Nepotism

“ Full of reforming zeal, he issued ordinances against begging, extravagance and gambling; forbade judges to accept presents from suitors; built new courts of justice; prohibited the sale of offices, maintaining the financial equilibrium by reducing expenses; and, an almost revolutionary step, struck at the root of nepotism, in a bull of 1692 ordaining that thenceforth no pope should grant estates, offices or revenues to any relative. ”

“ Though I have heard of one or two exceptions stated in proof that nepotism is not yet extinct among our Prelates, yet it is impossible to compare the present condition of the Church, and the disposal of its dignities and emoluments with the facts recorded in this Life, without an honest exultation. ”

“ But what is to become of the scions of nobility who have no claim upon landed estate, when nepotism ceases to exist, sinecures are abolished, and all Government clerkships are matter of open competition! Frankly we do not know, but doubtless Providence will always be tenderly disposed towards persons of good family. ”

“ One would gladly overlook a little favouritism and nepotism, a little sticking square men into round holes, and of round men into square holes, for the sake of having a class of young clerks and employés who felt that their master’s business was their business, his honour theirs, his prosperity theirs. ”

“ I am a victim of nepotism. I have, I fancy, proven adequate; indeed, I may say it is rare to find a man of my attainments in so insignificant a position.... But I have been cast out upon the streets arbitrarily, that a corrupt and self-seeking group of professional politicians may curry favor with a man more corrupt than themselves. In short and in colloquial terms, I have been kicked out to provide a place for Supervisor Delorme’s cousin.”
Carmel nodded. ”

“ But nothing accords less with genuine nepotism than this; nay, the very ostrich, by night and in colder places, broods in person, and only omits it where the sun broods better; so, too, the man of influence provides for his cousins only in those cases where great want of merit requires it. ”

“ What he was after to-day was, by letting fly grazing shot, to fix the Apothecary in the agonizing fear that some connection of ideas or other would lead him every moment to the subject of his present brother. Thus he incidentally with great success laid the poor hare's-foot on the rack of the "larded hare," when he contended ironically—for nepotism. ”

“ Of his luxury and extravagance, his nepotism so costly to the country, his assumption of power, and the art with which he knew how to make himself obeyed and feared by all classes and conditions of men, history amply informs us in details scarcely credible at the present day ”

“ Between these two typical instances I hesitate which to place foremost: but since the nepotism of the President is a ruling passion, revealing the primary instincts of his nature,—since it is maintained by him in utter unconsciousness of its offensive character,—since, instead of blushing for it as an unhappy mistake, he continues to uphold it,—since it has been openly defended by Senators on this floor,—and since no true patriot anxious for republican institutions can doubt that it ought to be driven with hissing and scorn from all possibility of repetition,—I begin with this undoubted abuse. ”

“ The fellow who has been handling thousands of dollars in college management and running twenty assistants—the man who could have taken the place—has no father to give him the boost necessary, and the other man's failure has queered his chances. He has to go to work as a mere clerk under a man—excuse me, I don't want to do any knocking."
"You think the whole trouble is caused by misdirected nepotism."
"Yes."
"Ah——" It was young Kaufmann again. "But you said that you were trained in advertising on your college paper." ”

“ The chief defects of which he was accused were a tendency to nepotism, and a willingness to use public money and public contracts as bribes to constituencies in need of railways and other public works. ”

“ As society is at present governed or constituted something which is by no means humanitarian or ideal prevails, and in spite of the best intentions of idealists or philanthropists you have the enormous toll of inefficiency and nepotism to contend with. ”

“ Nichte. A euphemistic use of “nephew” is that of the natural son of a pope, cardinal or other ecclesiastic; and from the practice of granting preferments to such children the word “nepotism” is used of any favouritism shown in finding positions for a man's family. ”

“ I am old and ill, and must arrange my affairs. The task is painful both for you and for me. I will not refer to my anger at my son's marriage; your misfortune disarmed me—I called you to my side, and I desired to behold and to love in your son William, the heir of my fortune, the pivot of my dreams of future ambition. Alas! madam, fate was cruel to us! My son's widow and orphan shall have all that can insure them an honourable existence; but, sole master of a fortune due to my own exertions, I adopt my nephew, and look upon him henceforward as my sole heir. ”

“ Is it any merit to them that they have a count or a baron for a father? I can't help laughing at them! If that is all that they can pride themselves upon, then I am, indeed, truly sorry for these stuck-up aristocrats. To be born the son of a noble is surely no merit; but to be, as I am, the son of an inferior official who, through his own energy and diligence, has worked his way up and reached an important position, that, indeed, is a thing to be proud of. ”

“ He is a hunchback—and—an idiot—has a touch of insanity about him. Except the first few years of his life, he has been confined in an asylum. This nephew has a bachelor uncle, who has declared his [30] intention to make the young man his heir if he marries when he is twenty-one. Otherwise the great fortune goes to another branch of the family. They would make a victim of you, wreck your beautiful young life for their own ambitious aims. It will be six months before he is of age. But the marriage shall never be, my darling. Your young life shall never be sacrificed by these inhuman Shylocks. ”

“ I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended, under certain conditions, to be given by you to your nephew George. If your nephew is married at the time of my death, and if his wife is living, I request you to put him at once in possession of your legacy; accompanying it by the expression of my desire (which I am sure he will consider a sacred and binding obligation on him) that he will settle the money on his wife—and on his children, if he has any. ”

“ The public will never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is made on the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced by family views; nor can they ever see with approbation offices, the disposal of which they intrust to their Presidents for public purposes, divided out as family property. ”

“ Enmesh a young Marchese in the tangles of Neaera's hair. A paternal governor puts his fingers before his eyes; and lets a smile be seen on his lips beneath them. But do not seek to bind him by less easily broken ties. A vigilant and moral governor frowns on the instant; and a paternal government well knows how to protect its distinguished sons by very summary and effectual process.
But when for a poor Diva there comes also the time when that pleasant wild-oat sowing seems no longer a promising pursuit, what does the paternal wisdom decree as to her future? ”

“ A golden-hearted old dust contractor, who hides a will that will give him all that erratic father's property, and disinherit the man aforesaid, and who, to [Pg 146] crown his virtues, pretends to be a miser in order to teach the young woman, also aforesaid, how bad it is to be mercenary, and to induce her to marry the unrecognized and seemingly penniless son; their marriage accordingly, with ultimate result that the bridegroom turns out to be no poor clerk, but the original heir, who, of course, is not dead, and is the inheritor of thousands ”

“ Every moment I expect to see her come in and laugh at me for imagining that she could be guilty of eloping with such a man. How my husband jeered me for saying that his clerk was a dangerous person! And now he is our son-in-law: now we are all fastened together for life, and degraded for ever!”
“No, no: not degraded. My dear aunt, Mr. Curling is quite as gentlemanly as the majority of young men. Look at the sons-in-law one meets with everywhere! Elopements take place in the highest families. ”

“ The heir, who would have been very strong-minded had he been born a woman, had a soul above the management of a country estate. Although all his passions were extremely well-bred and gentlemanly, and had never given him one moment's anxiety from the hour of his birth, there was one—no less gentlemanly, however, than the others—which ruled him with something approaching despotism. ”

“ I tell you now, what I have told you before, that your son Rupert forged that lie against my father that he might take his place as your heir. It was done in a mad impulse of jealousy, and thank God his conscience has punished him for it! Look at his life! Can't you see that there is something amiss with it? Has he not always seemed like a man haunted by some guilty shadow? From one career he has passed to another, never satisfied, never happy. ”

“ Not only a long-lost heir—an heir of the melodrama, strutting into your hitherto unsuspected kingdom at just the right moment, loaded up with the consciousness of unguessed merit and of rights so long feloniously withheld—but even to be a common humdrum domestic heir is a profession to which few would refuse to be apprenticed. ”

“ The Nephews, who are few in number, take upon them to be both Shepherds, and Shearers; Treasurers, and Extorters: so that they suffer no body to grow rich but for them, nor to rise but by their means and to their profit, nor to take from others except it be to present them. For woe be to those Ministers of State, or subordinate Officers, that dare contradict a Nephew’s Will ”

“ In Nias the eldest son usually succeeds his father in the chieftainship. But if from any bodily or mental defect the eldest son is disqualified for ruling, the father determines in his lifetime which of his sons shall succeed him. In order, however, to establish his right of succession, it is necessary that the son upon whom his father's choice falls shall catch in his mouth or in a bag the last breath, and with it the soul, of the dying chief. ”

“ For the rest, you know my descent is sufficiently recognized as that amidst well-born gentry to have rendered me no mesalliance to families the most proud of their ancestry, if I had kept my hereditary estate and avoided the career that makes me useful to man. But I acknowledge that on entering a profession such as mine—entering any profession except that of arms or the senate—all leave their pedigree at its door, an erased or dead letter. All must come as equals, high-born or low-born, into that arena in which men ask aid from a man as he makes himself ”

“ It is hardly a case of royalist and rebel, sir, but the deliberate action of a man suppressing all knowledge of the existence of his own nephew, in order that he might himself obtain the property of his dead brother. ”

“ An elder brother had already selected the army as his profession, and it was therefore decided that my father should enter the church; and thus it is that we have had, and still have, so many people in that profession, who are not only totally unfit for, but who actually disgrace, their calling. The law of primogeniture is beset with evils and injustice; yet without it, the aristocracy of a country must sink into insignificance. ”

“ Never a lady left her wedded husband, but she must needs find herself weighted with charge of his grand-nephew. Cuckoo-tutor sits in General's nest, General's wife to bear him company, and lo! the General brings a grand-nephew to the supplanter, convinced of nobility beyond petty conventions of divorce-court rigmarole. ”

“ But you must be aware, nephew, that my daughter, not less from the fortune which will be exclusively hers, and her individual accomplishments, than from the leading political station which her father fills, will be enabled to have a choice in the adoption of a suitor, which this childish passion might defeat. ”

“ A respectable man, who, relying on your word, had given his sister to your nephew, found himself abused. Your nephew, whose patrimony you had swallowed up in order to increase an inheritance which was to have been his own, was reduced to poverty, with a numerous family. ”

“ I really think the penetrating into the Motives that actuate the Persons in a private Family, of much more general use to be known, than those concerning the Management of any Kingdom or Empire whatsoever: The latter, Princes, Governors, and Politicians only can be the better for, whilst every Parent, every Child, every Sister, and every Brother, are concerned in the former, and may take example by such who are in the same Situation with themselves. ”

“ The powerful old chief to whom my mother was married had no children of his own. I was her only child by a former marriage and her fondness was all centred on me. Our religion, which was the Greek, forbade a plurality of wives. The old chief was not likely to have a direct heir, and, as he was now seventy, her great object was to have him confer on me the succession to the principality; this last he consented to do if she would countenance his amours with other women. ”

“ This extravagant and undutiful behaviour in a matter of such great consequence as the birth of an heir to my crown, to the manifest peril of the Princess and her child (whilst you pretend your [Pg 234] regard for her was your motive) inconsistent with the natural right of all parents, and in violation of your double duty to me, as your father and as your King, is what cannot be excused by any false plea, so repugnant to the whole tenor of your conduct, of the innocence of your intentions, or atoned for by specious pretences or plausible expressions. ”