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More "Expediency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... danger of an attack from Indians. Two of the party wished to go back; but the leader drew his revolver and threatened to shoot the first man who tried to seek safety. "We must hang together or hang separately." Logically, each man had the right to secede, and go off on his own account, but expediency made a law and we declared that any man who tried to leave did so ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... modifications, whispered the means by which he flattered himself that it might yet be averted. Miriam listened to him in silence, nor could he, with all his consummate art, succeed in extracting from her the slightest indication of her own opinion as to their expediency. They parted, Honain as sanguine ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... manufacturer, admitted it was all right in theory, but it wouldn't do as a practical measure. That finished me. I'm a woman, you know, and when a thing appears right in theory, I believe it'll be right in practice. Expediency don't count with me, you see. But tell me, do you still ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... fire, protested against the surrender of the sovereignty of America, "the dismemberment of this ancient and most glorious monarchy". He urged that England should refuse to bow before the house of Bourbon; "if we fall let us fall like men". Richmond answered him by dwelling on the expediency of acknowledging American independence; otherwise, said he, "instead of Great Britain and America against France and Spain, as in the last war, it will now be France, Spain, and America against Great Britain". Chatham rose to reply and fell back in a fit. He died on May 11. Parliament voted ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... memorandum on the Catholic question to the Secretary of State in England, which was intended to be laid before the Cabinet, and which maintained the impossibility of safely satisfying the Catholic claims, and the expediency of the Prince Regent's taking a decided part against them. A general election had taken place in September, and it is evident from the letters of Lord Liverpool and Peel that they at this time looked upon Canning and his followers with even more ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... development came step by step and grew out of real worships. It was quite different from the wholesale adoption of a body of non-national, poetical gods: yet even this development was too artificial, too much stamped with the marks of expediency and courtesy and compromise. It could not live. The personalities of such gods vanish away; their prayers become prayers to 'all gods and goddesses of the City'—theois kai theesi pasi kai pasesi; those who remain, chiefly Athena and Theseus, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... your lesson well, my lord, and ye will do your part in this day of expediency when men are more concerned about their safety and that of their children than that of the kirk of God and the cause of righteousness. I make sure that there will be much fair talk between you and your guests, but I cannot breathe this air, and so you will excuse me from your ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... me almost impossible, Weighing the language of the noble lord, To catch its counsel,—whether peace of war. [Hear, hear.] If I translate his words to signify The high expediency of watch and ward, That we may not be taken unawares, I own concurrence; but if he propose Too plunge this realm into a sea of blood To reinstate the Bourbon line in France, I should but poorly do my duty here Did I not lift my voice protestingly ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... reality of thought to lie deeper than all systems. Those current abstractions, which make up all the morality and all the philosophy of most people, have been brought under suspicion. Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and expediency, honour and interest, virtue and vice—all these words, which seemed once to express elementary and certain realities, now strike us as just the words which, thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once. It is thus not merely philosophy which is discredited, but just that ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... were both young, wealthy, of good family, and though the parents had planned this marriage and joined together the hands of the young couple, yet it was their good fortune that love should tie and strengthen the bond which mere expediency had formed. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... strife ran high. The question at issue was chiefly one of religion. The rank and file of Protestant England was determined against the revival of Romanism, which a continuation of the Stuart line seemed to threaten. Charles was a Protestant only from expediency, and on his deathbed accepted the Roman Catholic faith; his brother James, Duke of York, the heir apparent, was a ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... "we have done exceedingly well, and have avoided all sort of mischief, I think, with safety and without dishonour. The votes put the question of guilt or innocence out of doubt; the withdrawing is grounded upon mere expediency, and has nothing to do with the verdict; had we given up before the third reading, it would ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... whatever for any sect or party under heaven, as such. I have no axes to grind, no logs to roll, no favors to ask. All I desire is to do what is right, and prevent what is wrong. I believe in no "expediency" that is not predicated of justice, for in all things—politics, as well as everything else—I know that "honesty is the best policy." A retributive Providence will unerringly and speedily search out all wrong-doing; hence, right is always ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... composition of a work on this subject, a distinguished friend and Brother, whose opinion I much respect, and with whose advice I am always anxious to comply, unless for the most satisfactory reasons, suggested the expediency of collecting the decisions of all Grand Masters, Grand Lodges, and other masonic authorities upon every subject of Masonic Law, and of presenting them, ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... himself. The first had imperilled her beloved child's bodily welfare to save him from what she thought an evil thing, and the Astons, father and son, had bid defiance to their hitherto straightforward policy and followed expediency instead of open ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... Hampshire. But there was something so repellent to me in the idea—something so meanly like the common herd of spies and informers in the mere act of adopting a disguise—that I dismissed the question from consideration almost as soon as it had risen in my mind. Even as a mere matter of expediency the proceeding was doubtful in the extreme. If I tried the experiment at home the landlord of the house would sooner or later discover me, and would have his suspicions aroused immediately. If I tried it ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... now consulted in his mind as to the expediency of making for Havana or proceeding on his cruise. The leak had materially diminished, and, like all old vessels, though she gave a good portion of work at the pumps, a continuation of good weather might afford an opportunity to shove her across. Under these feelings, he ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... into the habits and feelings of the people among whom he had lived. But he had been useful as a great oil-jar, from whence oil for the quiescence of troubled waters might ever and anon be forthcoming. Expediency was his god, and he had hitherto worshipped it with a ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... beneficial tendency of this great work, to particularize its manifold advantages; they are too weighty to be overlooked, either by the Legislature or the community at large, and will doubtless dictate the expediency of bringing them into effectual operation. The different modes suggested of raising the capital required for the undertaking are: 1st. From the Provincial revenue by the annual rate of a loan; 2nd. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the hammer of war. But your rulers began with disclaimers of Anti-Slavery designs. You cannot be surprised, if our people took your rulers at their word, or if, notwithstanding your change,—a change which they imagined to be wrought merely by expediency,—they retained their first impression as to the object of the war, an impression which the advocates of the South used every art to perpetuate in their minds. That the opponents of Slavery in England should desire the restoration of the Union with Slavery, and with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Mr. Van Buren or Mr. Harrison was the greatest favourite of the passengers; and, on this being defeated, owing to the total ignorance of so many on board of both the parties he had named, he had suggested the expediency of establishing a society to ascertain daily the precise position of the ship. Captain Truck had thrown cold water on the last proposal, however, by adding to it what, among legislators, is called a "rider;" he having drily suggested that one ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power. The men most ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... reference," proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, "to the young girl and boy, the two young people"—Mr. Tangle crushed— "whom I directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of making the order for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Scriptural form; but no further. I do not think the form of Church, any more than the form of civil government, is settled in the Scriptures; I believe that both are left, as Bishop Stillingfleet has shown at large, to times, places, and circumstances, to be determined upon the ground of expediency and utility—a ground on which Dr. Paley has supported the different orders of the Church of England with his accustomed clearness, ability and elegance. I know, on the contrary, that much may be said upon the same ground in favour of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... whether the responsibility of giving the order to fire the castle attaches to Adam Gordon or to Captain Car or Ker, who was Adam's right-hand man. But when all is said on either side, it is irrational, as Child points out, to apply modern standards of morality or expediency to sixteenth-century warfare. It is curious that this text, almost contemporary with the occurrence which gave rise to the ballad, should be wholly concerned with Captain Car and make no mention of ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... these occult practices the Illumines in time became the third great masonic power in France, and the rival Orders perceived the expediency of joining forces. Accordingly in 1771 an amalgamation of all the masonic groups was effected at the new lodge ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... which I am not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mr Dombey acquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certain points of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it necessary to insist. I failed to convince Mrs Dombey of the expediency of her immediately altering her conduct in those respects, with a view to her own peace and welfare, and my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey that if I should find it necessary to object or remonstrate again, I should express my opinion ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... that was enough to mark him out as a disaffected person. No doubt he also talked imprudently; for it was not the nature of this man to keep his sentiments hidden in his heart, and to talk the language of expediency. What he thought in private he advocated publicly in season and out of season; and it was quite in the natural course of things that information regarding his political opinions should be lodged against him with the Board of Excise. His political conduct was ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... on the first two propositions as expressed in the negative, in which I entirely concur, it is unnecessary for me again in to recur to them. In respect to the last, you have had an opportunity since your adjournment not only to test still further the expediency of the measure by the continued practical operation of such parts of it as are now in force, but also to discover what should ever be sought for and regarded with the utmost deference—the opinions and wishes of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... perpetual meetings with Alexa Trent were as unfair to the girl as they were unnerving to himself. Since he couldn't marry her, it was time to stand aside and give a better man the chance—and his thought admitted the ironical implication that in the terms of expediency the phrase might stand ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... back the real subject, and to make the House understand that the ballot, whether good or bad, had been knocked on the head, and that members had no right at the present moment to consider anything but the expediency or inexpediency of so much Reform as Mr. Mildmay presented to them in the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... cannot be transition from the natural to the spiritual world. The natural has its limitations, and beyond these cannot go. So far as the natural world is concerned man can never rise above seeking for pleasure, and making expediency and social approbation the standards of life, hence there is little wonder that those ethical teachers who make nature their basis, deny the possibility of action that is unselfish and free. "The Spiritual Life," however, as Eucken says, "has an independent ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... any means. Ordinarily decent, conservative citizens joined in counselling moderation and virtual compromise with the lawbreakers—it was nothing else—to "avoid trouble." The old love of fair play had been whittled down by the jack-knife of all-pervading expediency to an anaemic desire to "hold the scales even," which is a favorite modern device of the devil for paralyzing action in men. You cannot hold the scales even in a moral issue. It inevitably results in the triumph of evil, which asks nothing better than the even chance to ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... advantages commensurate with the sacrifices required and the hazards incurred. Unfortunately, in our times there are so many doubtful and contested rights that most wars, though apparently based upon bequests, or wills, or marriages, are in reality but wars of expediency. The question of the succession to the Spanish crown under Louis XIV. was very clear, since it was plainly settled by a solemn will, and was supported by family ties and by the general consent of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... not the proximate, end. Moral Science a deduction from the laws of life and the conditions of existence. There have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental Moral Intuitions. The Expediency-Morality is transitional. Reference to the general ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... had better stay at home' we substitute 'You should better stay at home,' an entirely different meaning is expressed, the idea of expediency giving place to ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... as the chief human concern was rapidly declining. The interest in human society as an organism to be studied, and if need be, taken to pieces and put together again, was only just beginning. Montesquieu's great work, 'The Spirit of the Laws,' which demanded for expediency and convenience in legislation the place which modern Europe had long assigned to authority, had only appeared in 1748. Swift's satires had made serious breaches in the wall of convention by which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Orders—there being no bishop in this country—though the boon had often been solicited from the English Church and as often denied. The trammels of State alliance and the policy of preferring political expediency to religious right prevented the authorities from venturing upon a spiritual act and granting the prayer of the petitioners. The clergy had ministered to their flocks all along in the face of intolerance and bitter opposition ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... henceforth be made in Slav. But as the Senate consisted of forty-five nobles, and these were obliged to be over forty years of age, one may say that they did not represent what was most virile in the State; at all events, this isolated tribute to expediency may for a time have been observed in that assemblage, in the world of letters it was disregarded. And this is the more wonderful when we remember that Dubrovnik had from Italy a language that was ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... For the sake of expediency we have numbered and placed a title (in English) on each ancient recipe, following the example of Schuch. This procedure may be counted against us as a liberty taken with the text. The text has remained inviolate. We have merely aimed at a rational and legible presentation—work ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... means made up his mind as to Female Suffrage, was much relieved that not a single woman in Redmarley had so much as breathed its name. His inclinations led him to follow where Mr Asquith led, but his long training in the doctrines of expediency gave him pause. He decided that he could not yet range himself alongside of the anti-suffrage party. As his old father was wont to remark cautiously, "You must see where you are first," and as yet Eloquent had not ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... questions. In behalf of that great change of national policy, the repeal of the Corn Laws, "Punch" fought most vigorously, not, however, forgetting to bestow a few raps of his baton on the shoulders of the Premier whose wisdom or sense of expediency induced such sudden tergiversation as to bring it about. O'Connell's blatant and venal patriotism was held up to merited derision, which his less wary, but more honest followers in agitation, O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchell, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... draws them out of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst of amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in conclave on the expediency of emigration. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... very charming in the moonlight, very like "Midsummer Night's Dream;" but Mary Ogilvie, who was a good way behind, felt a start of dismay as the clear notes pealed back to her. She longed to suggest a little expediency; but she was impeded; for poor Miss Ray, entirely unused to long country walks and nocturnal expeditions, and further tormented by tight boots, was panting up the hill far in the rear, half-frightened, and a good deal ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the present pacifist argument in favor of non-violence is based rather upon its expediency. Here, we are told, is a means of social action that works in achieving the social goals to which pacifists aspire. Non-violence provides a moral force which is more powerful than any physical force. Whether ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... feeling which they evoked. He remembered hearing, when a boy, the same arguments. They had served their purpose once before, with other issues, to plunge the South into war and consequent disaster. Had the lesson been in vain? He did not see the justice nor the expediency of the proposed anti-Negro agitation. But he was not in politics, and confined his protests to argument with his friends, who ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Napoleon agreed in theory. It had originally been his intention to winter in the provinces that he had now overrun, and to march against St. Petersburg or Moscow in the spring. He had, however, other matters besides those of military expediency to consider. In the first place, the Poles were exasperated at his refusal to re-establish at once their ancient kingdom, a refusal necessitated by the fact that he could not do so without taking from Austria and Prussia, his allies, the Polish districts that had fallen to their share. Then, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... is no escape. Leaving aside all questions of justice or political expediency, the aggressor throughout has been Germany. Austria's fury over the assassination of the heir to the throne was natural. But Servia tendered ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... destroy;—and these could not be moved quite at once. 'Mr Brehgert must of course have access to my private room, as long as it is necessary,—absolutely necessary,' said Mr Longestaffe in answer to a message which was brought to him; 'but he will of course see the expediency of relieving me from such intrusion as soon as possible.' But he soon found it preferable to come to terms with the rejected suitor, especially as the man was singularly good-natured and forbearing after the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... of the question of right, I come to the question of expediency. I listened, Sir, with much interest and pleasure to a noble Lord who spoke for the first time in this debate. (Lord Porchester.) But I must own that he did not succeed in convincing me that there is any real ground for the fears by which he is tormented. He gave us a history ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ground for it, that had her lord once roused from the straw-yards of his prize cattle, there was a certain stubborn, irrational, old-world prejudice of pride and temper in him that would have made him throw expediency to the winds, then and there, with a blind and brutal disregard to slander and to the fact that none would ever adorn his diamonds as she did. So that Cecil had not only her fair fame, but her still more valuable jewels in his keeping when he started from the Star and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... delight, telling her, immediately upon her entrance, that Mr. Smith came from the country, and could tell beautiful stories. Mrs. Shipton thanked him gratefully for being so kind to her little ones, and began to feel more comfortable about the expediency of having admitted him into their ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... ll. 13, 14 [Stz. 25]. "And for they knew, the French did still abet The Scot against vs." —The discussion between Westmorland and Exeter on the expediency of first attacking Scotland is found in Holinshed. In the rude old play, "The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth," on which Shakespeare founded his "Henry IV." and "Henry V.," the argument for attacking Scotland first is put into the mouth ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... brawling, blasphemy and rude tumult, in the suburbs of New York, on Sundays, within the last few years, that I have never seen in any other part of the world on similar occasions; and serious doubts of the expediency of the high-pressure principle have beset me, whatever may be the just constructions of doctrine. With the last I pretend not to meddle; but, in a worldly point of view, it would seem wise, if you cannot ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... mercies, rather than venture among the horns of the herd. She is not an amiable cow; but she has a very intelligent face, and seems to be of a reflective cast of character. I doubt not that she will soon perceive the expediency of being on good terms with the rest of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... circumstances of the case would, in the opinion of the world, have justified the use of force on our part in the first instance. Cautionary rigour is at all times invidious; and has this additional objection to it, that the severity of a preventive course, when it best succeeds, leaves its expediency ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... resolutions indorsing the policy of the Administration. In the Legislature his efforts were equally successful, and the opponents of the Administration were forced to abandon their constitutional objections to the treaty, and to content themselves with a simple denial of the expediency of the measure at that time. President Washington attached so much importance to these services that he offered to his old friend and comrade the position of Attorney-General of the United States, but Marshall declined ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Indian at once, but the Manitoba Act had {75} set a precedent. Only a few thousand acres were at stake, in a boundless land where the Government stood ready to set aside a hundred million acres for a railway. The expediency of winning the goodwill of the half-breeds was apparent to Canadians on the spot, especially now that the Indians, over whom the Metis had great influence, were also becoming restless because of the disappearance of the buffalo and ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... under moral obligation or in duty bound to do. Ought is the stronger word, holding most closely to the sense of moral obligation, or sometimes of imperative logical necessity; should may have the sense of moral obligation or may apply merely to propriety or expediency, as in the proverb, "The liar should have a good memory," i. e., he will need it. Ought is sometimes used of abstractions or inanimate things as indicating what the mind deems to be imperative or logically necessary in view of all the conditions; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... out of neutral vessels, was revived, as a matter of course, with the renewal of the war and all American ships felt the expediency, of avoiding cruisers that might deprive them of their men. Strange as it may seem, a large and leading class of Americans justified this claim of the English, as it was practised on board their own country's vessels! What will not men defend when blinded and excited ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... comparatively easy—given compelling circumstances and an obedient soul. But to sacrifice others never becomes easy to a man who respects the rights of others. And we shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency makes it easy for them to order great mental ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... and so induced a willingness to listen to the preaching of a new and purer creed. And on the part of those of the Council who were organizing the revolution—among whom religion seemed to be regarded less as a vital fact than as a matter of political expediency—there was a strong disposition to encourage the spread of doctrines which obviously, by weakening the Priest Captain's hold upon the people, would increase their own strength. Therefore, Fray Antonio found himself free to preach to this heathen multitude ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... cannot expect to hold the friendship of the world, especially of England, France, and Japan, if we are to treat agreements not as inviolable contracts, but as mere matters of convenience, whose plain terms are to be ignored when matters of expediency dictate. I know that the Irish, through the Hearst newspapers, will cry out that I have surrendered to England, that I am attempting to hand over to Europe a quasi-control over the Panama Canal. As a matter of fact, we are in bad by reason of our attitude on Panama ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... added its temptations; the darkness of northern climes both rendering the typical character of Light more deeply felt than in Italy, and necessitating its admission in larger masses; the Italian, even at the period of his most exquisite art in glass, retaining the small Lombard window, whose expediency will hardly be doubted by anyone who has experienced the transition from the scorching reverberation of the white-hot marble front, to the cool depth of shade within, and whose beauty will not be soon forgotten by those ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... republic? After Sinn Fein, the Labor party? Madame Markewicz is high in the councils of both Sinn Fein and Labor. One day, lost in one of her trance-like meditations in which she states her intuitions with absolute disregard of expediency, she ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... engaged in trade, where we were not only useful, but absolutely necessary to our country in her dearest interests; we, with all that was near and dear to us, were sacrificed without remorse, to the infernal deity of political expediency! We fell to gratify the wishes of dark envy, and the views of unprincipled ambition! Your foes, Sir, were avowed; were too brave to take an ungenerous advantage; you fell in the face of day.—On ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... take the line of least resistance, and when thousands of votes of small landowners are to be won through the advocacy of an exemption, exemptions there will be. The whole system of taxation is wrong, it seems to me, and though, as a matter of expediency, sometimes from conviction, many people advocate the opposite course, I have long felt that taxation should not be imposed according to the ability to pay so much as according to benefits received ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... restrained by ecclesiastical censures through the see of Canterbury, to which province they are subject by law, they will be for ever rising in arms against the king, to the disquiet of the whole realm of England." Gerald's answer to this was complete, except from the point of view of political expediency. "What can be more unjust than that this people of ancient faith, because they answer force by force in defence of their lives, their lands, and their liberties, should be forthwith separated from the body corporate of Christendom, and ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... Friar Lawrence was lying in a ditch, while I was behind an oak. We were near enough to discern the niece, and consequently we feared to be recognised. The situation was neither dignified nor romantic. My friend was sanguine, though big ardour was slightly damped by the ditch water. I doubted the expediency of trying the boat-house, but he urged the risk of her disappointment, which made the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Slavery and Its Remedy;" "the Rev. J.D. Paxton's 'Letters on Slavery'; the Rev. S.J. May's letters to Andrew T. Judson, 'The Rights of Colored People to Education Vindicated'; Prof. Elizur Wright, Jr.'s, 'Sin of Slavery and Its Remedy'; Whittier's 'Justice and Expediency'; and, above all, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's startling 'Appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans' were the more potent of the new crop of writings betokening the vigor of Mr. Garrison's Propagandism," says that storehouse ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... subjugate his will and his inclination to the prevailing laws and principles and beliefs, and he must sacrifice his private aims and desires to the common interest, even when his reason and will may not be convinced. That is a simple matter of compromise, and the sacrifice is made as a matter of expediency and duty rather than as a matter of emotion. But there are other natures to whom it is essential to live by emotion, and to whom it is a relief and delight to submerge their private inclinations in some larger national or religious emotion. We have seen of late, in ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lady Mabel. It seemed to her to be very odd,—unless certain people had made up their minds as to the expediency of ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... creased and worn bill. Spreading it out, he offered it to the man beside him. To loot an army warehouse was fair play as he saw it. Morgan's command had long depended upon Union commissaries for equipment, clothing, and food. And a horse trade was something forced upon him by expediency. But he still shrank from this ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... about fifty years after the apostles. He wrote, therefore, within a hundred years of the apostle John. But he was a man of peculiar views, extravagant in his opinions, an enthusiast in everything. He proves that the practice of infant baptism was established, by arguing against the expediency of baptizing children, and unmarried persons, lest they should sin after baptism. His argument, with respect to both these classes of persons, is the same. His language is, "If any understand the weight of baptismal obligations, they will ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... have rendered the Europeans vile in the estimation of the Japanese. This is the error which must be destroyed by some means or other, even if it should be necessary to pick a quarrel with them, as we have already done with the Chinese. At the same time that I admit the expediency of so doing, I by no means assert that ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... if we may judge from what we know of him, his own peculiar and somewhat detestable way of refusing. Once when his daughter had asked a perfectly simple favour in a matter of expediency, permission, that is, to keep her favourite brother with her during an illness, her singular parent remarked that "she might keep him if she liked, but that he had looked for greater self-sacrifice." These were the weapons with which he ruled his people. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... publicly begged pardon for a sin which he never committed. The play was "The Rival Queens," the part assigned to Evans that of Alexander, but 'twas some time before this Alexander could be induced to crave the forgiveness of the excitable Dublinites. Finally he yielded to expediency, and, coming forward to the centre of the stage, expressed his contrition. At this, a puppy in the pit cried out "Kneel, you rascal!" and Evans, now thoroughly exasperated, tartly answered: "No, you rascal! I'll kneel to none but God, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... general disfavor with which American pacifist tendencies were regarded in Germany. Nine-tenths of the American nation are pacifists, either through their education and sentimental prepossession in favor of the principle, or out of a sense of commercial expediency. People in the United States did not understand that the German people, owing to their tragic history, are compelled to cultivate and to uphold the martial spirit of their ancestors. The types of the German officer ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... by meat must apparently be reduced to that of a condiment food destined to produce in a measure the whipping-up which is useful, and sometimes indispensable to the system. We cannot here discuss the expediency of action and the harmlessness of the dose of substances reputed stimulating. But one can ask oneself whether, to attain this object of stimulation, carnivorous feeding is indispensable, and if vegetarianism could not supply ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... outgrow the mischief, but perhaps it may shorten my life. I tell you this because I want you to see what is before us. I have no right to expect you to link your life with mine under these circumstances, and your guardian is very doubtful as to the wisdom and expediency of it.' ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... how far injurious; but in what way its benefits may be enhanced, and its mischiefs, if any, be abated. He who should demonstrate that it has a pernicious tendency, would but the more strongly enforce our propositions; since he would thereby show the expediency of diminishing that tendency and of mitigating that evil which the public will forbids to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... foe had vanished. Though Montagu had obtained from Oxford some glimpse of the desire which the more sagacious and temperate Lancastrians already entertained for that alliance, and though Louis had already hinted its expediency to the earl, yet, till now, Warwick himself had naturally conceived that the prince shared the enmity of his mother, and that such a union, however politic, was impossible; but now indeed there burst upon him the full triumph of revenge and pride. Edward of York ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Contrivances I was able to attain my Ends and to establish the Welfare of my Countrymen. Do you blame me? It is not the business of a Ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must fly even from Virtue herself, if she sit in a different Quarter from Expediency. It is his Duty to sacrifice the Best, which is impossible, to a little Good, which is close at hand. I was willing to lay down a Multitude of foolish Laws, so that, under their Cloak, I might slip in a few Wise ones; and, had I not shown myself to be both Cruel and Superstitious, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the world with such an unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones, seemed to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no inactive part in arranging the affair; there were considerations of expediency which she would be far more likely to appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood, and there was just the specious phantom of sentiment and romance in this late union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a fool of a woman who has lost ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shield of respectability to present to all questioners, he advertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. Walter Mong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents; and so he advertised out of expediency. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... no doubt, a clever man in his way, but he was not a man of high principle. He hated trouble of any sort, and expediency was usually his guide. Still he had had much experience in teaching, and Aunt Annie was quite equal to the task of sounding his knowledge of ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... herself. She had just settled that of her own accord, and, without committing herself or others, had suggested a really sensible plan by which all trouble would be avoided in future. That was the common-sense way of looking at it. He would lay the plan before the colonel, have him judge of its expediency and its ethics—and even the question whether she already knew the real truth, or was self-deceived. That done, he would return to his own affairs in Sacramento. There was nothing difficult in this, or that ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... about really difficult points. It is so much easier to say at once that all drinking ought to be suppressed, than to consider how, in actual circumstances, sobriety can be judiciously encouraged; and by assuming a good self-evident law and denouncing your opponents as immoral worshippers of expediency, you place yourself in an enviable position of moral dignity and inaccessibility. No argument can touch you. These abstract rules, too, have the convenience of being strangely ambiguous. I have been almost pathetically affected when I have observed ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... asked me last night whether my thoughts had been directed to the topic which is uppermost just now in so many minds in regard to the religion of the future, and I ventured to tell her that it would be found to be contained in the generalised expediency ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... arriving at land of some description upon the course we were pursuing, and having every reason to believe, from present appearances, that we should not find it the sterile soil met with in the higher Arctic latitudes, I warmly pressed upon him the expediency of persevering, at least for a few days longer, in the direction we were now holding. So tempting an opportunity of solving the great problem in regard to an Antarctic continent had never yet been afforded to man, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to hold both the Servians and Bosnians in check, by pitting the one against the other, was of doubtful expediency; and, as the event proved, tended materially to weaken the imperial cause by depriving it of the aid of the Bosnian irregulars, who had acquired a name for reckless daring second to none. The outbreak of the Russian war was the signal for another attempt to obtain ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... from a germ of the Divine life within, or am I shaping my path to obtain some immediate result of expediency? Am I endeavoring to compass effects, amidst a tangled web of foreign influences I cannot calculate; or am I seeking simply to do what is right, and leaving the consequences to the good ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... whether the past had been spent well, and how the future could be spent better. So, as time went on, he pushed his books further and set himself to this consideration. For a while he sat looking at his own doings only by the light, as it were, of two candles—the one, of expediency; the other, of rectitude. Had he been wise? ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... alone would supersede the expediency of announcing any definite and irrevocable resolution. You are among the small number of those who know my invincible attachment to domestic life, and that my sincerest wish is to continue in the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... prize fellowships is that they are the only means by which a child of the working-class can raise himself to the highest positions in the land. My answer to this would be that, in the first place, it is of questionable expediency to invite the cleverest members of any class to leave it—instead of making their abilities available in it, and so raising the whole class along with, and by means of, their own rise. Second, these prize fellowships will continue, and must continue, to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... of his Lieder to appear in print; the songs numbered op. 9, which would appear to antedate them in composition and publication, were not written until a decade later, when they were issued under an arbitrary opus number as a matter of expediency. Their proper place in MacDowell's musical history is, therefore, about synchronous with the mature and characteristic "Eight Songs" of op. 47. From the five songs now published in one volume as op. 11 and 12, the progress of MacDowell's ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... mutilation for anarchists convicted of killing or inciting to kill—mutilation followed by death. For those who merely deny the right and expediency of law, plain mutilation—which might advantageously take the form of removal ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... agreed with his wife, on grounds of expediency. "Never make a row if you can help it," was the peaceable principle to which this gentleman committed himself. "Send word that the children have caught colds, and get ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... arrangements for the removal of his master's wardrobe from the George and Vulture. This request Mr. Samuel Weller prepared to obey, with as good a grace as he could assume, but with a very considerable show of reluctance nevertheless. He even went so far as to essay sundry ineffectual hints regarding the expediency of stretching himself on the gravel for that night; but finding Mr. Pickwick obstinately deaf to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Presently he said: "If it were restored to you, Davenport's moral right to it would still be insisted on. The restoration would be merely on grounds of expediency." ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... as Dutch sentiment at the Cape appeared already to be thoroughly hostile to us, it would be dangerous to alienate the British Africanders also by making a martyr of their favourite leader. But whatever arguments may be founded upon expediency, it is clear that the Boers bitterly resented, and with justice, the immunity ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... head, a sound judgment, and a good heart, could adjust a scheme that would satisfy all; at least it would satisfy colonists by its justice, and reconcile the peers and the people of England by its expediency, for the day Great Britain parts with these colonies, depend upon it, she descends in the scale of nations most rapidly. India she may lose any day, for it is a government of opinion only. Australia will emancipate itself ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... looked harassed and perplexed, and showed himself glad of being joined by any ally whom he could trust. In truth, harsh and narrow as he was, Paulett was too good and religious a man for the task that had been thrust on him, where loyal obedience, sense of expediency, and even religious fanaticism, were all in opposition to the primary principles of truth, mercy, and honour. He was, besides, in constant anxiety, living as he did between plot and counterplot, and with ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... truth, being a body of principles applicable primarily to legislation and only secondarily to ethics, its doctrines hold far more obviously true in the field of politics than in the field of morals. On any wide view of large public questions expediency will be found to be only another name for justice. It can be neither the interest nor the duty of any nation to legislate in a way which produces more of suffering than of happiness. A policy opposed to the interests or the welfare ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... that of food, of which they would fain have more, and gaze with wistful eyes upon their captors, who are feasting on the remnant of what was until lately their own property. But the latter jeeringly suggest to them the expediency of their devouring each other, since they seem to have a preference for ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the exhibits showed the work of separate institutions for the sexes. A comparison of that kind would be profitable only from a pedagogical point of view and is of minor consideration in our American system of education. Woman's place in the schoolroom is defended by tradition, expediency, and merit; and instead of surrendering in the face of foreign criticism their positions as instructors, women teachers are to-day broadening their field of labor by serving as instructors in many ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... his usual adroitness and boldness. Assuming that the President had made no express recommendation, he devoted his speech mainly to a strong argument of party expediency, repelling without reserve and denouncing without stint the work of the Lecompton Convention. "Stand by the doctrine," said he, "that leaves the people perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions for themselves, in their own way, and your party will ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... many so-called Christian legislators and Christian people would go to this "heathen" philosopher and learn of him—learn that to do right is always and ever the highest safety, the highest expediency, the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of France and of England towards the Acadians was based upon political expediency rather than upon any definite or well-conceived plan for the development of the country. The inhabitants, born to serve rather than to command, had honestly striven according to their light to maintain respect for constituted authority. But the state of unrest into which they were ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... the "eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, that his ears are open to their cry, and that he is able to succour them, being tempted;" and, therefore, he pondered the matter well in his own heart, and consulted often with his father on the expediency of removing William from the guardianship of ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... certainly oppose it." In the June following, however, the commons having in the meanwhile passed a resolution indicating favour to emancipation, the Duke declared that he looked on the question as one of expediency; and concluded his speech by recommending that the public mind should be allowed to rest. In the end, it might be possible to do something; for he was most desirous of seeing the subject brought to ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... special quality, so well named by the Romans gravitas, which at Athens was never reached, but which has again appeared in England, owed its development to the august discipline of the Senate. Well might Cineas call this body an assembly of kings. Never have patriotism, tradition, order, expediency, been so powerfully represented as there; never have change, passion, or fear had so little place. We can well believe that every effective speech began with the words, so familiar to us, maiores ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... religious feelings nor by any great tendency to idealization. And yet the nineteenth century has its standard, firmly based on public opinion, made up of a respect for decency and justice, a love of refinement, and an appreciation of the expediency as well as the attractiveness of virtue; a standard which influences many minds over which religion has little control. But in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, religion had ceased to govern, and had not yet attained that moral influence which, even ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... proposed measure; and in one district there was no choice. The Senate therefore stands at present twenty-two in favor, and nine opposed to the bill. The Message of Governor HUNT narrates the events which gave occasion to the Extra Session, and argues in favor of the constitutionality and expediency of the proposed measure for the enlargement of the canals.—— An Address has been issued by 56 of the 112 members of the Convention which framed the Constitution of the State, whose names are appended to that document, in which, after examining ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... general has a right to see men abandon the means of defence, and then—after the lapse of three days too!—inflict on them the worst fate that could have befallen them had they held out. The only remaining plea is that of expediency; and it is one upon which many a retail as well as wholesale ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... inkling of the Governor's complicity in the affair; still this offense had been condoned by the many, as usually happens with the crimes of great men who occupy stations of honor, whose misdemeanors are often enshrouded and borne away into oblivion beneath the veil of expediency and interest of the common weal. A court-martial would indeed take place; but its verdict would be one of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... secrets enough in Lucretia's life to render her apprehensive of encountering those who had known her in earlier years; and Varney feared lest any rumour reported to St. John might create his mistrust, or lessen the hold obtained upon a victim heretofore so unsuspicious. They both agreed in the expediency of withdrawing themselves and St. John as soon as possible from London, and frustrating Percival's chance of closer intercourse with the stranger, who had ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Fielding this morning, and consulted him about the expediency of your remaining here, as you wont live with us. We wish the place kept up;—it is a curioso in its way—an antique with all its appurtenances; and I do not know any one more in keeping with it, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... bruise it; even excessive nurture may cause an exuberance of growth and weaken the roots. I do not doubt your real repentance, my Francis—Heaven forbid it me, but I confess I do gravely doubt the expediency of your assuring Donna Aurelia of it otherwise than by a letter which I shall willingly convey to her. May I ask you now—since I stand to you in loco parentis; yes, yes, in loco parentis—how it was that you became acquainted with the fact ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... perturbation. General Gough was urged by Sir Arthur Paget to withdraw the resignation. Sir Arthur Paget told them that the operations against Ulster were to be of a purely defensive nature. Unfortunately, Sir Arthur Paget based his appeal on expediency and private interest, and not sufficiently on the call of public duty. This failed to influence the officers. They persisted in their resignations, and only finally withdrew them on receiving a written undertaking from the War Office that they would not be again presented with the alternative ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... angry with Artaphernes. He presumed, too, that Megabates would denounce him to Artaphernes, and, through him, to Darius, as the cause of the failure of the expedition. A sudden order might come at any moment, directing that he should be beheaded. He began to consider the expediency of revolting from the Persian power, and making common cause with the Greeks against Darius. The danger of such a step was scarcely less than that of remaining as he was. While he was pondering these momentous questions in his mind, he was led suddenly to a decision by a very singular circumstance, ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... fear to hinder him from being charitable. The cowardice of conscience is one of the saddest penalties of sin; and to avert suspicion from one's self by severity to others is, indeed, the most miserable expediency of self-condemnation. The temper of charity and compassion seems natural to men of letters and of art. They are emotional and sensitive, and by the necessity of their vocation have to hold much communion with the inmost consciousness of our nature; they thus learn ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... play, and not real. One of the finest and not unfamiliar strokes of comedy in this kind is that of a seasoned veteran in the part of a politician who turns upon another veteran with whom he differs upon a question of expediency, and striking an attitude, with an air and tone worthy of the great Folair himself, or Mr. Crummies in his loftier moments, exclaims, "Apostate!" It is conceded that there has been nothing finer on the stage since Dick Turpin pointed ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... pedestrian, pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, antipodes, podium, polypod, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... pacifist argument in favor of non-violence is based rather upon its expediency. Here, we are told, is a means of social action that works in achieving the social goals to which pacifists aspire. Non-violence provides a moral force which is more powerful than any physical force. Whether it be used by the ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... before the passing of the Reform Bill, that Nicholas was a thorough Reformer. What was our astonishment to discover shortly after the meeting of the first reformed Parliament, that he was a most inveterate and decided Tory! It was very odd: some men change their opinions from necessity, others from expediency, others from inspiration; but that Nicholas should undergo any change in any respect, was an event we had never contemplated, and should have considered impossible. His strong opinion against the clause which empowered the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... assaults. I strongly question the expediency of advocating the revival of whipping for those crimes. It is a natural and generous impulse to be indignant at the perpetration of inconceivable brutality, but I doubt the whipping panacea gravely. Not in the least regard or pity for the criminal, whom I hold in far lower estimation than a mad ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... in the infallibility of every word of Scripture, the subject is taken out of the province of natural reason, conscience, and expediency; and there is nothing to be said. They hold by the current tradition as the explicit will of God. But, at the present day, there is an increasing proportion of persons who look on the Hebrew narrative of the origin and earliest experience of our race ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... went to the meeting where the strike was to be voted. Nobody had opposed the strike, for the cause was plainly a just one. The men wanted their pay to be issued to them every week, and they were entitled to it. The only question in my mind was one of expediency. Could we hope to win a strike at a time like that when the mills were on the verge of closing because ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... are very imperfect at the best; legislatures are constantly subject to currents of popular prejudice and passion; statesmanship is too often weak and fluctuating, incapable of appreciating the true tendency of events, and too ready to yield to the force of present circumstances or dictates of expediency; but law, as worked out on English principles in all the dependencies of the empire and countries of English origin, as understood by Blackstone, Dicey, Story, Kent, and other great masters of constitutional and legal learning, gives the best possible guarantee for the security ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the result of the present public movement for the abolition of capital punishment, and however far future experiments may go towards establishing the expediency and safety of such a change in criminal jurisprudence, the history of every nation and people will show, we believe, the remarkable fact, that ever since Cain stood before his Maker with his hands reeking with the blood of his murdered brother, and his heart so deeply ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... business work with a good conscience, being more particular about the interests of those who trust us than of our own. Indeed, on the bare ground of expediency it is best to do so; for then, if misfortune happens, trade goes bad, or your vessel is cast away, they will make good allowance for you, knowing that you are a loser as well as they, and that at all times you have thought as much of them as of ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... he is now in the position of a Mohammedan converted to Christianity, who is advised by the missionary to choose one of his two wives to have and to hold as a lawful spouse. When one has given his heart to Henry Esmond and the Heart of Midlothian he is in a strait, and begins to doubt the expediency of literary monogamy. Of course, if it go by technique and finish, then Esmond has it, which from first to last in conception and execution is an altogether lovely book; and if it go by heroes—Esmond and Butler—then ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... declaration of war, shall appear, when unprejudiced history is written, to have been characterized by patience, forbearance, and self-restraint, they will add to the credit of former days. If they were characterized by selfishness, by politics, by a balancing of expediency against justice they will be counted as a time of ignominy for which a victorious war would furnish ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... suggest that although the crime charged to have been committed in this case is held odious, as being in conflict with our opinions on the subject of national sovereignty and personal freedom, there is no prohibition of it or punishment for it provided in any act of Congress. The expediency of supplying this defect in our criminal code is therefore recommended to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... constantly broken by degenerate and vicious men, women and children, very rarely is broken in a free wild herd or flock. In the observance of this fundamental law, born of ethics and expediency, mankind is far behind the wild animals. It would serve a good purpose if the criminologists and the alienists would figure out the approximate proportion of the human species now living that bullies and maltreats and oppresses the weak and the defenseless. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Moses was a lover of beauty, and the hold he had upon his people was quite as much through training them to work as through his moral teaching. Indeed, his morality was expediency—which is reason enough according to modern science. When he wants them to work, he says, "Thus saith the Lord," just the same as when he wishes to ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... its meaning, which entered into subsequent action as guiding faiths, and imperative notions about the conditions of success. The authority of religion and that of custom coalesced into one indivisible obligation. Therefore the simple statement of experiment and expediency in the first paragraph above is not derived directly from actual cases, but is a product of analysis and inference. It must also be added that vanity and ghost fear produced needs which man was as eager to satisfy as those of hunger or the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... everything, not to convince him, for he had seen them, but from expediency and good taste, and to avoid painful explanations. Hippolyte Ceres suffered all the tortures of jealousy. He admitted it to himself, he kept saying inwardly, "I am a strong man; I am clad in armour; but the wound is underneath, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... want and woe, all calamity and disappointment, all shame and guilt. In Christ there come forward to meet her, love, hope, truth, light, salvation. In Simon are acted out doting conservatism, mean expediency, purblind calculation, carnal insensibility. Generosity in this scene is confronted with meanness, in the attempt to shelter misfortune. The woman is a tragedy herself, such as Aeschylus never dreamed of. The scourging Furies, dread Fate, and burning Hell unite in her, and, borne ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... lightly. Such a tempestuous wooing! You ask me to marry you because you fear I might do worse—because you believe that I'm irresponsible, and that without you I'll end in spiritual beggary. I appreciate your motives. They're large, ingenuous and heroic. Thanks. Love is not a matter of expediency or marriage a search for a guardian. If they were, mon ami, I should have long ago married ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... had been made to us on the morning of my visit to Miss Jenrys, Bill having appeared at our quarters at an early hour, and I had been studying the expediency of letting Miss Jenrys into the history of her brunette acquaintance, as far as I myself knew it, before visiting the two ladies, at last deciding that I would wait a little and be guided by circumstances, the episode of Gerald Trent's disappearance finally ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... in the unanimity with which we then and there dropped as one man. In the short interval between the first and second discharges of grape, one of those incidents occurred which often turns the seriousness of battle into a seeming frolic. While considering the expediency of advancing, our attention was drawn to the antics of several cattle, which had been quietly grazing near by, now so thoroughly astonished at the strange proceedings that they were literally attempting ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... building your wharf with stolen materials, you have committed a moral wrong. There is no more terrible mistake, than to violate what is eternally right, for the sake of a seeming expediency. Those who act upon such a principle, do the utmost in their power to destroy all that is ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the success of 'Die Entfuehrung' could permanently establish German opera in Vienna. The musical sympathies of the aristocracy were entirely Italian, and Mozart had to bow to expediency. His next work, 'Le Nozze de Figaro' (1786), was written to an adaptation of Beaumarchais's famous comedy 'Le Mariage de Figaro,' which had been produced in Paris a few years before. Da Ponte, the librettist, wisely omitted all the political references, which contributed ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... squealed, he gouged no less hard. Appeals for financial mercy fell on deaf ears. He was a free lance, and had no friendly business associations. Such alliances as were formed from time to time were purely affairs of expediency, and he regarded his allies as men who would give him the double-cross or ruin him if a profitable chance presented. In spite of this point of view, he was faithful to his allies. But he was faithful just as long as they were and no longer. The treason had to come from them, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... hope, convincing. If all Catholics in the Western Provinces, under the direction and with the continued support of the Hierarchy, unite in one sublime and persistent effort, we have the utmost confidence in its immediate realization. Some Catholics, we know, will distrust its expediency, despair of its success or even feel an obligation to oppose it. Difficulties, most undoubtedly, we will have numerous and great. With time, patience, perseverance and self-sacrifice we will overcome them. Nothing succeeds like success. The establishment of a work of that kind is the work ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... of sixty years strongly inclines me to a preference of matured and considerate action over that immediate action which notoriously is in nine cases out of ten as ill-advised as it is precipitate. Only in the field of politics is the expediency of the latter assumed as of course; yet, as in science and literature and art so in politics, final, because satisfactory, results are at best but slowly thrashed out. As respects wisdom, the modern statute book does not ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... fascinations upon Sevrin, and to receive his homage in her queenly and condescending way. She was aware of both—her power and his homage—and enjoyed them with, I dare say, complete innocence. We have no ground in expediency or morals to quarrel with her on that account. Charm in woman and exceptional intelligence in man are a law unto themselves. Is ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... necessarily stamp them as being conspicuously dishonest. They were subjected to great and unusual temptations. Their vast power and their immunity from punishment, made it easy for them to enrich themselves at the public expense, while their sense of honor, deprived of the support of expediency, was not great enough to restrain them. The very men that were the boldest in stealing public land or in avoiding the tax collector might have recoiled from an act of private dishonesty or injustice. However, it would be absurd in the face of the ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... is not long. I will read it. It invokes a religious sanction and the authority of God on their civil obligations; for it was no doctrine of theirs that civil obedience was a mere matter of expediency. Here it is: ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Margaret in horrified protest against the last item on the programme. But Sylvia gave a chuckle of cheerful complacency, and, so far from being overcome, looked so much revived by the prospect that there could be no doubt as to the expediency of the proposed visit, so far as health ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... spoken of expediency—political expediency. Sometimes political expediency can overreach itself and perpetrate the most grave injustices. Individuals at times are unnecessarily called upon to suffer in the interests of a cause. Your Excellency will remember a certain affair at Tavora ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... wagon. The musicians were mounted on horses. This was all there was of the parade. Alfred has since learned that this feature was introduced into the circus as an expediency. G. G. Grady, an impecunious circus proprietor, found his colossal aggregation without a band wagon and no funds to purchase one. He hit upon the idea of mounting his band on horses. The innovation was heralded as a feature and to this day circuses advertise the mounted band ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the young man who is growing up, it is a very general custom to send him to sea. The board, in imitation of so wise and salutary an example, took counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver Twist, in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port. This suggested itself as the very best thing that could possibly be done with him: the probability being, that the skipper would flog him to death, in a playful ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... subservience.] Expedience. — N. expedience, expediency; desirableness, desirability &c. adj.; fitness &c. (agreement) 23; utility &c. 644; propriety; opportunism; advantage. high time &c. (occasion) 134. V. be expedient &c. Adj.; suit &c. (agree) 23; befit; suit the time, befit the time, suit the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... impost on the native sulphur, which is therefore checked in its sale; now that he keeps an army of 80,000 men to play at soldiers with; now that he constitutes himself the only referee even in questions of commercial expediency, and a fortiori in all other cases, which he settles arbitrarily, or does not settle at all; now that he sees so little the signs of the times, that he will not let a professor go to a science-congress ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... it was impossible to be severe with them;"[2135] hence, when insurrections were to be put down, the Assembly had neither the courage nor the force necessary. "They blame for the sake of decency; they frame their deeds by expediency." and in turn justly undergo the pressure which they themselves have sanctioned against others. Only three or four times do the majority, when the insurrection becomes too daring—after the murder of the baker Francois, the insurrection of the Swiss Guard at Nancy, and the outbreak of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of judgment far above his years. Indeed, he was decidedly superior to his rivals in personal merit and attractions. [45] But, while private inclinations thus happily coincided with considerations of expediency for inclining her to prefer the Aragonese match, a scheme was devised in another quarter for the express purpose ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... recalled his own humiliation, his long captivity, and mistrusted the power of his subtile, amiable friend-enemy. Friendship? Sweeter was hatred. But the promptings of wisdom had suggested the policy of peace; the reins of expediency drove him, autocrat or slave, to the doctrines of loving brotherhood. He turned his gloomy eyes upon the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... also (as I am reminded) an ode on the consecration of St. Anne's, Alderney, when I accompanied the Bishop to the ceremony: and some memorable stanzas about the decent expediency of the Bailiff and Jurats being robed for official uniform, since ornamentally adopted; but before I wrote they wore mean ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... likely to excite alarm and opposition. In every effort to promote the temporal or spiritual welfare of others, we should consider things as they really are, and not merely as they ought to be, and we should consult expediency as far as we can do so, without compromising principle. ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... such weaklings; as a Christian minister I denounce them. Nothing can excuse a soul for wavering in its duty because that duty is hard. It is the hard things we should take delight in facing; otherwise we are babes and not men, and our faith a matter of expediency, and not that stern and immovable belief in God and His purposes which can alone please Deity and bring us into that immediate communion with His spirit which it should be the end and aim of every ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... at Acoma, there is no doubt that the circular form is the more primitive and was formerly used by some tribes which now have only the rectangular form. Still the abandonment of the circular and the adoption of the rectangular form, due to expediency and the breaking down of old traditions, was a very gradual process and proceeded at a different rate in different parts of the country. At the time of the Spanish conquest the prevailing form in the old province of Cibola was ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... which may possibly befit an individual. A certain heroic dreamer told men to give all they had to the poor. You, if you like, may adopt this idealistic attitude. You may do generous actions such as your country cannot afford to do, since a nation which abandons the line of expediency is on the high road to suicide. If I have a bilious attack, by all means come and console me; if Poland has a bilious attack, there is no reason why England should step in as dry-nurse; there may be every reason, indeed, why England should stand aloof. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... their indulgence, he made no secret of the mistake by which he had been led so far on a fruitless errand. While speaking, the signs and gestures of Dudley gave him reason to believe, that his companion had something of importance to communicate. In a private interview, the latter suggested the expediency of concealing the truth, and of rescuing the child they had in fact discovered from the hands of her barbarous masters. It was now too late to practise a deception that might have availed for this object, had the stern principles of Content ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... his partner played several rubbers with varying success, until the loss of three sixpences, the gradual sinking of the purl, and the striking of ten o'clock, combined to render that gentleman mindful of the flight of Time, and the expediency of withdrawing before Mr Sampson ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States," added to the Minutes of 1823, remarks: "Whilst the General Synod, with due deference to the judgment of this respectable Synod, cannot divest themselves of doubt as to the expediency of the temporary recession of the Pennsylvania Synod from the general union of the Lutheran Church, they rejoice that in the very act of withdrawing they declare their unaltered conviction of the propriety and utility of such a union, and intimate that ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... seems most appropriate. An Oxford tutor used to give half-binding as an example of what Aristotle calls [Greek text], or "shabbiness," and when we recommend such coverings for books it is as a counsel of expediency, not of perfection. But we cannot all be millionaires; and, let it be remembered, the really wise amateur will never be extravagant, nor let his taste lead him into "the ignoble melancholy of pecuniary embarrassment." Let the ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... strange, however, that such a practical people should not have discovered long ago the mere expediency of telling the truth, in the same way that they have found mercantile honesty to be unquestionably the best policy, and that trade is next to impossible without it. But to argue, as many do, that China is wanting in morality, because she has adopted a different standard of right and ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... with its brief dream of pleasure and long reality of thought to lie deeper than all systems. Those current abstractions, which make up all the morality and all the philosophy of most people, have been brought under suspicion. Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and expediency, honour and interest, virtue and vice—all these words, which seemed once to express elementary and certain realities, now strike us as just the words which, thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once. It is thus not merely philosophy which ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... candid, Ma, I think I should have kept it from you if I could: though I had not decidedly made up my mind. I was following Jasper out, to confer with him on the subject, and to consider the expediency of his and my jointly hushing the thing up on all accounts, when I found him speaking to you. Then ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... suspecting that Colonel Morley was actually the person whom Darrell had already appointed his adviser and representative in all transactions that might concern the very parties under discussion. But just as he was about to suggest the expediency of writing to Alban to return to England, and taking him into confidence and consultation, Lady Montfort resumed, in a calmer voice and with a ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... superstitious dread that once the chain was forged his love for her would cease—marriage could not now reinstate her in the world's sight—she had ceased to remember that her life was a crime. She had heard it said so often that marriage was simply an institution founded upon expediency; that all systems having been tried, the one that worked best was the union of a man to one wife, that she herself began to doubt its being a heaven-ordained institution, and the only state tolerated by Divine Providence. But if she ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... The expediency of a general freedom being granted to the Negroes considered. Reasons why it might be productive of advantage and safety to ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... "the question behind is Expediency and the question in front, Divine Justice. You ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... to those of my companions. THEY could scarcely be called comme il faut, at all; though, to own the truth, I am afraid there is tant soit peu de vulgarity about all WORKED pocket-handkerchiefs. I remember that, one day, when Madame de la Rocheaimard and Adrienne were discussing the expediency of buying our whole piece, with a view of offering us to their benefactress, the former, who had a fine tact in matters of this sort, expressed a doubt whether the dauphine would be pleased with such ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... cleared of trees and stumps, as it might be by a coup de main. This would be compressing the results of ordinary years of toil, into those of a single season, and everybody was agreed as to the expediency of the course, provided it ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... lawyer into Parliament. They stand in the way of all progress but their own; they suck our blood in every affair of life; they baffle all honest thinking with their cunning, and look at right and wrong only from the point of expediency. Job says there ought to be a law against lawyers going in at all. But catch them making it! In fact, we're in their clutches more than the fly in the web, because they make the laws; and they'll never make any laws to limit their own powers over ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... told him that his government was acting in concert with the Tuileries to restore the republic, and that General Porfirio Diaz was the leader into whose hands the care of the capital should be transferred in order to avoid possible bloodshed. He therefore urged upon the marshal the expediency of inviting General Diaz to advance near to the city. According to M. de Keratry, Mr. Otterburg even informed him that arrangements had been made with the bankers of the capital to assure one month's pay to the troops of the Liberal leader. This episode plainly illustrates the lack of concert and ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the rear of the rest, up a narrow lane leading uphill, anxiously discussing with Father Romuald the expediency of seeking hospitality from any of the great lords whose castles might be within reach before he had full information of the present state of factions at the Court, when suddenly his son Malcolm came riding back, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quick, another little thought sprang up in the deeper recesses of her mind and took its place beside the other. It was right that she should be true. She ought to do the right. Argument, the pleas of weakness, the demands of expediency, the plausibility of compromise were all of no avail. The idea "I ought" persisted and persisted and persisted. She could and she ought. There was no excuse for her, and no sooner had she thrust aside the shifty mass of sophistries under which she had striven to conceal them, no ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... crank who, as soon as he thinks he has discerned a moral principle, immediately gets into the saddle, and then rides hell-for-leather, reckless of all considerations of public expediency. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... are not many who have done so from the best and the purest motives. The public career of some, and the private virtues of others, would belie us if we dared to assert the contrary. With them it may be conviction, or it may be an overruling sense of expediency—and with either motive we do not quarrel—but surely it is not for them, the new converts, to insinuate taunts of interested motives and partial construction against those who maintain the deserted principle. "For whom are you counsel now?" ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... old Orsola, after a few moments of rapid reflection as to the expediency of telling her trouble to the porter, and a decision prompted by the good-natured manner of the man, and by the poor woman's extreme need of some one to tell her trouble to,—"the fact is, that I wanted to ask the advice of the Signor Marchesino about a young friend of mine, the Signora Paolina ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... beautiful—formulae that weaken rather than toughen up the musical-muscles. If the composer's sincere conception of his art and of its functions and ideals, coincide to such an extent with these groove-colored permutations of tried out progressions in expediency, that he can arrange them over and over again to his transcendent delight—has he or has he not been drugged with an overdose of habit-forming sounds? And as a result do not the muscles of his clientele become flabbier ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... the beginning of the seventeenth century not less than four categories would suffice to classify the people of England according to their religious differences. First, there were those who still continued to adhere to the Roman see. Secondly, those who, either from conviction or from expediency or from indifference, were content with the state church of England in the shape in which Elizabeth and her parliaments had left it; this class naturally included the general multitude of Englishmen, religious, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... thought gentlemen were out of order in entering upon the merits of the main question at this time, when they were considering the expediency of committing the petition; he should, therefore, now follow them further in that track than barely to observe, that it was the right of the citizens to apply for redress, in every case they conceived themselves aggrieved ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to the lines," Poltneck added. "It appears they had been driven back several times, leaving their dead and wounded in such numbers on the field—officers and men—that there was some hesitation about the expediency of trying it again. Not, however, in the bomb-proof pit. Kohlvihr was of a single mind, determined to make his reputation as man-indomitable at the expense of his division. A patchy old rodent of ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... others escape, those at Far End who also huddled and waited and would not believe. Their caves at the valley-floor were even less secure. Whether it was blinding hate or the bitter dregs of expediency, for Mai-ak and his remnants there was only one recourse now. It had ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... he said: "If it were restored to you, Davenport's moral right to it would still be insisted on. The restoration would be merely on grounds of expediency." ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... blood boiled in my veins as I thought of the name they had left me. Thank heaven! I have never disgraced it. But were I situated as you are, and the dead Augustus Vavasour in the place of the living George Delme, I would act as I am now advising you to do. I speak solely as to the expediency of the measure. From what I have stated—from my situation in life—from my character—you may easily imagine that all my prejudices are enlisted on the other side of the question. But I must here confess that I see something inexpressibly ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... way and came into this place, without realizing whither our steps were leading us," he said, while he continued to prod the mud before him; "and at length we fell, as you might observe, into the miry clay. I had just suggested the expediency of our return, when Mrs. Pennypoker—um—in short, met with an accident which unduly detained us and—ah, I have it!" he exclaimed triumphantly, as he carefully worked his stick put through the earth, and ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... commencement—the first instalment—in a system of unlimited extra-territorial dependencies and imperial expansion. With these responsibilities and obligations we here this evening have nothing to do, any more than we have to do with the expediency or probable results of the policy of colonial expansion, when once fairly adopted and finally entered upon. These hereafter will be, but are not yet, historical questions; and we are merely historical inquirers. We, therefore, no matter what others may do, must try to confine ourselves to our ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... is a question of expediency. As government of all kinds becomes better managed, there is less necessity for protection for the press. It must be recollected, however, that this anonymousness (to coin a word) may not only be useful to protect us from any abuse of power, but that at least it takes away that ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... will remember how he felt the embarrassment of his foreign policy caused by the growing and deflecting influences of Moltke, and even of his friend Roon. And there was no Bismarck to hold the Staffs in check for reasons of expediency in the years before 1914. The military mind when it is highly developed is dangerous. It sees only its own bit, but this it sees with great clearness, and in consequence becomes very powerful. There is only one way of holding it to its legitimate function, and that is by the supremacy of ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... equally matched and powerful opponents. He endeavored to soothe and quiet the excited feelings of his grandsons, and finally recommended to them to appeal to augury to decide the question. Augury was a mode of ascertaining the divine will in respect to questions of expediency or duty, by means of certain prognostications and signs. These omens were of various kinds, but perhaps the most common were the appearances observed in watching the flight of birds through ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and we finally discussed seriously the expediency of emigrating to Louisiana. The more timid among us represented the temerity and folly of such an undertaking, but the desire to seek our brother exiles grew keener every day, and became so deeply rooted in our minds, that ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... that this position and attempt of the North should have awakened a spirit of resistance in the South that shook the Union to its very center. Whatever might be the opinion of Northern men as to the power of Congress over slavery in the territories, or as to the expediency of prohibiting it, it was too late to apply their doctrine to Missouri. She was ripe for admission to the Union as a State, with domestic institutions formed to suit her people, and formed, too, under the eye and sanction of Congress, and Congress had no right ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... allegorical painting, which no one will be at the pains to understand, or, what is more to the purpose, to buy, in this enlightened nineteenth century. Sam, who was thriving already, fell in love with Clarissa Gage, with her six thousand pounds fortune: there was no premeditation, or expediency, or cunning, in the matter; it was the luck of the man. But Will Locke could never have done it: he, who could never make a clear subsistence for himself, must attach himself to a penniless, cheery, quick little girl like Dulcie; and where he could not well maintain one, must provide ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... liberal advocacy of all popular questions. In behalf of that great change of national policy, the repeal of the Corn Laws, "Punch" fought most vigorously, not, however, forgetting to bestow a few raps of his baton on the shoulders of the Premier whose wisdom or sense of expediency induced such sudden tergiversation as to bring it about. O'Connell's blatant and venal patriotism was held up to merited derision, which his less wary, but more honest followers in agitation, O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchell, equally shared. Abolition (or ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of a peaceful country, and in the second, had one of our party been wounded, the consequent delay would have rendered our return to the boats certainly a work of great difficulty, perhaps wholly impossible; for no considerations of expediency would in my mind have justified the abandonment of a defenceless comrade, wounded in the common cause, either to the natural dangers and privations of the country, or the barbarous revenge of its inhabitants. They continued in force, upon the opposite bank, for some time, and then ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... refute them, should it seem desirable. About the same time, General Lafayette made a similar request, sending me the number of the periodical that contained the communication, and suggesting the expediency of answering it. I never, for an instant, doubted the perfect right of an American, or any one else, to expose the errors that abounded in this pretended statistical account, but I had little disposition for the task. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was no need to tie Prince to-day. The usual equine sense of expediency would be quite sufficient to keep any horse under cover. She left the sleigh, and groped her way—truly it was not easy to keep on her feet, the wind blew so—till she saw the little white church ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... liberty of heresy and unbelief is not a right.... All the rights the sects have, or can have, are derived from the State, and rest on expediency. As they have, in their character of sects hostile to the true religion, no rights under the law of nature or the law of God, they are neither wronged nor deprived of liberty, if the State refuses to grant them any rights at all."—Brownson's ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the death of George the Second, and accession of George the Third, Mr. Bernard, Governor of Massachusetts, suggested to Harvard College "the expediency of expressing sympathy and congratulation on these events, in conformity with the practice of the English universities." Accordingly, on Saturday, March 14, 1761, there was placed in the Chapel of Harvard College ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... is true, had codes of law, like the Institutes of Manu in India, or the jurisprudence of Solon and the enactments of Lycurgus. But Roman law from the beginning was sanctified by the conviction that it was founded on justice, and not merely on expediency or prudence. In submitting to the laws, even when they were cruel and oppressive, the Roman was obeying, not force, but conscience. The view which Plato gave as an ideal in Crito was realized in Roman society from the first. Consider the cruel ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... to that course, and Mr. Hobhouse also recommended it. "There are two points," he wrote on the 23rd of December, "to which your attention will probably be chiefly directed by Captain Hastings. These are, the expediency of your going with the Perseverance, instead of waiting for the other boats, and the propriety of immediately disposing of the two frigates in America"—about which frequent reports had arrived, showing that their preparation was in even worse ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... other, they committed the most monstrous crimes; yet even these were surpassed by the magnitude of their revenges which they pursued to the very utmost, neither party observing any definite limits either of justice or public expediency, but both alike making the caprice of the moment their law. Either by the help of an unrighteous sentence, or grasping power with the strong hand, they were eager to satiate the impatience of party spirit. Neither faction ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Ministers could convince themselves of the expediency and moral propriety of slaying a man capable, as they believed, of schemes, however qualified, for the capture of the Spanish treasure ships. They saw the difficulty of proving to the country the capital criminality of the avowal of a project never acted upon. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... exist, and it was not until 1640 that, as we have already seen, the offending passages against Christ were expunged by the Rabbis as a measure of expediency. Now that they have been replaced, no further attempt is made to deny that they refer to the founder of Christianity. As far as I am aware they are not included in any English translation of the Talmud, but may be found in an English version of Dr. Gustav H. Dalman's book, Jesus ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... or the delirious excitement with which a brutal crowd witnesses a lynching overbalance the pain of their solitary victim? Yet our souls revolt against such things. We cry, ruat caelum, fiat justitia! Justice is prior to all expediency! Is this irrational, or can it be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... of all the resources of the Empire. Consolidated and mobilized the Empire is self-sustaining and invincible. Its military and financial powers would be quadrupled. There is nothing to justify any delay in accomplishing this object except political expediency. In union there would be not only immediate strength, but confidence ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... this examination, Philip could not divine, nor did he particularly care, though he might had he known that his father was considering the expediency of selling them, and buying another security—the stock of a certain railroad—which would pay larger dividends. His main interest was to ascertain whether his father had any government bonds, and this question he was now able to answer in ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... that the right of a son to come into the place of his father, whether in respect to property, power, or social rank, is not a natural, inherent, and indefeasible right, but a privilege which society accords, as a matter of convenience and expediency. In England, expediency is, on the whole, considered to require that all three of these things, viz., property, rank, and power, in certain cases, should descend from father to son. In this country, ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... been guilty of horrible and shameful offences against God, the Church, the State, and humanity itself. Philip professed the most pious horror at what he had discovered; he lamented the grievous necessity laid upon him, and urged upon the guilty men the expediency of a full and immediate confession of their wicked doings as the only way to secure pardon and escape the just and extreme penalty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... be described as a bully, with the modification that while the bully in an English school is always depicted as a coward at heart (a supposition, however, by no means always borne out in after-life), Bismarck had the courage of a bull-dog. Moreover, Bismarck was a Conservative, a statesman of expediency. The Emperor is a man of principle; and as expediency, in a world of change, is a note of Conservatism, so, in the same world, is principle the leit-motiv of Liberalism. To call the Emperor a man of principle may appear to be at variance with general opinion as founded on exceptional ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... his leave, and returned to the chateau, very much discouraged. "This priest," thought he to himself, "is a man of expediency. He allows himself certain indulgences which are to be regretted, and his mind is becoming clogged by continual association with carnal-minded men. His thoughts are too much given to earthly things, and I have no more faith in him than in the ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... abandoned. A committee of a vacant Radical borough has offered to nominate him. My influence is weak; madame would have him go back with her and her brother to Normandy. My influence is weak, I suppose, because he finds me constantly leaning to expediency—I am your pupil. It may be quite correct that powder is intended for explosion we do not therefore apply a spark to the barrel. I ventured on that. He pitied me in the snares of simile and metaphor. He is the same, you perceive. How often have we not discussed what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... commerce.—Reply of the Count d'Aranda, declaring himself vested with ample powers to treat.—Visit of the Count d'Aranda to Versailles.—M. Rayneval goes to England.—Probable objects of his visit.—Conversation with Mr Vaughan on the subject of M. Rayneval's visit.—Mr Jay represents the expediency of treating with America on an equal footing; the inexpediency of attempting to exclude the Americans from the fisheries; and of restricting the western boundary and the navigation of the Mississippi.—Mr Vaughan goes to England to communicate these views to Lord Shelburne.—Proposed ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... could see out of the corner of my eye his obsequious shadow gliding after mine, while the moon, suspended on our right hand, seemed to gloat serenely upon the spectacle. He tried to explain—as I've told you—his share in the events of the memorable night. It was a matter of expediency. How could he know who was going to get the upper hand? "I would have saved him, honourable sir! I would have saved him for eighty dollars," he protested in dulcet tones, keeping a pace behind me. "He has saved himself," I said, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... of improvement, physical or mental. We overlook, amid the diversities of form, color, and language, the specific identity of the human family. The Celt, for instance, wants, it is said, those powers of sustained application which so remarkably distinguish the Saxon; and so we agree on the expediency of getting rid of our poor Highlanders by expatriation as soon as possible, and of converting their country into sheep-walks and hunting-parks. It would be surely well to have philosophy enough to remember ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... saw the letter, and agreed with his brother on the expediency of obtaining full proof of the validity of the will in both Queensland and England, and put in hand the writing of inquiries for the purpose, from the legal authorities at Brisbane, for which purpose ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and, in so doing, have rendered the Europeans vile in the estimation of the Japanese. This is the error which must be destroyed by some means or other, even if it should be necessary to pick a quarrel with them, as we have already done with the Chinese. At the same time that I admit the expediency of so doing, I by no means assert that we ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... neighbourhood of Bencoolen, situated as it is in the same latitude with the Moluccas, exposed to the same periodical winds, and possessing the same kind of soil, would prove congenial to their culture. Under this impression I suggested to the other members of the Board the expediency of freighting a vessel for the twofold purpose of sending supplies to the forces at Amboina, for which they were in distress, and of bringing in return as many spice-plants as could be conveniently stowed. The proposition was acceded to, and a vessel, of which I was the principal ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... be better able to form an opinion of the expediency of such a measure after Lysander has given us his definition of this eighth and last ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... actions under two points of view,—interest and obligation,—expediency and right. The questions which we inwardly ask concerning actions all resolve themselves into one of these,—Is the act useful or desirable for me? or, Is it my right or my duty? He who is wont to ask the former of these questions is called a prudent man; he who habitually ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... gentleman at the Treasury wrote a short letter to Mr. Jones, apprising that unhappy gentleman that my Lords had taken the matter into their fullest consideration, and that nothing could be done to help him. Had Jones been consulted by any other disappointed Civil Service Werter as to the expediency of complaining to the Treasury Lords, Jones would have told him exactly what would be the result. The disappointed one, however, always thinks that all the Treasury Lords will give all their ears to him, though they are deafer than Icarus ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hinderance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... abuses which have crept into all systems of education connected with it. If the upper classes could only be interested in it by being led into it when young, a great improvement might be looked for;' and the witness goes on to urge the expediency of appointing professors of art at the Universities. Upon the question of infusing a lay-element into the Royal Academy by the addition of non-professional academicians, Mr. Ruskin takes occasion to observe:—'I think if you educate our upper classes ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... grown men. In Parliament there was long and weary fighting over the details. The Tory Government did not wish to oppose the bill directly. Neither party had really faced the question or made up its mind. Expediency rather than justice was in the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... But the old question of expediency always bobs up. I'm getting older. I'm not as old as this white hair would make me, but I feel it. Perhaps I am out-of-date. Your eyes are young, boy; your soul fresh from God's heart. I'm just a little ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... a fracture in an animal is in fact no less amenable to treatment than the same description of injury in any other living being. But the question of the propriety and expediency of treatment is dependent upon certain specific points ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... just proportion—his duty, the plantation, the helpless freedman threatened by lawless fury; the two women—no longer his one tantalizing vision, but now only a passing detail of the work before him. He saw them through no aberrating mist of tenderness or expediency—but with the single directness of the ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... (Vide Chapter X.) One of his first steps as First Lord which affected Admiralty organization was the appointment of a Deputy First Sea Lord. This appointment was frankly made more as a matter of expediency than because any real need had been shown for the creation of such an office. It is unnecessary here to enter into the circumstances which led to the appointment to which I saw objections, owing to the difficulty of fitting into the organization an officer bearing the title ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... and her conscientious indulgence of the same, were proverbial among her acquaintances, but no one—not even prudish and fearsome maidens of altogether uncertain age, and prudent mammas, equally alive to expediency and decorum—had ever labelled her "Dangerous," while with young people she was a universal favorite. Although, with an eye single to her hobby, she regarded a man as an uninteresting molecule of animated nature, unless ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... half-breed populace stalk policeman and priest, red jacket keeping the dark-skinned people straight in this world and black robe laying out conditions for the world to come. So is Chipewyan fate chequered with the rouge et noir of compulsion and expediency. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... character of the opinions which were received at the time in Europe, as well as the strong consciousness on the part of the patriarch, and those who acted with him, of the expediency of throwing the voice and countenance of the Church into the scale alike against the tribunitial oligarchy and against local jealousies and prejudices. There was perhaps in this case the additional inducement that the proposal to invest the doge with supreme power and jurisdiction over the Church, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... moderate size, and of moderate merit.[17] Its form, repeatedly changed from motives of expediency, was at first that of letters addressed to the Abbe Raynal. Its contents display little research and no scholarship. The style is intended to be popular, and is dramatic rather than narrative. There is exhibited, as everywhere in these early writings, an intense ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
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