copy" for the late editions of the evening papers and to give the "sketch"-writers a chance of exercising their pretty wits. As Mr. SPENCER LEIGH HUGHES once remarked in an after-dinner speech to Mr. BALFOUR, "You, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... supposed a product of 7165 kilogrammes. The very correct information afforded by two Portuguese manuscripts on the gold-washings of Minas Geraes, Minas Novas and Goyaz, in the Bullion Report for the House of Commons, 1810, acc. page 29, goes as far only as 1794, when the quinto do ouro of Brazil was 53 arrobas, which indicates a produce of more than 3900 kilogrammes paying the quint. In Mr. Tooke's important work, On High and Low Prices part 2 page 2) this produce is still estimated ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... inferior one, impatient of his origin, will turn out to be nothing but a servant of the aristocracy, and (more or less openly) of a barrack-master. He will be the servant, not of the King, not of the House of Commons, but of the House of Lords, and (as long as such influence lasts, which can be but a short while), of its military leader. He will do nothing whatsoever contrary to their dictation, upon peril of being ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... People of the Realm be greatly impoverished for the Cause aforesaid: Our Sovereign Lord the King considering the said Mischief, and willing thereupon to provide Remedy, by the advice & assent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and at the request of the said Commons, hath ordained and stablished, That no Man nor Woman, of what Estate or Condition they be, shall put their Son or Daughter, of whatsoever Age he or she be, to Serve as Apprentice to no Craft nor other Labour within any City or Borough ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Mr. Franklin had, it appeared, gone straight to his father's residence. He arrived at an awkward time. Mr. Blake, the elder, was up to his eyes in the business of the House of Commons, and was amusing himself at home that night with the favourite parliamentary plaything which they call "a private bill." Mr. Jeffco himself showed Mr. Franklin into his father's study. "My dear Franklin! why do you surprise me in this way? ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... crofter is accustomed to trace his claims, the land was owned by the chief and clansmen in common, and allotments and reallotments were made from time to time to individual clansmen, each of whom had a right to some portion of the land, while the commons were very extensive. Rent or service was paid to the chief, who had more or less control over the clan lands and often possessed an estate in severalty, with many personal dependants. In many cases ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... the news spread through the House of Commons; but at nine men in the inner lobbies were gossiping, not so much upon how far Russia, while ostensibly upholding the Shah, had pulled the strings by which the insurgents danced, as upon the manner in which the 'St. Geotge's Gazette', the Tory evening newspaper, had seized upon the incident and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... decisive epoch in the constitutional as well as in the intellectual history of England. The Great Charter was extorted from John; the representation of the commons from his successors; the universities were founded or organized; the romantic poetry of France began to be transfused into a language intelligible throughout England; and above all, the Anglo-Saxon tongue was in this century finally ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... considerable figure as public speakers; and Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible, cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth, now courting popularity, now calling servility ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... elegant sedilia. Wenlock grew up beneath the patronage and protection of its Priory, by means of which it received many royal favours, and was protected by many royal charters, one of which conferred the right, at a very early period, of representation in the Commons House of Parliament. ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... a Scholar: I have been matriculated in the University, wore out six Gowns there, seen some fools, and some Scholars, some of the City, and some of the Country, kept order, went bare- headed over the Quadrangle, eat my Commons with a good stomach, and Battled with Discretion; at last, having done many slights and tricks to maintain my wit in use (as my brain would never endure me to be idle,) I was expeld the University, only for stealing a ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... curing of her own hams. In the year 1800 the Carbury property was sufficient for the Carbury house. Since that time the Carbury property has considerably increased in value, and the rents have been raised. Even the acreage has been extended by the enclosure of commons. But the income is no longer comfortably adequate to the wants of an English gentleman's household. If a moderate estate in land be left to a man now, there arises the question whether he is not damaged unless ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... he was arrested after all. There had been an order of the House of Commons for his arrest and for the burning of his books, possibly, as Masson thinks, obtained by his friends to make it seem unnecessary to except him in the Indemnity Bill. The books were duly burnt, or such copies of them as came to the hands of the hangman; and ultimately, at some uncertain ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... are a good prophet. Oh, into what a state have the scoundrels brought this devoted kingdom. If the House of Commons would but melt down their faces, it would greatly assist the copper currency—we ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... before the fascinated eyes of the people in the two most celebrated countries of Europe. The English commenced their career of extravagance somewhat later than the French; but as soon as the delirium seized them, they were determined not to be outdone. Upon the 22nd of January 1720, the House of Commons resolved itself into a Committee of the whole House, to take into consideration that part of the King's speech at the opening of the session which related to the public debts, and the proposal of the South Sea Company towards the redemption and sinking ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... possessed the higher truth. Anyhow, while he and his had (thanks to a very small property which came with the late Mrs Gainsborough) always just enough to eat, they had always just not enough of anything else; short commons were ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... at the same time, that the legislature approved their sentiments, a bill was brought in and passed, in the House of Lords, for the better carrying on the war in the West Indies, which was lost, however, by a kind of ministerial craft, in the House of Commons; and soon after, for reasons which have never yet been explained to the public, all designs of this nature were laid aside. The only expedition of this nature, during the whole war, was that of the Duke and Duchess, under the command of Captain Woods ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Eve a great tournament was to be held in London, which the archbishop had devised to keep together lords and commons, lest they should grow estranged in the troublous and unsettled times. To the which tournament there came, with many other knights, Sir Ector, Arthur's foster-father, who had great possessions near to London; and with him came his son, Sir Key, ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... the aristocracy of England and her upper middle class, in the main, still sympathized with the South, while the English cabinet tried to maintain neutrality. Four-fifths of the House of Lords were "no well-wishers of anything American, and most of the House of Commons voted in sympathy ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... a Town and a Village.—The other night it was warmly contested in the Reform debate in the House of Commons, whether Bilston and Sedgeley, in Staffordshire, were towns or villages. Mr. Croker spoke of the "village of Bilston," and the "rural district of Sedgeley," but Sir John Wrottesley maintained that the right hon. gentleman would find nothing in Bilston that would give him any idea of sweet Auburn. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... Lecturer, and her Course on the Physiology of the External Senses was a perfect model of elegant composition and refined oratory. Mrs. Gent died at the residence of her husband, Thomas Gent, Esq. Doctor's Commons, after a month of severe suffering, which she bore with singular fortitude, and the most pious resignation. There is a fine bust of her, by Behnes; it was in the Exhibition two years since, and, from ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... with the dead bodies of our sons and daughters. But why should I complete the picture? If you fail—and you must fail—you will fling the country into the arms of England. Our gentry will be terrified, our commons will be cowed. Designing Englishmen will make an easy prey of us. They will take from us even the hard-earned measure of independence we already possess. We shall become, and we shall remain, a contemptible province of their Empire instead of a sovereign and independent nation. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... further discussion of the prerogatives of the crown Mr. Otis said: "When the Parliament shall think fit to allow the colonists a representation in the House of Commons, the equity of their taxing the colonists will be as clear as their power is, at present, of doing it if ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... of appointments would have been given in all cases to persons qualified for them. But no: it was convenient to pay compliments; and Lord Colchester, whose talents and knowledge insured him respect as Speaker of the House of Commons, or as a British nobleman, was placed for years in the situation as one of the Commissioners of the Board of Longitude, for which every competent judge knew him to be wholly unfit. What was the return which he made for ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... that at the present time the mass of middle-class people are not only acquainted with, but convinced of, the truth, that, long before the war, the House of Commons had become a fraud; that its debates did not turn upon matters which really divided opinion, and that even its paltry debating points, the pretence of a true opposition ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... Jesu." To these may be added Mr. Simpson's biography of Campion. For our constitutional history during Elizabeth's reign we have D'Ewes's Journals and Townshend's "Journal of Parliamentary Proceedings from 1580 to 1601," the first detailed account we possess of the proceedings of the House of Commons. Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce gives details of the wonderful expansion of English trade during this period, and Hakluyt's collection of Voyages tells of its wonderful activity. Amidst a crowd of biographers, whose number marks the new importance of individual life and action at ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... at Plympton St. Mary, the 1886 elections were held, and my relative being in politics a conservative, took an active part in the return of Sir John Kennaway (who died a few years ago, father of the House of Commons). Mr. Newbery was chairman of many of his meetings at which I attended. A polling booth was at the school house at Plympton, and on the day of the poll, I was much amused to see gentlemen's carriages being driven to ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... subscription-rooms under authority, winked at by a pious corporation, patronized by nobles and gentlemen supporters of the turf, and who are good enough, sometimes, to make laws for us plebeians in the Houses of Lords and Commons. There is Doncaster, with policemen to keep order, and admit none but "respectable" people—subscribers, who fear Heaven and honour the Queen. Are you aware, my Lord Chief-Justice, are you aware, Mr Attorney, Mr Solicitor-General, have you the slightest notion, ye Inspectors of Police, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... burning of London, the popish plot, Godfrey's murder, and the Earl of Essex's death; and to crown all, it was pretended that the late King was poisoned by his orders: it was set forth that the King's religion made him incapable of the crown; that three subsequent houses of commons had voted his exclusion: the taking away of the old charters, and all the hard things done in the last reign, were laid to his charge: the elections of the present parliament were also set forth very odiously, with great indecency ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... shook his own ample person, but generally created a petty earthquake on every side of him. For the present, I shall not stop to particularize him more closely; but when I add that the person in question was a well-known member of the Irish House of Commons, whose acute understanding and practical good sense were veiled under an affected and well-dissembled habit of blundering that did far more for his party than the most violent and pointed attacks of his more accurate associates, some of my readers ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the British House of Commons are disappointing to the pilgrim in search of decorum. The Mother of Parliaments has trouble ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... 'hang up the aristocrats,' of heads promenaded on pikes, of women mounted astride of cannon, of trees of Liberty crowned with the red cap, of white-robed maidens and old men drawn about the streets in flower-wreathed cars; of imprisonments and guillotinings, of proclamations, and short commons, of cockades and plumes, swords and carmagnoles—it grows tedious! And then folk are beginning to lose the hang of it all. We have gone through too much, we have seen too many of the great men ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... legislation in regard to the theatres and the licensing of plays was made in 1734, when Sir John Barnard moved the House of Commons "for leave to bring in a bill for restraining the number of houses for playing of interludes and for the better regulating common players of interludes." It was represented that great mischief had been done in the city ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... so deeply stirred by the manner in which English investors and borrowing states had suffered from the system by which the business of international finance was handled, that a Select Committee of the House of Commons was "appointed to inquire into the circumstances attending the making of contracts for Loans with certain Foreign States and also the causes which have led to the non-payment of the principal moneys and interest due in respect of such loans." Its ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... class is the populace, between which and the patrician order a relation something like Roman clientage existed, contributing greatly to the maintenance of exclusively aristocratic power in the State. The greatest conspiracy (that of Marin Falier) which the commons ever moved against the oligarchy was revealed to one of the nobility by his plebeian creature, or client; and the government rewarded by every species of indulgence a class in which it had extinguished even the desire ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... undertook by his influence in the House of Commons to carry things agreeably to his Majesty's wishes" (Whalley); one who ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... and his fellow Catholics non-resistants, because for two hundred years they submitted to exclusion from the House of Lords and the House of Commons, rather than qualify themselves for a seat by an oath abjuring the Pope? Were the non-juring Bishops of England non-resistants, when they went down to the grave without taking their seats in the House of Lords, rather than take an oath denying the Stuarts and to support ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... produce of the land has been decreasing, or even that it has been absolutely stationary during the last century, few will be disposed to believe. The enclosure of commons and waste lands certainly tends to increase the food of the country, but it has been asserted with confidence that the enclosure of common fields has frequently had a contrary effect, and that large tracts of land which formerly produced great quantities of corn, by ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Education in Sexual Hygiene for Young Working Women. Charities and the Commons, vol. 15, pp. ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... Mr. Montague Mathew, in the house of commons, during the last session of parliament, that Mr. Mathew Montague was no more like him, than a horse chesnut ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... foam-fenced prison in the South Atlantic, Great Britain gave back many of the fruits which it had cost her much, in the lives of her brave and the sufferings of her poor, to win; and Castlereagh defended this policy in the House of Commons on the curious ground that it was expedient "freely to open to France the means of peaceful occupation, and that it was not the interest of this country to make her a military and conquering, instead of a commercial and pacific nation."* (* Parliamentary Debates ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... render homage to Philip, or sacrifice any of your faithful counselors. A fine recompense have the people of Oreus got, for trusting themselves to Philip's friends and spurning Euphraeus! Finely are the Eretrian commons rewarded, for having driven away your embassadors and yielded to Clitarchus! Yes; they are slaves, exposed to the lash and the torture. Finally he spared the Olynthians, who appointed Lasthenes to command ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... King retires to Oxford. State of the kingdom. Treaty at Oxford. Intrigues during the treaty. Return of the Queen. Fall of Reading. Waller's plot. Solemn vow and covenant. Death of Hampden. Actions of Sir William Waller. The Lords propose a peace. Are opposed by the Commons. New preparations for war. Battle of Newbury. New great seal. Commissioners sent to Scotland. Solemn league and covenant. Scots prepare for war. Covenant taken in England. Charles seeks aid from Ireland. Federative assembly of the Catholics. Their apologies and ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... to short commons," went on Plunkett. "Therefore, Mr. Meredith, we are put to the necessity of taking a look ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... round the intention of the Act more successfully. We have never been able to understand why the Liberal party in the House of Commons should object to Local Self-Government taking place in public-houses. The objection implies a distrust of the people. And it so happens that down here we always take a glass of grog before inaugurating an era; we should as ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wag in the House of Commons announced unctuously to a somnolent assembly that all men with eighteen months' service, or over, in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force had been granted, or were in process of being granted, leave to England. He was an optimist; or ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... first proposed in England almost exactly the same arguments were brought against the proposal as are now advanced against the notification of venereal disease. Sir W. Foster, member for Ilkeston, and a medical man of standing, speaking in the House of Commons in the debate on the Infectious Diseases Notification Bill, on ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... time when the Earl of Oxford and the Lord Bolingbroke used to drink healths to the Tories, the Church of England considered those noblemen as the defenders of its holy privileges. The lower House of Convocation (a kind of House of Commons) composed wholly of the clergy, was in some credit at that time; at least the members of it had the liberty to meet, to dispute on ecclesiastical matters, to sentence impious books from time to time to the flames, that is, books written ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... these national ideas concerning the laws of hospitality, and are generous in their entertainment of each other, even although it means that their monthly supply of grain will run short, and that they will be hard put to it, and have to live on short commons during the last days of the month. People holiday-making, or out of work, will forage about in search of free meals, and will drop in here and there just about dinner time without much thought as to whether their company ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... frequent, short, and useless Parliaments, tell the Gentry, grown weary of the great expences of Elections, should sit at home, and trouble themselves no more but leave the People expos'd to the practices of them, and of their Party; who if they carry one House of Commons for their turn, will make us Slaves and Papists by ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... responsible for the bitter hatred which was borne to him by a large body of his country-men, [12] and which found its expression in the malignant insinuations in which Burke, to his everlasting shame, indulged in the House of Commons. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... BRITAIN. Parliament, House of Commons. First report from the Select committee on sugar and coffee ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... by the British officers, and often insulted. Many stories are told illustrative of English sentiment toward him. A member of Parliament, about to address the House of Commons, happening, as he rose, to see Arnold in the gallery, said, pointing to the traitor, "Mr. Speaker, I will not speak while that man is in the House." George the Third introduced Arnold to Earl Barcarras, one of Burgoyne's officers at Bemis's Heights. "Sire," said the proud old Earl as he turned ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... dancing master, and I should have thought just the opposite. I should have said, "This Englishman is no courtier; I never heard that courtiers have a timid bearing and a hesitating manner. A man whose appearance is timid in the presence of a dancer might not be timid in the House of Commons." Surely this M. Marcel must take his fellow-countrymen for so ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... be disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before discoursed or written of, argues first a singular good will, contentedness and confidence in your prudent foresight, and safe government, lords and commons; and from thence derives itself to a gallant bravery and well grounded contempt of their enemies, as if there were no small number of as great spirits among us, as his was who when Rome was nigh besieged by ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... Kirby and Tom Coper, Ben showing much verbal respect and outward deference for his umpire's judgment and experience, but managing to get the ball done his own way after all; whilst outside the shop, the rest of the eleven, the less-trusted commons, are shouting and bawling round Joel Brent, who is twisting the waxed twine round the handles of bats—the poor bats, which please nobody, which the taller youths are despising as too little and too light, and the smaller are abusing as too heavy and two large. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... the "Government of New Caledonia bill," on 9th July, the Colonial Secretary said in his place in the House of Commons:—"The Thompson River district is described as one of the finest countries in the British dominions, with a climate far superior to that of countries in the same latitude on the other side of the mountains. Mr Cooper, who gave valuable evidence before our committee on this district, with ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... Germany apologizing and offering amends. But there may be some audacious logic by which Germany can justify such conduct. Talking of Belgium, I was referred the other day to the report of the debates in the House of Commons found in the 10th volume of Cobbett's Parliamentary Reports, touching the attack on Copenhagen by England in 1808, in which the Ministry justified its ruthless attack upon a neutral power in almost precisely the same language that Von Bethmann ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... While undistinguish'd trifles swell the scene, The last new play and fritter'd magazine. Thus 'tis in life, where first the proud, the great, In leagued assembly keep their cumbrous state; Heavy and huge, they fill the world with dread, Are much admired, and are but little read: The commons next, a middle rank, are found; Professions fruitful pour their offspring round; Reasoners and wits are next their place allowed, And last, of vulgar tribes a countless crowd. First, let us view the form, the size, the dress; For these the manners, nay the mind, express: That weight ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... Russell, then leader of the House of Commons, and Secretary of State for the {71} Colonies, selected a new governor-general of Canada to complete the work begun by Durham, he entrusted to him an elaborate system of government, most of it experimental and as ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... as the correspondent of PUNCHINELLO, I was on the floor of the House of Commons when Mr. GLADSTONE made his short speech, on the 25th, about England and possessions. I was standing by the O'DONOHUE when the Minister said, "A free and voluntary contract is the only basis for continued union." I whispered to O'DONOHUE—Good for Ireland! He did me the honor to repeat it aloud; ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... hereditary; governor general appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister for a five-year term; following legislative elections, the leader of the majority party or the leader of the majority coalition in the House of Commons is automatically designated prime minister by the ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... am persuaded, had they been led immediately into a battle begun to their hands, they would have laid about them like furies; for there is nothing like victory to flush a young soldier. Thus, while the humour was high, and the fermentation lasted, away we marched, and, passing one of their great commons, which they call moors, we came to the river, as he called it, where our lieutenant was posted with his four men; 'twas a little brook fordable with ease, and, leaving a guard at the pass, we advanced to the top of a small ascent, from whence ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... 8th Corps, was another man of character in high command. He spoke of himself in the House of Commons one day as "a plain, blunt soldier," and the army roared with laughter from end to end. There was nothing plain or blunt about him. He was a man of airy imagination and a wide range of knowledge, and theories on life and war which he put forward ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Vote of confidence in Commons. The PM asked the indulgence of the House and played a record of Churchill's famous speech: "... Turning to the question of invasion ... We shall not fail; we shall go on to the end ... We shall defend our island whatever the cost. We shall fight on beaches, in cities and on the hills. We ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the most unutterable stupidity.' Lord Althorp is 'a thick, large, broad-whiskered, farmer-looking man.' O'Connell, 'a well-doing country shopkeeper with a bottle-green frock and brown scratch wig.... I quitted them all (the House of Commons) with the highest contempt.' Of Thomas Campbell, the poet, it is written that 'his talk is small, contemptuous, and shallow; his face has a smirk which would befit a shopman or an auctioneer.' Wordsworth, 'an old, very loquacious, indeed, quite prosing man.' Southey 'the shallowest ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... culture were in separate compartments. The barbarians were not only literally in the saddle, but on the front bench in the House of commons, with nobody to correct their incredible ignorance of modern thought and political science but upstarts from the counting-house, who had spent their lives furnishing their pockets instead of their minds. Both, however, were practised in dealing with money and with ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... none other than that precocious marvel of England who but a year before had taken the breath from the House of Commons, and had sent his fame flying over the Channel and across the wide Atlantic; the talk of London, who set the fashions, cringed not before white hairs, or royalty, or customs, or institutions, and was now, at one and twenty, Junior Lord of the Admiralty—Charles ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... taken in Britain of the Sand River convention, which the Conservative ministry of that day had approved, and when, at the instance of delegates sent home by those who, in the Orange River territory, desired to remain subject to the British crown, a motion was made in the House of Commons asking the Queen to reconsider the renunciation of her sovereignty over that territory, the motion found no support and had to be withdrawn. Parliament, indeed, went so far as to vote forty-eight thousand ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... unto the Crown, Thereby disburdening many heavie taxes Impos'd upon the commons of ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... time; and though he met with opposition, he reprimanded the refractory members in such severe terms, that his request was at last complied with. The cardinal afterwards, attended by several of the nobility and prelates, came to the house of commons; and in a long and elaborate speech laid before them the public necessities, the danger of an invasion from Scotland, the affronts received from France, the league in which the king was engaged with the pope and the emperor; and he demanded a grant of eight hundred thousand pounds, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Presidential chair, turned his attention to the improvement of the National Capital, which was then unworthy of the American people. The streets generally were wagon tracks, muddy in the winter and dusty in the summer, while the numerous public reservations were commons overgrown with weeds. The growth of the city had been slow and labored, the real estate being generally in the hands of a few old fogies who manifested no disposition to improve or to sell. For many years the metropolis had been petted and spoiled by the general Government, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... wrote a book and several pamphlets, delivered public lectures, and raised a discussion in the public press. The London City Corporation petitioned Parliament in 1842 for the abolition of burials within the City, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons was at once entrusted with ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... practise as such in the court in which Sir George Jessel, master of the rolls, presided. Chitty was highly successful in his method of dealing with a very masterful if exceedingly able judge, and soon his practice became very large. In 1880 he entered the house of commons as liberal member for Oxford (city). His parliamentary career was short, for in 1881 the Judicature Act required that the master of the rolls should cease to sit regularly as a judge of first instance, and Chitty was selected to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... and said, "Let us go upstairs." But the men had most of them to go, some to the House of Commons, others to ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... community, the reasons, in short why women want and are asking for the vote, the universal reasons why men, even good men, cannot be trusted to take care of women's interests, were never better or more tersely summed up than in a story told by Philip Snowden in the debate in the British House of Commons on the Woman Suffrage Bill of 1910, known as the Conciliation Bill. He said that after listening to the objections urged by the opponents of the measure, he was reminded of a man who, traveling with his wife in very rough country, ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... women were taught to find amusement in domestic duties, instead of seeking it at a circulating library, assemblies, and balls, we should hear of fewer appeals to Doctor's Commons and the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... part of the parliament consisted of an assembly, called the House of Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and love of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation. And that these two bodies made ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... measure from the Commons down to each end of the Purt, Round the Abbey, Moy, and Knather,— I wish no one any hurt; The Main Street, Back Street, College Lane, the Mall, and Portnasun, If any foes of mine are there, I pardon every one. ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... and himself a member of the Society of Friends, he has never used the Quaker thee and thou, nor persisted in wearing his hat where other men take off theirs. In the House of Commons he conforms to the usages of the place, and speaks of "the noble lord opposite," and "my right honorable friend near me," just as though the Quakers never had borne their testimony against such vanity. In his dress, too, there is only the faintest intimation ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... a description of the ready-made article." Mrs. Sidgwick in "Salt and Savour," page 232, wrote: "But what intrigued her was Little Mamma's remark at breakfast," From the Parliamentary news, one learns that "Mr. Harcourt intrigued the House of Commons by his sustained silence for two years" and that "London is interested in, and not a little intrigued, by the statement." This use of intrigue in the sense of "perplex, puzzle, trick, or deceive" dates from 1600. Then it fell into a state of somnolence, and after an existence ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... dare to till, will be fouled with the dead bodies of our sons and daughters. But why should I complete the picture? If you fail—and you must fail—you will fling the country into the arms of England. Our gentry will be terrified, our commons will be cowed. Designing Englishmen will make an easy prey of us. They will take from us even the hard-earned measure of independence we already possess. We shall become, and we shall remain, a contemptible province of their Empire ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... and occasionally of John Mitchel. But I could not agree with McNeice that he had changed his tune. He still seemed to be editing a rebel paper and still advocated the use of physical force for resisting the will of the King, Lords and Commons of our constitution. It is the merest commonplace to say that Ireland is a country of unblushing self-contradictions; but I do not think that the truth of this ever came home to me quite so forcibly as when I read The Loyalist that it would be better, if necessary, ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... people from the country. Berlin itself could not contain this influx. The newcomers were obliged gypsy fashion to put up as best they could in the neighborhood. In holes and caves on the heaths and commons, in huts made of brushwood, they bivouacked for months, and these men who lived like prairie dogs in such apparent misery were merry over their houseless, wild existence. As a matter of fact they experienced no actual want, as there was work for every one who could and would labor. The ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... of the most cherished beliefs of the House of Commons is that upon the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill anything under the sun may be discussed. Colonel YATE was justly surprised, therefore, when the SPEAKER ruled that he was out of order in criticising the Indian Government for its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... Many were the conflicts between the different members of the state, and broils, with the character of civil war in miniature, were of frequent occurrence. The submergence of the aristocratic element, the nobles, destroyed a natural balance of power between the bishop-prince and the people. The commons exerted power beyond their intelligence. Annual elections, party contests headed by rival demagogues kept the capital, and, to a lesser extent, the smaller towns of the little state ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... the people; so much resolution he had to bear the weight of their odium. The evil gained ground daily, not only by open clamours, but, which was far more dangerous, by a secession and by secret meetings. At length the consuls, so odious to the commons, went out of office: Servilius liked by neither party, Appius highly esteemed ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... sow the same crop as his neighbour, and compelled by law to allow his lot to lie fallow with the rest every third year. The remains of this common-field system are still evident in many parts of the country, the fields being termed "lot meadows," or "Lammas lands." Our commons, too, many of which remain in spite of numerous inclosures, are evidences of the communal life of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... could hardly be seen. She was in her Corsair state of mind, divided between her jewels and her poetry, and caring not very much for the increased rank which Lord Fawn could give her. "The Sawab's case is coming on in the House of Commons this very night," he said, in answer to a question from Miss Macnulty. Then he turned to Lady Eustace. "Your cousin, Mr. Greystock, is going to ask a ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... said, that individuals with great personal defects have made a considerable figure as public speakers; and Mr. Wilberforce, among others, may be held out as an instance. Nothing can be more insignificant as to mere outward appearance, and yet he is listened to in the House of Commons. But he does not wield it, he does not insult or bully it. He leads by following opinion, he trims, he shifts, he glides on the silvery sounds of his undulating, flexible, cautiously modulated voice, winding his way betwixt heaven and earth, now courting ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... insecurity of its tenure. Nothing will ever make a seat in this House not an object of desire to numbers by any means or at any charge, but the depriving it of all power and all dignity. This would do it. This is the true and only nostrum for that purpose. But a House of Commons without power and without dignity, either in itself or its members, is no House of Commons for ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... desirable more definitely to establish the place of grazing in the administration of the national forests, properly subordinated to their functions of producing timber and conserving the water supply. Over 180,000,000 acres of grazing lands are still pastured as commons in the public domain with little or no regulation. This has made their use so uncertain that it has contributed greatly to the instability of the livestock industry. Very little of this land is suited to settlement or private ownership. Some plan ought to be adopted for its use in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... Parlement consists of the Senate or Senat (members appointed by the governor general with the advice of the prime minister and serve until reaching 75 years of age; its normal limit is 105 senators) and the House of Commons or Chambre des Communes (301 seats; members elected by direct, popular vote to serve for up to five-year terms) elections: House of Commons - last held 27 November 2000 (next to be held by 2005) election results: House of Commons - percent of vote by party - Liberal Party 41%, Canadian ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the town, to whom they extend their charities. Each of their houses is a model of neatness, and a dispensary of gentle kindnesses; and the ecclesiastics have formed a modest centre of civilisation in the place. A dreary joke was made in the House of Commons about Bishop Alexander and the Bishopess his lady, and the Bishoplings his numerous children, who were said to have scandalised the people of Jerusalem. That sneer evidently came from the Latins and Greeks; for what could the ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a British statesman of Irish birth, who lived at the time of the American Revolution. While William Pitt opposed, in the House of Lords, the policy of the British government, Edmund Burke delivered, in the House of Commons, his famous speech on the Conciliation of the Colonies, March 22, 1775. This extract is taken from the closing paragraphs of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the persistent animosity of Pitt. The preliminaries of peace had been already signed at Fontainebleau on the 3d of November, 1762: when they were communicated to Parliament, the fallen minister, still the nation's idol and the real head of the people, had himself carried to the House of Commons. He was ill, suffering from a violent attack of gout; two of his friends led him with difficulty to his place, and supported him during his long speech; being exhausted, he sat down towards the end, contrary to all the usages of the House, without, however, having ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be shifted here and there with a hope of meeting obvious mischances all too familiar in the past. In industry and education administrative reform is constantly going on, with the hope of reducing friction and increasing efficiency. The House of Commons not long ago came to new terms with the peers. The League of Nations has already had to adjust the functions and influence of the ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... motions were made in both houses that an humble address in reply be presented to his Majesty, professing loyalty to his person, and supporting his views and measures. The mover in the Commons was Thomas Ackland, who, in the course of his speech at the time, strongly urged the policy of coercion, and emphasized his approval of it by declaring that it would have been better for his country that America had never been known than that "a great consolidated western empire" ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... should be punished with exile. For, on all occasion of any sudden and urgent war, an arrow of wood, looking like iron, used to be passed on everywhere from man to man as a messenger. (n) But if any one of the commons went in front of the vanguard in battle, he was to rise from a slave into a freeman, and from a peasant into a nobleman; but if he were nobly-born already, he should be created a governor. So great a guerdon did valiant men earn of old; and thus ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... at this college you commence Master of Arts: The scholars are not in commons, and kept to strict rules as in the colleges in England, nor wear gowns; they lodge and diet in the town, as at the colleges in Holland, and are required to attend at their several classes from eight in ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... [Sidenote: The Iesus arriued in Tripolis.] And about the 9. day of March next following, we made saile from thence, and about the 18. day of the same moneth we came to Tripolis in Barbarie, where we were verie well intertained by the king of that countrey, and also of the commons. The commodities of that place are sweete oiles: the king there is a merchant, and the rather (willing to preferre himselfe before his commons) requested our said factors to traffique with him, and promised them that if they would take his oiles at his owne price, they should pay no maner of custome, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... looked with a very favourable countenance on our friend Alan, most of them being acquainted, more or less, with so old a practitioner as his father, and all, or almost all, affording, from civility, the same fair play to the first pleading of a counsel, which the House of Commons yields to the maiden speech of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... allows' is that the Kings and Ministers are accountable and liable for breach of law as well as others. Kettlewell, had he lived long enough, might have come to transfer his idea of sovereignty to Kings, Lords, and Commons speaking through an Act of Parliament, and if so, he would have urged active obedience to its enactments, when not contrary to conscience, and passive obedience if they were so contrary. Therefore, were he alive to-day, and did he think it contrary to conscience ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... cheapening the passage to kingdom come, if they thought a dollar and two cents might be saved in the fare! Now the rationale of the matter is this:—as soon as persons establish a reputation for meanness—beating down folks, they fall victims to all sorts of shaves and short commons, and have the fine Saxony drawn over their eyes—from the nose to the occiput; they get the meanest "bargains," offals, &c., that others would hardly have, even at a heavy discount. Then some folks are so wonderful sharp, too, that we wonder their very shadow does not often cut somebody. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... At length it was lost, or said to be; and for the next five minutes she was face to face with the coachman, go wherever he might, protesting that it should be 'made good,' though she took the question to the House of Commons. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... air of the Pomptine marshes with health of body. From the first day, she espouses the cause of Hastings with a presumptuous vehemence and acrimony quite inconsistent with the modesty and suavity of her ordinary deportment. She shudders when Burke enters the Hall at the head of the Commons. She pronounces him the cruel oppressor of an innocent man. She is at a loss to conceive how the managers can look at the defendant and not blush. Windham comes to her from the managers' box, to offer her refreshment. "But," says she, "I could not ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Bentbridge increased in frequency as the prospect of the general election became more real. A snap vote in the House of Commons on a minor question of administrative expenditure decided the matter suddenly towards the end of June. The Government determined on a dissolution. Fielding took Clarice Mallinson into dinner at Mr. Le Mesurier's house on the day after the date of the dissolution was ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... was quite dark Lovey Mary rolled something in a bundle and crept out of the house. After glancing cautiously up and down the tracks she made her way to the pond on the commons and dropped her bundle into ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... did the duke come to hear of it till some years after, when Mr. Brounker's ill course of life, and his abominable nature, had rendered him so odious, that it was taken notice of in parliament, and, upon examination, found to be true, as is here related; upon which he was expelled the house of commons, whereof he was a; member, as an infamous person, though his friend Coventry adhered to him, and used many indirect acts to have protected him, and afterwards procured him to have more countenance from the king than most men thought he deserved; being a person, throughout his whole life, never notorious ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... high-pressure modification of the steam-engine as applied to steam-carriages, to the last completed Steam Drag and Carriage attached; while the most material points of Mr. Gordon's views are fortified by a condensation of the evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons. All this and much more is accomplished within two hundred octavo pages, which a less economical and therefore less praiseworthy editor would have expanded into a costly quarto. Mr. Gordon's work has thus ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... first. He said, 'You all remember how I waited upon table in commons. You know that I afterwards went through college, but you do not know that to this man [and he pointed to a classmate] I was indebted for the money that paid for ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... when I was silent—"Vandyke was a dauber to you, Frank. I see thy sire before me in all his strength and weakness; loving and honouring the King as a sort of lord mayor of the empire, or chief of the board of trade—venerating the Commons, for the acts regulating the export trade—and respecting the Peers, because the Lord Chancellor sits on ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... University Convocation resolves to admit women as graduates, January 17.... Twelve women elected in London as poor-law guardians, April; fifteen in the country.... Married Women's Property act passed by the Lords and brought down to the Commons May 22; passed and returned to the Lords August 16; received royal assent August 18.... Addition to Municipal Franchise act (Scotland) by inclusion of police burghs.... Women first voted in Scotland under the new act, November ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Saxon families of consequence which subsisted in England, and omitted no opportunity of mortifying and affronting them; being conscious that his person and pretensions were disliked by them, as well as by the greater part of the English commons, who feared farther innovation upon their rights and liberties, from a sovereign of John's ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... "The Commons of France have resolved to deliberate," said Mirabeau to De Breze, who brought an order from the king for them to disperse, June 23, 1789. "We have heard the intentions that have been attributed to the king; and you, sir, who cannot ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... great pains to show that the cost of the elaborate program of social reform is borne not by monopolist alone, but by that larger section of the business interests vaguely known as those possessing "Special Privileges." In distributing the new taxes in the House of Commons, the question to be asked of each class of wealth is, he says, "By what process was it got?" and a distinction is to be made, not between monopoly and competitive business, but "between wealth which is the fruit of productive enterprise ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... into an elegant compliment; the very crimes of others she seems to consider as so much incense offered up at the shrine of her own immaculate virtue. I'm certain she thinks she deserves to be canonised for having kept out of Doctors' Commons. Never is any affair of that sort alluded to that she does not cast such a triumphant look towards her husband, as much as to say, 'Here am I, the paragon of faithful wives and virtuous matrons!' Were I in his place, I should ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Caroline at St. Omer. Her Demands. Abortive Negotiations. Interposition of Mr. Wilberforce to avert the threatened Scandal. Queen Caroline in London. She refuses the Concessions proposed by the Government and the Proposals of the House of Commons. Unpopularity of Mr. Wilberforce. Policy of the Queen's Advisers. Public Excitement. Mob round the Queen's Residence. Dissatisfaction of the King ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... is a work without the least value, except as a convenient commonplace book or vade mecum, for tyro politicians and young divines, to smooth their progress in the Church or the State. This work is a text-book in the University: its morality is the acknowledged morality of the House of Commons." See also Coleridge's opinion ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... lordly in my elder brother, and his fellows were ever subject to his will. Even at the shooting matches in sport he was ever chosen captain, and the singing pueri soon would do his every behest. Cousin Maud would give them free commons on many a Sunday and holy-day, and when they had well filled their hungry young crops at our table for the coming week of lean fare, they went out with us into the garden, and it presently rang with mirthful songs, Herdegen beating the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... visited now chiefly by old ladies whose husbands—to judge by the black lace caps—have left Lombard Street for heaven. At the hotel where I stopped, which was at the top of the Commons outside the thicker town, I was the only man in the breakfast room. Two widows, each with a tiny dog on a chair beside her, sat at the next ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... Baptists, led some violent spirits to print a paper, entitled, 'The Second Part of England's new Chains Discovered,' this was read in many Baptist meeting-houses, and the congregations called upon to subscribe it: fortunately, they were peaceably disposed, and denounced it to the House of Commons in a petition, dated April 2, 1649. Mr. Kiffin and the others were called in, when the Speaker returned them this answer—'The House doth take notice of the good affection to the Parliament and public you have expressed, both in this petition and otherways. They have received ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... dinner hardly worth so much dressing for. The dishes, so far as he had an opportunity of judging, were tolerably cooked; but their number was not at all proportionate to that of the guests; in short, it was a decided case of short commons, and the waiters were scarce to match. There were but two parties well attended to. One was the family of an old gentleman from the South, who was part owner of the building, and who, besides this advantage, enjoyed the privilege of letting his daughter monopolize the piano of the public parlor ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Honourable the Committee of the Lords and Commons for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports, to be duly observed by all captains and officers whatsoever and common men respectively in their fleet, provided to the glory of God, the honour and service of Parliament, and the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... of uncertainty in the House of Commons last Wednesday, as to what should be taken to constitute "A Religious Body." Not to go harking back to the Rev. SYDNEY SMITH'S definition of "a Corporation"—which, without speaking it profanely, cannot be here quoted without offending eyes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... the heels of the gallant Black Watch. This regiment, known as the old 78th, was celebrated in many ways. This is the corps raised by Lord Lovat, that Pitt was said to have had in mind when in the British House of Commons he delivered the famous panegyric on ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... L. (Tony) BLAIR (since 2 May 1997) cabinet: Cabinet of Ministers appointed by the prime minister elections: none; the monarch is hereditary; the prime minister is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons (assuming there is no majority party, a prime minister would have a majority coalition or at least a coalition that was ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Although beautiful and picturesque, it was a wild region inhabited, mostly, by Indians and by a few white men, trappers and hunters by occupation. Its immense prairies, covered with weeds as tall as you, were the commons where herds of cattle and of deer roamed unmolested, save by the hunter and the panther. Such was the region your ancestors settled, and which, by their energy, they have transformed into a ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... little, Vingo; keep to the right; these bare commons are not the easiest grounds to ride over, though with a light spring-cart like this one can navigate with some degree of comfort. The broad ocean is the place, after all. Give me the old ship Tantalizer, and I am at home. Take the glass, ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... the chief command of the national forces. England realizing that the general whose coming had been so long awaited was found at last, made Wellington a marquis, and voted him the thanks of the Lords and Commons and one hundred thousand pounds, besides sending him the reinforcements of cavalry which he needed for his broad plan of operations ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... MINISTER was celebrating the longest—and pretty nearly the hottest—day by a vin d'honneur at Boulogne Mr. BONAR LAW had to content himself with small beer in the Commons. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... not very popular in the House of Commons just now. When he rose to address a "Supplementary" to the WAR MINISTER he was so persistently "boo-ed" that the SPEAKER had to intervene to secure him a hearing. Mr. LOWTHER probably repented his kindness when it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... the ways and manners of his social superiors, could not be much better than a heretic. And since his associates made an oracle of him, he was all the more dangerous. He revered neither Lords nor Commons, and was not to be awed by the most imposing institutions. He did not take his hat off when the gentry rode by, and it was well known that he had jeered at several of the most important individuals in county office. ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... importance of this great house rested exclusively upon its connection with the county of Chester. In this connection it was that the young Viscount Belgrave had been introduced, by his family interest, into the House of Commons; he had delivered his maiden speech with some effect; and had been heard favorably on various subsequent occasions; on one of which it was that, to the extreme surprise of the house, he terminated his speech with ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... do to be for ever known?' is a question which deserves at least a little more thought than those which most young men ask themselves, which commonly are, 'What shall I do to be known to-morrow—on the Turf or at Brook's—or in Doctors' Commons—or at some exclusive party at charming ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... political career in 1830, and in 1834 he went to India, as a member of the Supreme Council, returning in 1838 to England, where for a few years he pursued politics and letters, representing Edinburgh in the House of Commons, but being rejected, on appearing for re-election, he devoted himself to literature. During the last twelve years of his life his time was almost wholly occupied with his History of England, four volumes of which he had completed and published, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... in 1790, was introduced by Pitt himself in the House of Commons on the 7th of March 1791. Sixteen days later Adam Lymburner, a representative merchant of Quebec, whom Carleton described as 'a quiet, decent man, not unfriendly to the administration,' pleaded for hours before the committee of the House of Commons against the division of the province. ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... was so good that one must regret the mischance that placed a crown upon his comely head, was trying hard, at the bidding of a priest, to thrust Episcopacy down Scottish throats, who would not have it at any price. He was desperately in need of money, and the House of Commons (which had then a raison d'etre) was not prepared to give him any except on terms. Altogether it was an exciting time, but Milton was in no way specially concerned in it. Milton looms so large in our imagination amongst the figures of the period that, despite Dr. Johnson's sneers, we are ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... from door to door. Wrap up like a mummy. I wish the Committee room wasn't down those abominable House of Commons corridors...." ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... were camped near us, and I have no doubt would have willingly added to our slender store had they known to what short commons we were reduced. Our discomforts were soon over, however, for Lord Douglas hearing that I was in a starving condition, hastened from the "Cross," not heeding the terrible accounts of the track, bringing with him a supply of the staple food of the country, "Tinned Dog"—as ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... 1886, and its application was extended to our diplomatic relations by the unanimous concurrence of the Senate and House of the Fifty-first Congress in 1890. The latter resolution was accepted as the basis of negotiations with us by the British House of Commons in 1893, and upon our invitation a treaty of arbitration between the United States and Great Britain was signed at Washington and transmitted to the Senate for its ratification in January last. Since this treaty is clearly the result of our own initiative; since it has ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... (perhaps in the attitude in which she is presented on the copper coinage), discovers all of a sudden that she wants Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her that Veneering is 'a representative man'—which cannot in these times be doubted—and that Her Majesty's faithful Commons are incomplete without him. So, Britannia mentions to a legal gentleman of her acquaintance that if Veneering will 'put down' five thousand pounds, he may write a couple of initial letters after his name ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... unpersonal the unit is, the more fit is he to step into the place of another, and so to insure to the group uninterrupted self-maintenance. This was the enormous advantage through which during the Wars of the Roses the Commons repulsed the previously superior power of the upper house. A battle that destroyed half the nobility of the country took also from the House of Lords one-half its force, because this is attached to the personalities. The House of Commons is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... general officers "effectually to oppose and resist" all attempts to execute the obnoxious acts of the British Parliament; and by a singular coincidence on the same day, February 9, 1775, the Parliament pledged the lives and property of the Commons to the support of those laws. On the side of the Americans, the courts were declared unconstitutional and their officers traitors—and the practice of the military ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... and shame. And well the simperer might be vain,— He chose the fairest of the train. Gravely he greets each city sire, Commends each pageant's quaint attire, Gives to the dancers thanks aloud, And smiles and nods upon the crowd, Who rend the heavens with their acclaims,— 'Long live the Commons' King, King James!' Behind the King thronged peer and knight, And noble dame and damsel bright, Whose fiery steeds ill brooked the stay Of the steep street and crowded way. But in the train you might discern Dark lowering brow and visage stern; There nobles ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Senhor Silva's place; and he was, I must say, the best shot of the party. We had been unsuccessful, however, on several occasions, and though there was no famine in the camp, we had very little meat fit to eat; while our black attendants were beginning to grumble greatly at being placed on short commons. This made us more than ever anxious to get some game. We had scoured the country towards the south for some distance, and falling in with no animals, we were induced to proceed further off than usual. The country over which ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... time I went to jail," she related, "I had chained myself to the gallery in the House of Commons, and, when they tried to release me, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... rolling before me as he talked, and I looked at Northumberland House and at the brazen statue of Charles I. If I had time I would tell you about them, as Mr. Strahan told me. And yesterday I was in the House of Commons, and heard some great talking; and to-morrow we are going to the Tower. I think, if you were only here to go too, we should have a first-rate sort of a time. But I will try and tell ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... with two horses added to mine. Mrs. Crewe had invited me thither when she went down first. We found the Duke of Portland there; and the Duke of Devonshire and Windham came to dinner. The chancellor and speaker of the House of Commons could not leave London till four o'clock, but arrived a little after seven. We all set off together for Beaconsfield, where we found the rest of the pall-bearers—Lord Fitzwilliam, Lord Inchiquin, and Sir Gilbert Eliot, with Drs. King and Lawrence, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
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