Copula

“ On Saturday evening, July 11th, Lindet was walking with the Abbé Grégoire along the Paris road, beyond the barrier at the end of the Avenue.
'What will happen next?' asked the Curé of Bernay. 'It appears evident that the queen intends a coup d'état, but what it will be no one knows exactly.'
'The time for a coup d'état is passed,' said Grégoire; 'on the twenty-third of last month the decisive blow was struck, and it was struck by the Assembly. Consider, my friend, what can the Court do now? The Assembly represents twenty-five millions of men, the court represents a few thousands. ”

“ I feel it only fair to warn you that the Supreme Council would be extremely displeased if this prisoner should escape with his life. It is felt that an example must be made of him. If it is unwise to carry out the sentence here on Terminus, I will be happy to arrange a transfer to Atmion IV. On the Green planet there will be no possibility of trouble by Fleet members. I must insist that you accede to the wishes of the Council. Aram Jerrold must die in the disintegrators. No other course of action will be acceptable to the Supreme Council! ”

“ Silence fell on the council. The hearts of the Indians were dead within them. Amid their portentous surroundings,—the appalling signs of the wrath of the Great Spirit,—the fatal apathy which is the curse of their race crept over them.
Then rose the medicine-man, wild priest of a wild and debasing superstition, reverenced as one through whom the dead spoke to the living.
“Break up your council!” he said with fearful look and gesture. “Councils are for those who expect to live! and you!—the dead call you to them. Choose no chief, for who will be left for him to rule? ”

“ As shown at the outset of this section, if each of the groups united by militant coöperation is despotically ruled—if the groups are severally framed on the patriarchal type, or are severally governed by men of supposed divine descent—then the compound head becomes one in which the people at large have no share. ”

“ The implication is, then, that where groups of the patriarchal type fall into regions permitting considerable growth of population, but having physical structures which impede the centralization of power, compound political headships will arise, and for a time sustain themselves, through coöperation of the two factors—independence of local groups and need for union in war. ”

“ While the monarch and upper house are the products of that ancient régime of compulsory coöperation, the spirit of which they still manifest, though in decreasing degrees, the lower house is the product of that modern régime of voluntary coöperation which is replacing it; and in an increasing degree this lower house carries out the wishes of people habituated to a daily life regulated by contract instead of by status. ”

“ That our Great Rebellion was, in its external form, a war of classes, is one of those palpable facts which lie on the surface of history. At first, the parliament [357] did indeed attempt to draw over to their side some of the nobles; and in this they for a time succeeded. But as the struggle advanced, the futility of this policy became evident. In the natural order of the great movement, the nobles grew more loyal; [358] the parliament grew more [151] democratic. ”

“ A coup d’état is a practical confession that the regular and orderly methods of Government have failed in the hands of the Governor, and that he is driven to have recourse to irregular and lawless methods to compass his ends and vindicate his sovereignty. ”

“ And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,—
“Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?”
“I have made them,” said the hosier.
“How do you set to work to make a revolt?” said the king.
“Ah!” replied Coppenole, “’tis not very difficult. There are a hundred ways. In the first place, there must be discontent in the city. The thing is not uncommon. And then, the character of the inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to stir into revolt. They always love the prince’s son; the prince, never. ”

“ There were so many slaves in Attica, that the free population was but a small minority, and it is with the freemen only that we have to deal. These formed, therefore, virtually an aristocracy, freed, to a great extent, from servile work, so that they were provided with abundant leisure. ”

“ Among the Copts in Egypt, when the threshold of a new house is laid, the owner slaughters a sheep or a goat on the threshold, and steps over the blood, as if in covenant for himself and his household with Him to whom all blood, as life, belongs. ”

“ The conspiracy does not so far possess any strength, but its numbers are rapidly increasing day by day, and its strength is growing. Your ancestors would not have even your Assembly meet in an irregular and haphazard way, but only when the standard was hoisted on the citadel and the centuries in their array marched out, or when the tribunes had given notice of a meeting of the plebs, or the Assembly had been duly convened by one of the magistrates. ”

“ When ye shall divide by lot - That is, when on your repossessing your land, every family settles according to the allotment which they formerly had; for it is certain that the land was not divided afresh by lot after the Babylonish captivity. The allotment mentioned and described here was merely for the service of the temple, the use of the priests, and the prince or governor of the people. A division of the whole land is not intended. ”

“ Again they saw the flaming council fires, and heard once more the burning speech of their brothers as they counselled for war or the welfare of the tribe. The blood of youth again chased in their veins as they felt once more that they might sit in council as in the old time and then die in peace. The old war-bonnets and war-shirts were brought out; the coup stick with its trembling eagle feathers, the ancient bows and arrows. ”

“ An electoral college too small in numbers, which no higher power has the right of forcing to haste, can prolong disagreements and draw out the course of the election for a long time. It is this period during which we actually find the Holy See left The conclave. vacant most frequently for long spaces of time. The longest of these, however, gave an opportunity for reform and the remedy was found in the conclave, i.e. in the forced and rigid seclusion of the electors. ”

“ At this I feared the Conclave was about to riot. It is at such times that I most revere the wisdom of the ancients, who decreed seventy years the minimum age for a member of the Conclave. They shouted and began to beat their fists, but for how long can a man of seventy years roar like a youngster? ”

“ This was a useful simplification: on certain days only, from religious reasons, might the curies and centuries be convoked; the tribes on the contrary might assemble, and did assemble, every day, they were not restricted by the dies nefasti. People saw more and more that the form of general assemblies was a mere semblance, and too much depending on accident: it is but fancy to think of votes being the expression of personal will; impulse, the force of example, does every thing. ”

“ We may well believe that even after the organization of the assembly as comitia—that is, in curiate, centuriate, or tribal divisions [887] —the voting within the component groups continued for a time to be by din, as is suggested by the phrase sex suffragia, applied to the six oldest groups of knights in the comitia centuriata. [888] Voting by heads in large gatherings is in fact a slow, cumbersome process, the product of a well-developed political life. ”

“ Oppression and insurrection were not the sole origin of the communes. ... Two causes, quite distinct from feudal oppression, viz., Roman traditions and Christian sentiments, had their share in the formation of the communes and in the beneficial results thereof. The Roman municipal regimen, which is described in M. Guizot's 'Essais sur l'Histoire de France' (1st Essay, pages 1-44) , [also in 'History of Civilization,' volume 2, lecture 2] did not every where perish with the Empire; it kept its footing in a great number of towns, especially in those of Southern Gaul. ”

“ What can the boys have thought of me?"
"Listen, Berengar," said the empress, "whatever happens, it is not at all proper for you to call people names, whoever they may be, nor to make such a noise in the park, right behind the palace. An emperor's son never calls names, not even to a sentry. ”

“ That’s what they cried when they put the House of Savoy on the throne, and now they’re trying to pull it off again with the same cry.’
‘I fear the seeds of revolution are sown pretty thick in Italy,’ said Copley.
‘Where aren’t there the seeds of revolution to-day?’ Melville groaned. ‘Central Africa is only waiting a government in order to overturn it.’
‘By the way,’ interpolated Copley, ‘the assassin is a friend of Sybert’s.’
‘A friend of Sybert’s!’ Marcia echoed the words before she considered their form. ”

“ It is a faction, and generally a small one, that overthrows a dynasty or remodels a constitution. A small party, strong by long exile from power, and desperate of success except by desperate means, invariably has recourse to a coup d’état.... ”

“ You may remember that superstitious sect of whom Baucis spoke to you—a revolutionary faction, who, a score or so of years since, stirred up the whole city and gave occasion for the stern enactments of the divine Nero? Now again they are stirring up revolt as if they were mad; they are shaking the very foundations of society, and threaten to overturn all that we have till now held most sacred. ”

“ The one definite institution of those early days that is known to us is the village-council; the institution that, being most deeply rooted in the heart of the Slav, has survived all autocracies by divine right and is familiar to-day to the whole world as the Mir. ”

“ In more organized tribes, the chief-class is definitely separated from the lower class, and often regarded as different in nature—sometimes as god-descended. And later, we find these two becoming respectively freemen and slaves, or nobles and serfs. A glance at their respective functions, makes it obvious that the great divisions thus early formed, stand to each other in a relation similar to that in which the primary divisions of the embryo stand to each other. ”

“ When a man supports himself against a wall, and the woman, sitting on his hands joined together and held underneath her, throws her arms round his neck, and putting her thighs alongside his waist, moves herself by her feet, which are touching the wall against which the man is leaning, it is called the "suspended congress."
When a woman stands on her hands and feet like a quadruped, and her lover mounts her like a bull, it is called the "congress of a cow." ”

“ Columba and some others, founded on substantially the same principle, soon ramified through the greater part of Europe, tempered the wild excesses of useless penances, and, making labour an essential part of the monastic system, directed the movement to the purposes of general civilisation. In the last place, the barbarian invasions, and the dissolution of the Western Empire, dislocating the whole system of government and almost resolving society into its primitive elements, naturally threw upon the monastic corporations social, political, and intellectual functions of the deepest importance. ”

“ It is now sufficiently established that Livy often applies the term comitia to the assembly of plebs and to other assemblies which included but a part of the people. It is equally true that he uses concilium to denote an assembly of the whole people. ”

“ To prevent imposition, the society keeps a sample of the cloathing at their office, which is sealed with the seals of several of the committee, and shewn to the men and boys when they are cloathed, that the society may be sure the slopseller keeps up to his engagement. ”

“ A nucleus was formed which was to become the new social unit, that is to say, the feudal group. Of this the centre was a chief, around whom gathered men capable of bearing arms, who commended themselves to him according to the old form of vassalage, per manus. ”

“ When he had constituted the Areopagus of those who had been yearly archons, of which he himself was a member therefore, observing that the people, now free from their debts, were unsettled and imperious, he formed another council of four hundred, a hundred out of each of the four tribes, which was to inspect all matters before they were propounded to the people, and to take care that nothing but what had been first examined should be brought before the general assembly. ”

“ In short, he grew so powerful that no one durst dispute his commands; all which authority he transmitted to his successors, who, finding by the increase of the people and the many divisions of them that they grew insolent and ungovernable, they appointed a colamb in every province, as a vice-king, with absolute authority over all causes, except murder and treason, which are referred to the king and colambs in moucheratt. ”

“ The dividing of a kingdom into provinces or districts, which is done for the convenience of administering justice, and conducting other business of government, has a material influence over, and is in a great measure the cause of dividing men’s hearts. ”

“ Likewise the physical régime, according as a people is composed of hunters, shepherds or agriculturists. Likewise the fecundity of the race, and the consequent slow or rapid increase of population, and also the excess in number, now of males and now of females. ”

“ To come down to daily, deadly things—this upheaval is simply infernal. Parliament opened the other day and half the old lords that sat in their robes had lost their heirs and a larger part of the members of the House wore khaki. ”