Faction

“ And as every rebel faction must have its chief, the heaven of winter, the subterranean empire of darkness and woe, and its stars, a nation of black angels, giants and demons, had for their chief a malignant genius, whose character was applied by different people to the constellation which to them was the most remarkable. ”

“ That little laugh of hers was like the exclamation of a fellow who has got home with his rapier point.
"Quarrels or not," she answered, "there is a faction that was more than willing to use the ancient passage under my palace grounds, and to hold secret meetings in a room that I made ready for them."
"Faction!" The Gray Mahatma sneered. "Faithful seniors determined to expel unfaithful upstarts are not a faction!" ”

“ What—shall the traitor rear
His head amid our tribune—and blaspheme
Each patriot? shall the hireling slave of faction—
St. Just.
I am of no one faction. I contend
Against all factions.
Tallien.
I espouse the cause
Of truth. ”

“ The faction had removed from the service and councils all such as were capable of commanding the troops, or conducting affairs; and had substituted others in their room, without either talents or ability, in order to their being more absolutely masters of the government, and ruling without opposition. The chiefs, without military knowledge, valour, or experience, had no other merit than a blind and frantic rage. ”

“ He was equally a thick and thin supporter of the other faction, the Whigs; he was their time-serving dirty tool; no falsehood, no absurdity, however palpable, so that it served his masters, the Whig faction, was too gross for his depraved appetite. This gentleman, also, was equally lavish of his abuse against me, for having dared to interfere with a privilege which exclusively belonged to the two factions; any innovation upon which was considered as high treason of the greatest magnitude. ”

“ But if it be the duty of princes to restrain the factious, much more does it concern them to dissolve and dissipate the factions themselves. Now I call a faction, a multitude of subjects gathered together either by mutual contracts among themselves, or by the power of some one, without his or their authority who bear the supreme rule. 176A faction, therefore, is as it were a city in a city: for as by an union of men in the state of nature, a city receives its being, so by a new union of subjects there ariseth a faction. ”

“ Now was the work—the moment of interest—men and women groaning, staggering, and lying insensible; others shouting, leaping, and huzzaing; some singing, and not a few able-bodied spalpeens blurting, like over-grown children, on seeing their own blood; many raging and roaring about like bulls;—all this formed such a group as a faction fight, and nothing else, could represent. ”

“ In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. ”

“ By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. ”

“ They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community, and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans, digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests. ”

“ Their force, also, before it breaks out into open revolt, consists either in an eye or a tooth; for all faction, alienated from a state, is both watchful and biting; and this eye and tooth are, as it were, common to all the disaffected; because whatever they learn and know is transmitted from one to another, as by the hands of faction. ”

“ To the most extensive and opulent dominions, the most numerous and disciplined armies, the most renowned captains, the greatest revenue, he added also the most formidable power over opinion. He was the chief of a religious faction, animated by the most atrocious fanaticism, prepared to second his ambition by rebellion, anarchy, and regicide in every Protestant state. ”

“ Neither faction-fight nor party-fight ever stained the streets with blood. The whoop of strife was never raised by neighbor against neighbor, nor the coat trailed, or the caubeen thrown up into the air to challenge an opposite faction. ”

“ As we once had a rebellion of the clowns, we have now an opposition of the pedlers. The quiet of the nation has been, for years, disturbed by a faction, against which all factions ought to conspire; for its original principle is the desire of leveling; it is only animated, under the name of zeal, by the natural malignity of the mean against the great. ”

“ In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. ”

“ Those officers who lose the promotions intended for them by the crown must become of a faction opposite to that of the Assembly which has rejected their claims, and must nourish discontents in the heart of the army against the ruling powers. ”

“ The latent causes of faction seem sown in the nature of man. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, and government, and many other points, both of speculation and practice; an attachment to different leaders; mutual rivalries and animosities; the restlessness of ambition; the pride of opinion; the desire for popular favour; commonly supply a ready origin to factions. And where deeper causes are not at work, the most trivial differences, and the most accidental circumstances, occasionally excite the most severe conflicts. ”

“ I could show, that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that they have all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause and their own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last importance. ”

“ You were formerly the leader of your own faction, since it would appear that we are to talk of factions; you were dependent upon no one, and responsible only to yourself for your actions and opinions; and now you have allied your fortunes to those of persons by whom you will be subjected to a thousand indignities and annoyances when they no longer require your support. ”

“ And therefore those that are seconds in factions do many times, when the faction subdivideth, prove principals; but many times also they prove ciphers and cashiered; for many a man's strength is in opposition; and when that faileth he groweth out of use. It is commonly seen that men once placed take in with the contrary faction to that by which they enter: thinking belike that they have the first sure, and now are ready for a new purchase. The traitor in faction lightly goeth away with it ”

“ The same disposition of mind which in princes is called ambition is in subjects named faction. To this temper I was greatly addicted from my youth. I was, while a boy, a great partisan of prince John’s against his brother Richard, during the latter’s absence in the holy war and in his captivity. ”

“ Thus great households, and by degrees factions, were formed, and things were ready for the great outbreak of faction fighting, which ended in the destruction of the old nobility in the Wars of the Roses. ”

“ And this same kind of industry and diligence which they use to make a people, is commonly called a faction. But when a faction is inferiour in votes, and superiour, or not much inferiour in power, then what they cannot obtain by craft, and language, they attempt by force of armes, and so it comes to a civill warre. ”

“ A faction said that the main thing is wisdom. They sought for themselves a great sage and made him a king over them, and they sought for themselves a land conducive to wisdom and they went and settled there. ”

“ They gather them into faction, while they make themselves the relators and interpreters of the counsels and actions of single men, and nominate the persons and places to assemble and deliberate of such things whereby the present government may be reformed, according as it shall seem best to their interests. Now to the end that they themselves may have the chief rule in the faction, the faction must be kept in a faction ”

“ In the mean time the faction could calumniate any person, as the Duke, the Queen, and even the good King himself, as being in the plot, much more any one that was loyal in the ministry and magistracy, and so keep all in one. ”

“ The Church once shaken, every great and salutary support of the constitution will follow, and we shall have a government impelled solely by faction. When that time arrives, the minister will be the mere tool of the multitude; the faction in the streets will have its mouthpiece in the faction of the legislature. ”

“ They will have a few penniless branches, and no object or policy to justify their existence separate from the S.D.F.⁠It is a sheer faction racket—just such as school-boys indulge in when they split into factions in order to fight each other for no rhyme or reason, save the love of the squabble ”

“ But the predominant faction, drunk with insolence and animosity, made no distinction between courtiers who had been enriched by injudicious partiality and warriors who had been sparingly rewarded for great exploits achieved in defence of the liberties and the religion of our country. ”

“ The captains of the parts, and the other forces of the Guelph faction, gathered to organize their deferred revolution and defend themselves; but learning of the action of the colleagues and the council and perceiving the opposition too great and dangerous, separated, each hunting safety for himself. ”

“ The faction has emissaries spread far and wide to pluck allegiance from men's hearts. It will demand, on the part of the King, an active, unremitting attention to replace himself in that state of pre-eminence and influence the constitution allows, and even requires. ”

“ We desire only to point out the fact that these divisions and faction-fights are going on, and seem to spread and grow in extent and bitterness. There are but few, if any, States entirely free from them. ”

“ When faction decided on open rebellion or hidden treason, the agents of the malcontent leaders gathered together in the inns, where, so long as they did not rouse the suspicions of the authorities and maintained the bearing of studious men, they could hire assassins, plan risings, hold interviews with fellow-conspirators, and nurse their nefarious projects into achievement. ”