"House of Commons" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the horse, who also had lately taken his seat on the Opposition benches. It was the burning patriotism, the lofty character and the towering genius of Pitt, the fluency and personal integrity of Lyttelton, that led the younger members of the Opposition in the House of Commons; while in the Lords another friend from whom Fielding was to receive "princely benefactions," the young Duke of Bedford, a man of "inflexible honesty and goodwill to his country," attacked Walpole's alleged corrupt practices in the election of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... have seen it had I waited up during the night. So my belief in Cicero's oratory resolves itself into the conviction that I should have heard Cicero under certain conditions of time and place, which is identical with my expectation that I shall hear a certain speaker to-morrow if I go to the House of Commons.[140] However this be, the thing to note is that such retrospective beliefs, when once formed, tend to approximate in character to recollections. This is true even of new beliefs in recent events directly made known by present objective consequences or signs, as the snowstorm. ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... early and has polished off a good day's work before the average business man has settled down to his job. There is a big difference between his methods of work and those of Lloyd George. The British Prime Minister only goes to the House of Commons when he has to make a speech or when some important question is up for discussion. Smuts attends practically every session of Parliament, at least he did while I ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... yet, because he had made the Churches of Geneva and Scotland, which had no Bishops, to be Philadelphia in the Apocalypse, the Angel that God loved; Rev. iii. 7-13, and the power of Prelacy to be Antichrist, the evil Angel, which the House of Commons had now so spewed up, as never to recover their dignity; therefore did those Covenanters approve and applaud Mr. Brightman for discovering and foretelling the Bishops' downfall; so that they both railed at them, and rejoiced to buy good pennyworths of their land, which their ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... subjects thought that he ought to begin by fulfilling his engagements to them. John having received absolution, summoned four men from each county to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy which he had bound himself to make good. The meeting thus summoned was the germ of the future House of Commons. It was not a national political assembly, but it was a national jury gathered together into one place. The exiled barons were recalled, and John now hoped that his vassals would follow him to Poitou. They refused to do so, alleging their poverty and ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... English commerce promised to give him a revenue which, if peace were preserved, would save him from any further need of fresh appeals to the Commons. Charles was too wise however to look upon Parliaments as utterly at an end: and he used this respite to secure a House of Commons which should really be at his disposal. The strength of the Country party had been broken by its own dissensions over the Exclusion Bill and by the flight or death of its more prominent leaders. Whatever ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Mr. Stephenson, at the interviews with counsel, held previous to the Liverpool and Manchester bill going into Committee of the House of Commons, confidently stated his expectation of being able to impel his locomotive at the rate of 20 miles an hour, Mr. William Brougham, who was retained by the promoters to conduct their case, frankly told him that if he ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... upon his neck, and professing an intensity of friendship which, it is said, More always distrusted. He was the friend and companion of Erasmus during the residence of that distinguished man in England. More was gifted as an orator, and rose to the distinction of speaker of the House of Commons; was presented with the great seal upon the dismissal of Wolsey, and by his learning, his affability, and his kindness, became the most popular, as he seemed to be the most prosperous man in England. But, the test of Henry's friendship ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... served to alarm the landlords and their tenants, and taken in conjunction with other outbreaks, notably at Bristol, it produced a sense of anxiety in the mind of the country generally. The feeling found a somewhat amusing expression in the House of Commons, in a motion of Mr. Perceval, on 14th February 1831. This was to move an address to His Majesty to appoint a day for a general fast throughout the United Kingdom. He said that "the state of the country called for a measure like this—that it was a state of political and religious disorganization—that ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... Spencer had taken his seat in the House of Commons as member for Tiverton, and had, during two sessions, conducted himself as a steady and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fire. The last piece of information which that letter contains is that he and his wife are looking out for a house and estate to suit them. Mark my words! Frank will get one of the best estates in England; a seat in the House of Commons will follow as a matter of course; and one of the legislators of this Ass-ridden ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... existing regulations a Commander-in-Chief could have no leave. Lord Cross had tried to remedy this hard rule by bringing in the 'Officers' Leave Bill'; but as he informed Lord Lansdowne it was impossible to get it through the House of Commons that session, I was obliged very reluctantly to beg to be allowed to resign my command in the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... that the ships were sailing under commissions issued by the French East India Company, and made them perfectly lawful prizes. These commissions Kidd had most foolishly handed over to Lord Bellomont, and they could not be produced at the trial, although they had been exhibited before the House of Commons a little ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... history as much as I can, for we have talked as much as folks do during a whole night in the Commons' House, though, of course, not with so much learning, or so much to the purpose, because—why? They are in the House of Commons, and we in a public room of an inn at Horncastle. The goodness of the ale, do ye see, never depending on what it is made of, oh, no! but on the fashion and appearance of the jug in which it is served up. After being turned out ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... 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 over ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... In the House of Commons as in a music-hall you can always get a laugh by referring to "the lodger." Whether the lodger, who is considered quite good enough to vote for a mere Member of Parliament, should also be allowed a voice in the election of really important ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... forgetting that Dante looked to a still earlier period; and both forgot that the men of that earlier period said the same—"not now, indeed, but before us men were happy." So simpler men incline to say that their grandfathers were fine fellows, but the "old college is going to the dogs," or "the House of Commons is not what it was once," for reverence and faith and manliness once ruled the world. The old school lives upon an ignorance of history; it is genuinely moved by a simple moral ideal of life and character which its own imagination has created. And when evil ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... February 1952); Heir Apparent Prince CHARLES (son of the queen, born 14 November 1948) head of government: Prime Minister Anthony (Tony) BLAIR (since 2 May 1997) Cabinet of Ministers appointed by the prime minister elections: 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 not ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... clearly, in every case of an Honour, exactly what services the Honour is given for. This (taking paper from his pocket) is supposed to be the stuff sent round to the Press by the Press Bureau. (Reads.) 'Mr. Gentletie has gradually made a solid reputation for himself as the dullest man in the House of Commons. Whenever he rises to his feet the House empties as if by magic. In cases of inconvenience, when the Government wishes abruptly to close a debate by counting out the House, it has invariably put up Mr. Gentletie to speak. The device ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... The house of commons, in their address upon this occasion, expressed a dutiful sense of his majesty's just regard for the rights of the queen of Hungary, and for the maintaining the Pragmatick sanction; they declared their concurrence in the prudent measures which his majesty was pursuing ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... constitution of the year three of the Republic (1795) presented the following features. I. The executive power was to be lodged in Five Directors, chosen from time to time, who were to have no share in the legislation. II. There was to be a Council of Five Hundred, answering generally to our House of Commons: and III. A smaller assembly, called the Council of Ancients, intended to fulfil in some measure the purposes of a ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... to seize? Is it meaner to thank than to threaten? If he who is supported by the public is a beggar, our kings are beggars, our pensions are charity. Did not the Princess Royal hold out her hand, the other day, to the House of Commons? and does any one think the worse of her for it? We are all, in measure, beggars; but Beppo, in the large style of kings and robber-barons, asks for his baiocco, and, like the merchant-princes, keeps his bank. I see dukes and guardie nobili, in shining helmets, spurs, and gigantic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... and will were robust, but he might have said what his lifelong friend William M. Evarts used to say: "I pride myself on my success in doing not the things I like to do, but the things I don't like to do." Dana's ideal of life was to be a great Englishman, with a seat on the front benches of the House of Commons until he should be promoted to the woolsack; beyond all, with a social status that should place him above the scuffle of provincial and unprofessional annoyances; but he forced himself to take life as it came, and he suffocated his longings with grim self-discipline, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... of the Atlantic, by the manner in which this question has been used to embitter party strife. But it was a puzzle at first to know by which course to steer. When a Licensing Bill was before the English House of Commons, The General wrote:— ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... England, with the rest of Europe, came to a close in 1815. Immediately afterward domestic polities needed adjustment. "The disabilities were swept away," says a writer, "the House of Commons was reconstituted, the municipalities were reformed, slavery was abolished."[142] In due time the nation became adjusted to peace; the popular mind lost its nervousness; the universities returned to their sober thinking; and the Church took a careful ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... from dream to dream, Till, slow returning to my theme, Upon my vote I looked again— To whom was I to give it then? That uncorrupted maidenhood, My little power for public good. What party was there that I knew That I might dare intrust it to, A perfect party fair and square— My House of Commons in the air? ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... rather nervous laugh: "Look here, old chap, don't blow the entire English navy out of the water while you're closeted here with me. I must have some witness to prove that I didn't do it or I might have to explain to the House of Commons." ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... falling into "old style" of House of Commons debate, not only frankly accepted explanation but chivalrously took upon himself blame of the outbreak, which he said "apparently arose from an unfortunate expression of mine." Ended with pretty turn of grave satire that greatly pleased ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... Great nobles and obsequious prelates did him reverence. Ignorant and obstinate, the young King was determined not only to reign but to rule, in spite of the new doctrine that Parliament, not the King, carried on the affairs of government through the leader of the majority in the House of Commons, already known as the Prime Minister. George could not really change what was the last expression of political forces in England. The rule of Parliament had come to stay. Through it and it alone could the realm be governed. This power, however, though ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... looked at. 'It is our duty, my son, never to forget names and persons; I beg you to bear that in mind, my dearest Richie,' he said. We used to go to his opera-box; and we visited the House of Lords and the House of Commons; and my father, though he complained of the decay of British eloquence, and mourned for the days of Chatham, and William Pitt (our old friend of the cake and the raspberry jam), and Burke, and Sheridan, encouraged the orators ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Mutiny Act, still possessed a formidable weapon of offence in the power of making the Government ridiculous. Such was the difference existing between two quite distinct modes of government; between Parliamentary government and closet government; between the mace of the House of Commons and the fan of the Duchess de Longueville. England, as we need hardly say, has never had a government of this description. The nearest approach to it which she has ever seen was under the sway of Charles the Second, and, accordingly, the nearest ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... channel through which the money passed. With my own hand I secured above one hundred and twenty votes on that most important question to ministers. Eighty thousand pounds were set apart for the purpose. Forty members of the House of Commons received from me a thousand pounds each. To eighty others I paid ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the House of Commons was, soon after that, made impossible to Lord Cochrane. His father, Archibald, ninth Earl of Dundonald, died on the 1st of July, 1831. Lord Cochrane then ceased to be a commoner, and became in succession, when he was nearly fifty-six years old, Earl ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... subject before the House of Commons in England and measures are being taken which will insure to the traveling public immunity from accidents at sea. I need not mention that the majority of railways of our country have a system of examinations which prevents a color blind ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... Queen to her Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, who then had no home except his house in Chesham Place. It was gratefully accepted, for indeed it had already been coveted as an ideal residence for a busy politician who wanted fresh air, and could not safely be far from the House of Commons. As years went on Lord John spent more and more of his time in this delicious retreat, and in his declining years it was practically ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... transcendent influence in public, must be attributed to the confidence which he showed in his own superiority. "I trample upon impossibilities!" was an exclamation which no inferiour mind would dare to make. Would the house of commons have permitted any one but lord Chatham to have answered an oration by "Tell me, gentle shepherd, where?" The danger of failing, the hazard that he runs of becoming ridiculous who verges upon the moral sublime, is taken into our account when we judge of the action, and we ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... frequently at the root of mischief! Anyhow, he, being Superintendent of Electric Telegraphs in India in 1839, hauled an insulated wire across the Hooghly at Calcutta, and produced what they call 'electrical phenomena' at the other side of the river. In 1840 Mr Wheatstone brought before the House of Commons the project of a cable from Dover to Calais. In 1842 Professor Morse of America laid a cable in New York harbour, and another across the canal at Washington. He also suggested the possibility of laying a cable across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1846 Colonel Colt, of revolver notoriety, and Mr Robinson, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... the towns and the farmers and mechanics in the country; and those they elect must belong to their own class. As these constitute the great bulk of the people, the body that represents them stands for the House of Commons in England, or the House of Representatives in America. The second branch is elected exclusively by and from the merchants and manufacturers, and all who are engaged in trade, or as employers of labor. The third branch, which is the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... and 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. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Sir Fletcher Norton,[7] Speaker of the House of Commons, and Mr King's nearest relation, I named this inlet Norton Sound. It extends to the northward as far as the latitude of 64 deg. 55'. The bay, in which we were now at anchor, lies on the S.E. side of it; and is called by the natives Chacktoole. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... After some delay on the part of the governors, the long concealed records, bound up in three volumes, and embracing the whole period between 1560 and 1616, were given up by them for inspection, in the year 1834, to the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Church Patronage. ("Minutes of Evidence," pp. 126, 355, 374.) Dr. Lee, one of the witnesses before the Committee, declared, after examining them, he was quite certain that they were "authentic records." (Id. p. 450). The loss of ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... more than recompensed Scotland and Wales for the loss of separate nationality. As an earnest of legislative justice, Pitt gave hopes to the leaders of the Irish Catholic party that the disabilities which excluded Roman Catholics from the House of Commons and from many offices in the public service would be no longer maintained. On this understanding the Catholics of Ireland abstained from offering to Pitt's project a resistance which would probably have led to its failure. A majority of members in the Protestant Parliament of Dublin accepted ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... more parallel passages which Mr. Wyke Bayliss solemnly prints side by side, most of them are like parallel lines and never meet. The only original proposal that Mr. Bayliss has to offer us is that the House of Commons should, every year, select some important event from national and contemporary history and hand it over to the artists who are to choose from among themselves a man to make a picture of it. In this way Mr. Bayliss ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed indigence by the straining of all the machinery in the world?' That is Burke, sir—Burke: who, by the fribbles of his own day, was lightly termed the dinner-bell of the House of Commons, yet compelled the attention of ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and plays subsidiary parts in a score of others. They recall to us innumerable scandalous episodes, with which anybody who lives in the imaginary society of Balzac's Paris feels it a duty to be as familiar as a back-stairs politician with the gossip of the House of Commons. The list just given is a mere fragment of the great circle to which Balzac introduces us. The history of their performances is intimately connected with the history of the time; nay, it is sometimes essential to a full comprehension of recent ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... and that will be the fun. A serious fellow talking nonsense with lively illustrations, is just the man for House of Commons clown. Your humorous rogue is not half so taking. Con would be the porpoise in a fish tank there, inscrutably busy on his errand and watched for his tumblings. Better I than he; and I should make a worse of it—at least ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Mr. Phillips, proving as favourable to him, as could be hoped or expected, through the intercession of some that stood his friends both in Council and Parliament; particularly in the House of Commons, Mr. Andrew Marvel member for Hull, and who has prefixed a copy of verses before his Paradise Lost, acted vigorously in his behalf, and made a considerable party for him, so that together with John Goodwin of Coleman-Street, he was only so far excepted ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... the House of Commons appropriated 10,000 Pounds to the Trustees of Georgia, "to be applied towards defraying the charges of carrying over and settling foreign and other Protestants in said colony," and over 3,000 Pounds additional ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... politicians' indifference to its approval, their services were of slight account. Too often a political office was granted from a pocket borough in which a restricted electorate could be bought at a trifling expense. To gain support inside the House of Commons was enough. The greater public outside could be ignored. This attitude changed with the coming of the French Revolution. Here was a new force unrealized before—that of a crowd which, being unrepresented and with a real grievance, could, when it liked, take a club ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... committees, though they performed their duties with much zeal and assiduity, were hardly able to overtake the amount of business before them. It was not without much flattery and coaxing that the adroit Premier, of all men best formed for a general leader of the House of Commons, could persuade the unfortunate members that an unfaltering attendance of some six hours a-day in a sweltering and ill-ventilated room, where their ears were regaled with a constant repetition of the jargon connected with curves, gradients, and traffic-tables, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... rainbow set in the intolerable cloud. On Monday afternoon, when the House of Commons met, all parties were known to have sunk their private differences and to be agreed on one point that should take precedence of all other questions. Germany should not, with England's consent, violate the neutrality of Belgium. As far as England was concerned, all negotiations were at an ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... will not suffer," was the comfortable statement of Mr. JOSIAH WEDGWOOD during a speech on the subject of the War. As a matter of fact, owing to the French cooks employed at the House of Commons having returned to their country, the menu at the House will have to consist, until the end of the session, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... the bill introduced into the House of Commons by Sir Andrew Agnew, and thrown out by that House on the motion for the second reading, on the 18th of May in the present year, by a majority of 32, may very fairly be taken as a test of the length to which the fanatics, of which the honourable Baronet is the distinguished ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... of claret! Even before the close of 1770 might be discerned the growing discord and weakness of Wilkes and his city friends. At a meeting which they convened to consider their course of action, some proposed a new Remonstrance to the King, while others urged an impeachment of Lord North in the House of Commons. "What is the use of a new Remonstrance?" cried Wilkes. "It would only serve to make another paper kite for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales!"—"What is the use of an impeachment?" cried Sawbridge. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Dorothy and Temple had last parted, was in 1646 appointed by the House of Commons for the reception of the French Ambassador. In 1665 it was the town house of Mr. Secretary Bennet, afterwards Lord Arlington. Its grounds stood much in the position of the present Arlington Street, and Evelyn speaks of it as an ill-built house, but capable ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... deputy-lieutenant's coat exchanged for felon uniform, and your daily bottle of champagne for prison cocoa, my poor Rupilius, what a comfort it must be to have the business brought to an end! Champagne was the honorable gentleman's drink in the House of Commons dining-room, as I am informed. What uncommonly dry champagne that must have been! When we saw him outwardly happy, how miserable he must have been! when we thought him prosperous, how dismally poor! When the great Mr. Harker, at the public dinners, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... life of genius which repay its sufferings. DEMOSTHENES confessed he was pleased when even a fishwoman of Athens pointed him out. CORNEILLE had his particular seat in the theatre, and the audience would rise to salute him when he entered. At the presence of RAYNAL in the House of Commons, the Speaker was requested to suspend the debate till that illustrious foreigner, who had written on the English parliament, was accommodated with a seat. SPINOSA, when he gained an humble livelihood by grinding optical glasses, at an obscure village ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Cochrane 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 ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... this doctrine. They came by it honestly through long lines of ancestral heritage. The republicanism of the seventeenth century in the American forests, as well as upon the floor of the English House of Commons, had asserted that private persons had the right to make and unmake kings. The republican theorists of the eighteenth century had insisted that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were the birthright of each individual. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... of Alkmaar. Unfortunate mistake of a Spanish prisoner. 31. Conditions that tended to vivify the belief during Elizabethan era. 32. The new freedom. Want of rules of evidence. Arthur Hacket and his madnesses. Sneezing. Cock-crowing. Jackdaw in the House of Commons. Russell and Drake both mistaken for devils. 33. Credulousness of people. "To make one danse naked." A parson's proof of transubstantiation. 34. But the Elizabethans had strong common sense nevertheless. ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... with an intention to keep my life of honour in view, in the declaration I made her; but, as it has been said of a certain orator in the House of Commons, who more than once, in a long speech, convinced himself as he went along, and concluded against the side he set out intending to favour, so I in earnest pressed without reserve for matrimony in the progress of my harangue, which state I little thought of urging ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the Importance of the Registration of Deeds; dictated to me for an Election Committee of the House of Commons. acknowl. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... been finished on May 2nd.—At this time the Reform Bill was under discussion, and one letter written by me (probably at Sheepshanks's request) addressed I think to Mr Drummond, Lord Althorp's secretary, was read in the House of Commons. ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... prepared to withstand the vaunted 'Army of England.' In spite of his distinguished position and eminent services, Pitt died L40,000 in debt, and his responsibilities were promptly met by a vote of the House of Commons. ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... been withdrawn, and that only the minor positions near Sedd-el-Bahr were occupied. Great Britain's loss of officers and men at the Dardanelles up to December 11th was 112,921, according to an announcement made in the House of Commons by the Parliamentary Under Secretary for War. Besides these casualties the number of sick admitted to hospitals was 96,683. The decision to evacuate Gallipoli was made in the course of November by the British Government as the result of the early expressed opinion of General Monro, who had succeeded ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... intelligence and rare sagacity with which he followed the debate, and the readiness with which he skilfully formulated answers to the stately arguments of the wigged and powdered nobles. Pitt, under the tuition of his distinguished father, was fitted for the House of Commons as boys are fitted for college at Exeter and Andover, and he entered Parliament before becoming of age. Hamilton's preparation had been different. At twelve years of age he was a clerk in a counting house on the island of Nevis ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... used to come in to church on Sunday morning, when the ladies of their families addressed themselves to devotions kneeling, while the men said their prayers standing, peering mysteriously into their tall hats—a strange ritual, of which traces may be observed at the House of Commons, but nowhere else, I fancy, on earth. On week days they lived an orderly, dignified existence in their big old-fashioned houses, leaving home little, though the more cultivated among them had travelled in their youth and knew thoroughly some foreign country. In their own orbit they had power, leisure, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... speaking in the House of Commons last night, paid a glowing tribute to the memory of Peter ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... 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 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
... very kind of you to call. I don't suppose you have any news. This morning's paper talked of an ultimatum. There has been a very exciting debate in the English House of Commons!" ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... MOUNT. I don't want to say a word against brains—I've a great respect for brains—I often wish I had some myself—but with a House of Peers composed exclusively of people of intellect, what's to become of the House of Commons? LEILA. I never thought of that! LORD MOUNT. This comes of women interfering in politics. It so happens that if there is an institution in Great Britain which is not susceptible of any improvement at all, it is ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... at last screwed up one's courage to have a tooth out, there is nothing more unnerving than to be told by the dentist that he cannot operate to-day and that one must come again to-morrow. The House of Commons felt like that this afternoon. Members had flocked from all parts of the kingdom—Nationalist Ireland excepted—to hear the PRIME MINISTER'S promised statement. Col. CHURCHILL, Lord HUGH CECIL (with a patch on his lofty brow denoting a recent casualty), and other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... Disestablishment Bill Lord Elcho proposed Solomon's plan of settling the dispute of the two mother Churches about Ireland. He would cut the country in two, establishing Protestantism in the north and Catholicism in the south. When an experienced member of the House of Commons makes such a proposition in this age, we should not be surprised that Sir Thomas Cusack in the year 1563 proposed to Queen Elizabeth that Ireland should be divided into four provinces, each with a separate president, either ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... bill was defeated. Earl Russell was swept out of office, and Disraeli was made chancellor. It was a field-day in the House of Commons when Carleton heard Gladstone, Bright, Lowe, and the Conservative and Liberal leaders. These were the days when such men as Governor Eyre, after incarnating the most brutish principle of that worse England, which every American and friend of humanity hates, could be defended, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... (in a case of perils confessedly so vague) is more like a moonstruck infatuation than any other recorded in history. Until Parliament met on the 4th of February, when a Roman Catholic member of the House of Commons first attempted to give some specific account of the legal effects incident to a substitution of bishops for vicars apostolic, no man has made the very cloudiest sketch of the evils that were apprehended, or that could be apprehended, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... committee of the House of Commons "on commercial credit" recommended an advance of L6,000,000 to manufacturers who were suffering from over-speculation. "Did they not know," asked Lord Grenville, in the House of Lords, March 21, "that they were adding to the mass of paper at this ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... of two days' continuance on the case of the missionary Smith has taken place in the House of Commons. A motion was made by Mr. Brougham, to express the serious alarm and deep sorrow with which the house contemplated the violation of law and justice, manifested in the unexampled proceedings against Mr. Smith in Demerara, and their sense of the necessity of adopting measures to ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not Chancellor of the Exchequer—but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... different matter. Sir Walter told me to look out for squalls, and the twinkle in his eye gave me a notion of what was coming. The first thing the sportsman did was to write a letter to the papers signed with his name. There had been a debate in the House of Commons on foreign policy, and the speech of some idiot there gave him his cue. He declared that he had been heart and soul with the British at the start, but that he was reluctantly compelled to change his views. He said our blockade of Germany ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... expended in 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
... appear this petty article of commerce, it is well known to keep in employ several thousand hands, and goes to show the vast importance of trifles to a country of decided commercialists. Mr. Osler, an intelligent manufacturer of Birmingham, gave the following statement before the Committee of the House of Commons, in 1824. "Eighteen years ago, on my first journey to London, a respectable looking man in the city asked me if I could supply him with doll's eyes, and I was foolish enough to feel half offended; I thought it derogatory to my new dignity as a manufacturer, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... head of government: Prime Minister Jean CHRETIEN (since 4 November 1993) was appointed by the governor general; on 25 October 1993; Deputy Prime Minister Sheila COPPS (since NA); note - the prime minister is the leader of the political party commanding a majority in the House of Commons cabinet: Federal Ministry was chosen by the prime minister from members of his own ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... served under Rodney in the West Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William Baskerville, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons under Pitt." ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... matter is not of much consequence at the present day, for the Wilmots have made a record in their province far more distinguished than that which they won in New England, for they have given to New Brunswick five members of the legislature, a senator and member of the House of Commons of Canada, two members of the executive of New Brunswick, and one of the privy council of Canada, an attorney-general and a provincial secretary of New ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... herself at the feet of George II., praying for her husband's life. 'Particularly Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell [Mrs. Cameron was a Campbell] told me, and others whom he could trust, that in the year 1748, or 1749, I don't remember which, as he, Sir Duncan, was going out of the House of Commons, Mr. Henry Pelham, brother to the Duke of Newcastle, and Secretary of State, called on him, and asked if he knew Glengarry? Sir Duncan answered he knew the old man, but not the young. Pelham replied, it was Young Glengarry he spoke of; for that he came to him offering his most ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... times, but particularly so under the circumstances under which Mannix held it. His chief, Lord Tolerton, Secretary of State for War, was incapacitated by the possession of a marquisate from sitting in the House of Commons. It was the duty, the very onerous duty, of Mr. Edward Mannix to explain to the representatives of the people who did not agree with him in politics that the army, under Lord Torrington's administration, was adequately armed and intelligently drilled. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... of election, however, is much older in England. We find statutes concerning the right of free election, that is, of allowing electors to vote without interference or control, as early as 1275. It is for this reason that almost from the origin of the House of Commons it has been unlawful, or at least uncustomary, for peers of the realm to even speak pending elections to the House of Commons. That House also vindicated its right to judge of elections against Elizabeth, and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... 22, 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 toward the redemption and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... "The Surrender," gives the finest description we have of the scene that followed. The Field Marshal in command of the British forces had that morning been sent for by a Cabinet Council then being held in the Prime Minister's room at the House of Commons. With nine members of his staff, the white-haired Field Marshal rode slowly into the City, in full uniform. His instructions were for unconditional surrender, and a request for the immediate consideration of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... solution. Those of us who are old enough to remember the inauguration of the popular movement for the extension of the franchise to women (which may be dated from the day in which our late noble leader, JOHN STUART MILL, addressed the House of Commons on this subject, in May, 1867), feel that our lives are passing away while wearily awaiting the dilatory educational development of mankind in ...
— The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women • Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat Condorcet
... Reprinted from "The Report of the Select Committee on Public Institutions. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 27 March 1860," pp. 113-123. The following members of the Committee were present on the occasion of the above evidence being given: -Sir John Trelawny (Chairman), Mr. Sclater Booth, Mr. Du Pre, Mr. Kinnaird, Mr. Hanbury, Sir Robert ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the House of Commons, was one day coming to his duty, when his coach happening to break down, he ordered the beadle to stop the first gentleman's coach they met, and bring it to him. The owner felt much surprised to be turned out of his own coach; but Sir Edward told him it was much more proper for him to walk in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... of any specific social experience it is always a question of how far one may pardonably err on the side of indiscretion; and if I remember here a dinner in the basement of the House of Commons—in a small room of the architectural effect of a chapel in a cathedral crypt—it is with the sufficiently meek hope of keeping well within bounds which only the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to consider the best means of improving the condition of the "aged and deserving poor." The report read: "Cases are too often found in which poor and aged people, whose conduct and whose whole career has been blameless, industrious and deserving, find themselves from no ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... a diplomatic situation different from that which has been established through official channels and documents"; and Lord Rosebery, while he recognized the importance of the incident, seeking to minimize its effects by an attitude of banter. The treatment of the incident by the House of Commons as a whole gave considerable satisfaction in Germany, where all efforts were directed to showing malevolent hostility to Germany on the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... and 173 members of the British House of Commons have signed the American Peace Memorial, nine of whom will come with ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... in hand, he turned his attention to the House of Commons. The old Whigs had set an example, which George was shrewd enough to follow. Walpole and Newcastle had succeeded in giving England one of the most peaceful and prosperous governments within in the previous history of the nation, but their methods were corrupt. With much of the judgment, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... principle of popular government, that the majority must rule. The seven voters of Old Sarum were allowed to return two members of Parliament, because this place,—once a Roman fort, and afterwards a sheepwalk,—many generations before, at the early casting of the House of Commons, had been entitled to this representation; but the argument for State Rights assumes that all these rights may be lodged in voters as few in number as ever controlled a rotten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... that War the traders of Great Britain determined, even at a temporary loss to themselves, to glut our market with their goods and thus break down forever, as they hoped, our infant manufactures. Their purpose and object were boldly announced in the House of Commons by Mr. Brougham, when he said: "Is it worth while to incur a loss upon the first importation, in order by the glut to stifle in the cradle those rising manufactures in the United States which the War had forced into existence contrary to the natural course of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... this unfortunate woman, and the cruel state of the law in regard to females, then attracted attention. On the 10th of May, 1790, Sir Benjamin Hammett, in his place in the House of Commons, called the attention of that House to the then state of the law. He mentioned that it had been his official duty to attend on the melancholy occasion of the burning of the female in the preceding year (it is understood he was then one of the sheriffs of London), he moved for leave ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various |
