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Franchise   Listen
noun
Franchise  n.  
1.
Exemption from constraint or oppression; freedom; liberty. (Obs.)
2.
(LAw) A particular privilege conferred by grant from a sovereign or a government, and vested in individuals; an immunity or exemption from ordinary jurisdiction; a constitutional or statutory right or privilege, esp. the right to vote. "Election by universal suffrage, as modified by the Constitution, is the one crowning franchise of the American people."
3.
The district or jurisdiction to which a particular privilege extends; the limits of an immunity; hence, an asylum or sanctuary. "Churches and mobasteries in Spain are franchises for criminals."
4.
Magnanimity; generosity; liberality; frankness; nobility. "Franchise in woman." (Obs.)
Elective franchise, the privilege or right of voting in an election of public officers.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Franchise" Quotes from Famous Books



... respect to the formation of juries, I examined the laws of States at a distance from one another, and the following observations were the result of my inquiries. In America, all the citizens who exercise the elective franchise have the right of serving upon a jury. The great State of New York, however, has made a slight difference between the two privileges, but in a spirit quite contrary to that of the laws of France; for in the State of New York there are fewer persons eligible as ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... this one march not less than 5,000. Of this great number two only offered insults to the gang of prisoners. One was a dirty, mean-looking little Hollander. He said, 'Well, Tommy, you've got your franchise, anyhow.' The other was an Irishman. He addressed himself to Frankland, whose badges proclaimed his regiment. What he said when disentangled from obscenity amounted to this: 'I am glad to see you Dublin ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... came into the Union in the first quarter of a century of its existence came in with democratic suffrage provisions, and had reactive effects of the highest importance upon the older States whose peoples were being attracted there. An extension of the franchise became essential. It was western New York that forced an extension of suffrage in the constitutional convention of that State in 1821; and it was western Virginia that compelled the tide-water region ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... very well that that was not all there was to it, and was determined to find out the significance of the franchise. I met with dense ignorance on every hand. I went to the Brooklyn Library, and was frankly told by the librarian that he did not know of a book that would tell me what I wanted to know. This was ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... that no ridicule or abuse of this stiff-necked old fraud could be excessive; for, if he were not Wordsworth, as what but a fraud could we picture him in his later years, as he protests against Catholic Emancipation, the extension of the franchise, the freedom of the Press, and popular education? "Can it, in a general view," he asks, "be good that an infant should learn much which its parents do not know? Will not a child arrogate a superiority unfavourable to love ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... and pitfalls for the capture of men by women. Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors. Men, on the other hand, attach penalties to marriage, depriving women of property, of the franchise, of the free use of their limbs, of that ancient symbol of immortality, the right to make oneself at home in the house of God by taking off the hat, of everything that he can force Woman to dispense with without compelling ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... a letter from our member, Whytbank, adjuring me to assist the gentlemen of the county with an address against the Reform Bill, which menaces them with being blended with Peeblesshire, and losing of consequence one half of their franchise. Mr. Pringle conjures me not to be very nice in choosing my epithets. Mr. Pringle, Torwoodlee, comes over and speaks to the same purpose, adding, it will be the greatest service I can do the county, etc. This, in a manner, drives me out of a resolution to keep ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... right in that," said Mr. West. "Of course, it is important that every citizen entitled to the privilege of voting in a democracy like ours should be able to exercise his franchise intelligently; but the citizen who is responsible for the management of farm lands ought surely to be at least as well informed concerning the principles which underlie the maintenance of soil fertility; provided, of course, that such knowledge is within his reach; and from what you say ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... agitation (p; 293) occurred during the period 1820-40. It was only one of many reform movements of the time. State after state abolished imprisonment for debt, [20] lessened the severity of laws for the punishment of crime, extended the franchise, [21] or right to vote, reformed the discipline of prisons, and established hospitals and asylums. So eager were the people to reform anything that seemed to be wrong, that they sometimes went to extremes. ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... will now "not merely refrain from engaging in wars with one another, but unite in preventing wars everywhere." As for our own Revolution of 1688, it was a great but not a perfect work. It had left religious toleration incomplete and the Parliamentary franchise unequal. We must continue to enforce its principles, especially in the matter of removing the disabilities that still weigh upon dissenters. Those principles are briefly (1) Liberty of Conscience, (2) The right to resist power when it is abused, and (3) The right to choose our own governors, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... to investigate and determine the question of fraud and what ought to be its consequences. If at the first two elections the majority refused to vote, it can not be pretended that this refusal to exercise the elective franchise could invalidate an election fairly held under lawful authority, even if they had not subsequently voted at the third election. It is true that the whole constitution had not been submitted to the people, as I always desired; but the precedents are numerous of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... as a court of election in October of the same year and admitted upon oath several members of "approved churches." After reading a number of passages from the Bible bearing on the subject of an ideal ruler, they proceeded to the election of a chief magistrate and four deputy magistrates. The franchise in all cases was confined to church members. In the Hartford colony, which was Connecticut proper, the earliest mention of elections is found in the Fundamental Orders of 1638, which have become famous as the first written constitution framed on the American continent. It was enacted that ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... them? No; but he begged to give them his positive assurance as a gentleman, that if he was returned to Parliament he would vote for an extension of the franchise, and the admission of the Jews ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... representative government, as of modern civilization, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community. But, though the superior intellects and characters will necessarily be outnumbered, it makes a great difference whether or ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... where the city has been plundered of sums estimated at 7 per cent of the total valuation of real estate. It has failed in St. Louis, where the council dominated, and where "Boss Butler" paid that body $250,000 to pass a street railway franchise. Neither did it work in Philadelphia, which has been plundered of an amount equal to 10 per cent of her real estate valuation; nor in San Francisco under the disgraceful regime of Mayor Schmitz. So overwhelming is ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... probable that after this war is over the women of the belligerent nations will be given the franchise by the weary men that are left, if they choose to insist upon it. They have shown the same bravery, endurance, self-sacrifice, resource, and grim determination as the men. In every war, it may be argued, women have displayed the same spirit and the same qualities, proving that ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... that he was the right man at the helm, he, Scheidemann, would show that the contrary was the case. He then enumerated what he called the many political failures of the Chancellor, the failure of the bill to amend the Prussian franchise law, and stated that the few bills which had been passed, such as the bill giving Alsace-Lorraine a real constitution, had been carried only with the help of the Social Democratic party. The speaker then once more rehashed the incidents of the Zabern matter, referred ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... suffrage? If so persons convicted of offences, or who are infamous for their vices may vote—for such persons are not outlawed.—On this principle, women of full age and unmarried, are also to be admitted.— Minors also whose property is taxed, should be permitted to exercise this franchise, at least by guardian or proxy. What then is the true meaning of the maxim, that representation and taxation are inseparable? Here all writers agree—it means that no community should be taxed by the legislature unless that community is, or might have been represented ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... still think that the franchise was extended to women merely as an objective piece of political justice. I hate cynicism, and I should be the last to throw cold water on an ideal, but, as I said, the real fruits of that political ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... agitation for the franchise for political emancipation, on platforms and on other places—even in prisons—we have talked about rights, and fought for rights; at the same time we have always coupled with the claim for rights clear statements ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... countrymen through the power of his eloquence. He appealed from the Chamber to the sense and the virtue of the people. In September, 1843, he first addressed the electors of Macon on the necessity of extending the franchise, in order to admit of a greater representation of the French people—generous, magnanimous, bold and devoted to their country. Instead of fruitlessly endeavoring to reform the government, he saw that the time had come ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... while millions of freemen with votes in their hands are left without education. Justice to them, the welfare of the States in which they live, the safety of the whole Republic, the dignity of the elective franchise,—all alike demand that the still remaining bonds of ignorance shall be unloosed and broken, and the minds as well as the bodies of the emancipated ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... denials. I do not deny that Donna Aurelia was in Florence earlier than you supposed, nor that I kept you in ignorance of it. It was judged better on all accounts. Father Carnesecchi was of that opinion. I believe that the lady had no desire to see you. Perhaps you will pardon my franchise when I say that it would have been singular if she had. She desired to be accommodated with her husband—and that was done. My part in that affair, which I am very ready to defend, need not concern you, though (if I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... proposed to transfer the judicial functions to a mixed body of 300 Senators and 300 Knights, the selected Knights to be included in the now attenuated ranks of the Senate. 14. ad dandam civitatem Italiae. The claims of the Italians to the franchise were just and pressing, but the overbearing pride and self-sufficiency of the Roman ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... court was derived an inferior court of civil jurisdiction, called the court-baron. This was held from three weeks to three weeks, and was in every respect like the county court;" (that is, the jurors were judges in it;) "only the lord to whom this franchise was granted, or his steward presided instead of the sheriff;" 1 Reeve's History of the English Law, ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... the election for Burgesses is not known.[142] The statement that the representatives were to be "chosen by the inhabitants" seems to indicate that the franchise was at once given to all male adults, or at least to all freemen. "All principall officers in Virginia were to be chosen by ye balloting box." From the very first there were parties, and it is possible that ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... should think, therefore, that a thing so useless to us and prejudicial to them might be relinquished by us, on the common principles of friendship. I know the merchants of these ports will make a clamor, because the franchise covers their contraband with all the world. Has Monsieur de Moustier said any thing to you on this subject? It has never been mentioned to me. If not mentioned in either way, it is rather an indecent proceeding, considering that this right of free port is founded in treaty. I shall ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... addressed to the President, urging him to recognize the freedmen as equal in all respects to the whites. He was the first man, of any authority or station, who ever informed me that the Government of the United States would insist on extending to the former slaves of the South the elective franchise, and he gave as a reason the fact that the slaves, grateful for their freedom, for which they were indebted to the armies and Government of the North, would, by their votes, offset the disaffected and rebel element of the white ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... great thing," he said, with a smirk of satisfaction—"it's a great thing to be the go-between between two states of being; to have the exclusive franchise to export and import shades from one state to the other, and withal to have had as clean a record as mine has been. Valuable as is my franchise, I never corrupted a public official ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... Union Pacific Railroad acquired the franchise of a Pennsylvania Company, known as the Credit Mobilier, divided its stock among themselves in proportion to their ownership in the Union Pacific Railroad, mortgaged the road to the extent permitted by the act ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... an autocratic despotism can be set up without destroying the forms of democracy. If we look through the forms to observe the vital forces behind them; if we fix our attention, not on the procedure, the extent of the franchise, the machinery of elections, and such outward things, but on the essence of the matter, popular government, in one important aspect at least, may be said to consist of the control of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... to which the question of Upper House reform gave rise in Victoria, the South Australians tackled it last session, when both Chambers were on the best of terms with each other, and an Act was passed by which the franchise was reduced from L50 freeholders and L20 leaseholders, to L20 leaseholders and L10 freeholders; the tenure of a seat shortened from twelve to nine years; the colony divided into electoral districts instead of voting in block; and a scheme introduced for finally dissolving the Council in the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... suspect the kind of Parliament that will suit a Colony is much of a secret just now! Mr. Wakefield, a democratic man in all fibres of him, and acquainted with Colonial Socialities as few are, judges that the franchise for your Colonial Parliament should be decidedly select, and advises a high money-qualification; as there is in all Colonies a fluctuating migratory mass, not destitute of money, but very much so of loyalty, permanency, or civic ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... date. I have just bought a infielder from Jersey City which they tell me is a second Ty Cobb. The last guy which come recommended to me like that acted like hittin' the ball was a felony and he must of figured that droppin' grounders put Cobb over. I have give everything but the franchise for this new bird, and I wanna see right now if he's one of them ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... the Macon Sunday School Union, (Colored,) rose and made a motion in behalf of the colored people of Macon, that a rising vote of thanks be tendered to Mr. Ballard for this beautiful building and its convenient and tasteful furnishings. Dr. Warren made a special request that the franchise be extended so as to include the white friends present, that all might vote. It was responded to by the whole assembly's rising. After the benediction, the various rooms were visited and admired. The beauty and convenience of the rooms, the fine ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various

... General election of 1710 the contest at Westminster excited much interest. The number of constituents was large, and the franchise low, all householders who paid scot and lot being voters. There were, too, many houses of great Whig merchants, and a number of French Protestants. But the High Church candidates, Cross and Medlicott, were returned by large majorities, though the Whigs had ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... of airs since the Interurban went through; but Ben Stevens forgets who helped him get the franchise. I could ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... their brothers' blood. It had the privilege of taxing traders upon the Severn, as appears from a petition presented by "the men of Bristowe and Gloucester" in the reign of Henry IV., praying for exemption. It obtained its charter of incorporation from Edward IV., and one granting the elective franchise from James I. ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... being distinctly brought under the notice of the reader. "I am prepared to administer the law in Ireland upon principles of justice and impartiality. I am prepared to recognise the principle established by law—that there shall be equality in civil privileges. I am prepared to respect the franchise, to give substantially, although not nominally, equality. In respect to the social condition of Ireland—as to the relation of landlord and tenant[36]—I am prepared to give the most deliberate consideration to the important matters involved in those questions. With respect to the Established ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... And, in fact, it does not appear that, as a corporation, they ever held for distribution any property except their land; or that they ever intended to make sales of their land in order to a division of the profits among the individual freemen; or that a freeman, by virtue of the franchise, could obtain a parcel of land even for his own occupation; or that any money was ever paid for admission into the company, as would necessarily have been done if any pecuniary benefit was attached to membership. Several freemen of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... statesmen have the greatest opportunities they have had for many years, and likewise the greatest duty. They have to guide the new voters in the exercise of the franchise; to guide them quietly, and without saying what they are doing, but still to guide them. The leading statesmen in a free country have great momentary power. They settle the conversation of mankind. It is they who, by a great speech or two, determine what ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... hundred county members and several members for metropolitan districts, and to enact that every borough of which an election committee should report that the majority of voters appeared to be corrupt should lose the franchise. The motion was rejected by ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... expression of public opinion, his disgust that the loose public in the streets dares to vent any emotion or will other than that suggested to it by a strong government, above all daring to voice it passionately. In a nation such as Germany, where the franchise is so hedged about that even those who have it cannot effectively express their wills, where political opinion is supplied from a central fount of authority, where the nation goes into war at the command of the Kaiser and his military advisers, where ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... renounce and labour with unshaken purpose: but for those who have not that view, and struggle on, animated at most by a vague consciousness that somewhere ahead lies a large end, towards which their efforts tend; who labour year after year at some poor little gargoyle of a Franchise Bill, or the shaping of some rough little foundation-stone of reform in education, or dress a stone (which perhaps never quite fits the spot it was intended for, and has to be thrown aside!); or who carve away all their lives to produce a corbel of some reform in sexual relations, in the end to ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... a matter of progressive legislation regarding the franchise of colored men, or of anybody else in the country. It is a question of law, Methodist law, ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... requires us, the moment we're sated with chrome chariots and miracle-fiber dressing-gowns and electronic magics, the minute our children have toys enough to last them through the age of franchise, to take in hand the feather forced upon us by regulation of the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities and visit the parish Potlatch Pyre, our modern vomitorium, to spew up last year's dainties to make belly-room for a ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang

... who were forcibly torn from their own land and enslaved in this. We must educate and evangelize them: as a debt we owe them, and also for the salvation of our country, whose liberties will be greatly imperilled by their presence and possession of the elective franchise, if they are left to ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley

... conscientious obligation which the then Government could no doubt bequeath, may ask themselves how long a democratically governed country would tolerate corruption or ineptitude in the public service on the ground that the monopolist worker of them had inherited a franchise from an ancestor who had known how to exploit the public necessities. The virtual expropriation of the Irish landlords, which was in progress in the United Kingdom, may have been right or it may have been wrong; ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... in the midst of what they averred were the throes of a great rebellion, the members of the Assembly proceeded to destroy the very foundations of civil and religious liberty and of the freedom of the press. They proposed to give the Governor almost despotic authority, by surrendering the franchise of the Assembly, and vesting its power in a council of twenty-four, half of whom should be appointed by the Governor himself, and half elected by the people from the list only of those who had estates worth more than fifteen hundred dollars a year, or a salary of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... institutions, in rather softened language, by Theophilus Parsons, in his famous defence of the rights of Massachusetts men (the "Essex Result," in 1778): "Women, what age soever they are of, are not considered as having a sufficient acquired discretion [to exercise the franchise]." ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... Laird hasn't treated us very well, in the matter of backing our policies," admitted Banneker thoughtfully. "The Combined Street Railway franchise, for instance." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... other some momentary advantage, or some lucrative concession, to the Irish people. Intrigue will be pardonable, diplomatic finesse will become a duty. This evil no doubt in some degree exists, but under the present state of things it admits of diminution. A just redistribution of the franchise will undoubtedly lessen the number of Ireland's representatives, whilst it will increase the relative importance, if not the actual numbers, of loyalists in the representation of Ireland. The gradual settlement of the land question, as Unionists ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... her burdens, and should have served in her fleets and armies. But though we sometimes hear the cry that we must 'educate the masses, for they are our masters,' who would listen to a proposal that the franchise should be confined to the educated or to those who fulfil political duties? Then again, we know that the masses are not our masters, and that they are more likely to become so if we educate them. In modern politics so many interests have to be consulted that we ...
— Statesman • Plato

... New Haven Water Company applied for a renewal of its charter. The city had been getting nothing for this valuable franchise, and there was considerable protest against a renewal on the same terms. The Trades Council asked the ministers of the churches to make a deliverance on the question, but there was no answer. I was directly challenged to ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... weapon in the furtherance of political justice and social reform, and that the pied pipers of folk-song have the power to rouse the nation and charm the ears of even the Mother of Parliaments. The second is that the working man needs something more to sustain him than bread and the franchise and a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. Democracy, having obtained for the working man a place in the government of the nation, is now asserting his claim to a place in the temples of poetry. The Arthurian knight, the Renaissance courtier, the scholar and the wit must admit the ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... Dr. Braun here. He's spent half his life in school, and where's it got him? He'd make more dough if he owned the local garage and dealer franchise for one of the automobile companies in some jerkwater town. And look at Ross. He'd probably make more money playing pro football than he does messing around with all those test tubes and Bunsen burners and everything. What good has ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... Adams, the rugged Puritan, who had opposed the bonds in his paper so boldly, he only shook a sorrowful head and lifted no voice in protest. Such is the weakness of our thunderers without their lightning! Brotherton, who still seemed uneasy, went on: "Say, men, didn't that franchise call for a system of electric lights and gas in five years and a telephone system in ten years more—all for that $100,000; I'm right here to tell you we got a lot ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... nationality, and upward and onward progress. Foreign immigration, foreign Catholic influence, and sectional factions nourished by them—and breeding demagogues in the name of Democracy, by a prostitution of the elective franchise—have already corrupted our nationality, degraded our councils, both State and National, weakened the bonds of union, disturbed our country's peace, and awakened apprehensions of insecurity and progressive ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... disabilities then so common in Europe were not enforced against them in America, except that they could not vote for members of the legislature. As that body itself declared in 1737, the Jews did not possess the parliamentary franchise in England, and no special act had endowed them with this right in the colonies. The earliest representatives of this race in America came to New Amsterdam with the Dutch and were nearly all Spanish and Portuguese ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... is required to be registered. This is a most important proceeding, as it insures the purity of the ballot and the intelligent exercise of the right of franchise. Elections. Shall be by ballot; for State, county, corporation and district officers, shall be held the Tuesday after the first Monday in November; except for mayors and councils of cities and towns, which shall be the second Tuesday ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox

... annihilated a powerful and hostile tribe on the Thames in 1637. Six hundred Indians perished, only two whites were killed. Connecticut was long after that comparatively safe from Indians. In 1639, the people formed themselves into a body politic by a voluntary association. The elective franchise belonged to all the members of the towns who had taken the oath of allegiance to the commonwealth. It was the most perfect democracy which had ever been organized. It rested on free labor. "No jurisdiction of the English monarch was recognized; the ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman

... possible measure to free us from one point or the other of that dilemma, we should seek some legal compromise which would free us from the letter of this oppressive law of our national Constitution. Suppose there should be proposed some general and stern limitation of the franchise? Such an onerous qualification must needs apply to black and white alike. Who would be first to object to it? It would be the politicians of the North, who could not afford to exact even a prepaid poll-tax as a test for a vote. In time the North will need to free her white slaves, already ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... put by the society editor of some paper Mr. Washington replied by merely telling a funny story the application of which to the impertinent inquiry was obvious. In another letter he summed up his opinion of the much-mooted question of the franchise in these two sentences: "There is no reason why every Negro who is not fitted to vote should not be disfranchised. At the same time, there is no good reason why every white man who is not fitted to vote should not ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... further safeguard, in many instances they made the exercise of the elective franchise dependent upon the payment ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... of the Central Dominican Railroad from Santiago to Moca was built and is operated by the Dominican government. In 1894 a franchise was granted the San Domingo Improvement Company for the Moca road, and grading was done for several miles outside of Santiago, but the financial troubles of the Dominican government suspended the work. When better times came, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... the Penal Code, entitled "Of crimes against the elective franchise," is hereby amended so as to ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... them that our old and our new lands of the West are wide and fertile enough to justify us in detaining them here and in annexing any number who may be willing to be so treated. As they well know, they will always have with us the most perfect guarantees of liberty, the fullest rights of franchise, while they will not suffer so much as now from frequent waves of moral heat incurred by all who have to take part in constant electioneering; nor will they, on the other hand, have to endure the winter and moral cold which may be experienced by all who have to undergo the effects of a Gubernatorial ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... FRANCHISE.—This was the privilege which was first given to the cities of Latium and then to inhabitants of other places. It was the power, on complying with certain conditions, of gaining full citizenship, and thus of taking part in elections ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... transplanted and partly an endeavor to put the regulation of the slaves into their own hands. Negroes voted in those days: for instance, in North Carolina until 1835 the Constitution extended the franchise to every freeman, and when Negroes were disfranchised in 1835, several hundred colored men were deprived of the vote. In fact, as Albert Bushnell Hart says, "In the colonies freed Negroes, like freed indentured white servants, acquired property, ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... "If we had a franchise to build a road or two roads through Arizona (we controlling, but having it in the name of another party) it could be used against Scott. Cannot you have Stafford [Governor of Arizona] call the Legislature together and grant such charters as we want ...
— How Members of Congress Are Bribed • Joseph Moore

... about theatres, it must be remembered that the theatre is one of our glories. What other country has a Comedie Franchise—an institution two centuries old, miraculously respected, so far, amidst all our ruins, by the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... same limitation to the exercise of the elective franchise. Those only should be permitted to exercise this power who are qualified to do so with advantage to the community; and all laws which regulate or limit the possession of this power should have in view, not the equal rights of all men, but solely and exclusively the public good. It is on this ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... already rich and impoverish the impoverished still further. At the very time that property was bitterly resisting enlightened pleas for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, for the enactment of a mechanic's lien law, and for the extension of the suffrage franchise it was using the public money of the whole people for its personal and private enterprises. In works dealing with those times it is not often that we get penetration into the underlying methods of the trading class. But ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... us were children. We have had one revolution in which you had a great share, a great revolution of opinion on the question of the suffrage. Does it not read like madness that men, thirty years ago, were frantic at the idea of the people of Birmingham having a L10 franchise? Does it not seem something like idiotcy to be told that a banker in Leeds, when it was proposed to transfer the seats of one rotten borough to the town of Leeds, should say (and it was repeated in the House of ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... delivered himself. "Well, sir; we landed it. Biggest thing that ever happened to Kingston. Double our population in three months. I told my friend Worth that they would have to come through with that franchise whether they wanted to or not, and by George! we landed it. There was nothing ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... men, by showing themselves great and generous may now save the country. I will answer for it, that the patriots will defend you with their lives; the patriots do not hate you; they only hated your unpopular measures. For my part, I will give you a guarantee as extensive as is my perpetual franchise." The directors, instead of this reconciliation, published Babeuf's letter, and sent the conspirators before the high court ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... Eden, Miss Valentina Gilchrist, Miss Maud Blackadder and myself," said Rosalind in the tone of one dealing reasonably with an unreasonable person, "are the Committee of the North Hampstead Branch of the Women's Franchise Union. Miss Gilchrist is our secretary, I am the President and Miss ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... citations clearly prove inequality? Are not the very letter and spirit of the marriage contract based on the idea of the supremacy of man as the keeper of woman's virtue—her sole protector and support? Out of marriage, woman asks nothing, at this hour, but the elective franchise. It is only in marriage that she must demand her right to person, children, property, wages, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can we discuss all the laws and conditions of marriage, without perceiving its essential essence, end, and aim? Now, whether the institution ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... adopted by the commission before being given effect as law reserved to the people, this being known as the referendum; the power at any time to make any member of the commission stand for reelection reserved to the people, this being known as the recall; the granting of public franchise always to be submitted to the approval of ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... rising dangers as total prohibition, and the female franchise, the daylight saving, and eugenic marriage, together with proportional representation, the initiative and the referendum, and the duty of the citizen to take an intelligent interest in politics—and I admit that I shall not be sorry to go away ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... November, 1887. The World had been conducting a vigorous campaign against municipal corruption in New York—a campaign which ended in the arrest of a financier who had bought the votes of aldermen in order to get a street railroad franchise." ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... of the franchise at the polls was by "viva voce," the voter proclaiming his vote by stating the name of the candidate for whom he voted in a distinct voice, which was audited on the rolls by clerks ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... it, they ought at least to be sure that no man entitled to it by their own argument, is robbed of a right so precious as that of free citizenship; the "all-pervading, all conquering Anglo-Saxon" ought to set as high a value on American citizenship as the all-conquering Roman placed upon the franchise of his State two thousand years ago. This discussion would of course be of little interest to the genuine Negro, who is entirely outside of the charmed circle, and must content himself with the acquisition of wealth, the pursuit of learning and such other privileges as his "best ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... suffrage, never has gone so far as to say that all women, as well as all men, are brothers. The female suffrage, as we know, is merely a question of time. Before very long, no doubt, there will be a feminine Reform Bill, during the course of which Mr. Disraeli will explain that the feminine franchise has always been the one idea of the Conservative party, and in which the compound housekeeper will occupy as prominent a position as the compound householder ever could have done. Nobody, however, has as yet absolutely asserted, we do not say the equality, for ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... something about the dissolution. He said to me, 'You will address your constituents upon vacating your seat, and acquaint them of your intention to solicit a renewal of their confidence whenever they are called upon to exercise their franchise, which I tell you confidentially,' he added, 'will be very soon.' I would have given a hundred pounds to be then and there in a position to express my hopes and fears! But it is, then, you see certain that we are to have it, and that they will not meet the present parliament. Most ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the whole kingdom, perpetrated by persons who are peers of the kingdom, along with others, the cause shall not be tried in any other place but in Parliament, nor by any other law than the law and course of Parliament; and that it belongeth to the Lords of Parliament, and to their franchise and liberty by the ancient custom of the Parliament, to be judges in such cases, and in these cases to judge by the assent of the King; and thus it shall be done in this case, by the award of Parliament: because the realm of England has not been heretofore, nor is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... before the Roman conquest. It was continued after that event, and in two ways. To some extent it was definitely encouraged by the Roman government, which here, as elsewhere, founded towns peopled with Roman citizens—generally discharged legionaries—and endowed them with franchise and constitution like those of the Italian municipalities. It developed still more by its own automatic growth. The coherent civilization of the Romans was accepted by the Britons, as it was by the Gauls, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... than this? Strip it of the poor reward of popularity; suffer even the excesses committed in defence of the popular interest to become a ground for the majority of that House to form a disqualification out of the line of the law, and at their pleasure, attended not only with the loss of the franchise, but with every kind of personal disgrace; if this shall happen, the people of this kingdom may be assured that they cannot be firmly or faithfully served by any man. It is out of the nature of ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... a body pays the taxes, Surely you'll agree, That a body earns a franchise, Whether he ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... was not too proud to adopt this course, and was duly entered in the register of the art of doctors and apothecaries. It was not necessary that he should study medicine, the regulation being a mere form, probably to carry out the idea that every citizen possessing the franchise should have ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... him to ask about the children, but his mind seemed full of his Barcona coal business. The railway was learning to treat them half decently and the coal was coming out better than they'd hoped for. They'd a franchise to light the town, developing their power from the mine screenings, and what they got from this would be so much velvet. And he had a chance to take over one of the finest houses in Mount Royal, if he had a family along with ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... Kansas, has reached us, will soon be transferred from Congress to a broader stage, where every citizen will be not only spectator, but actor; and to their judgment I confidently appeal. To the People, now on the eve of exercising the electoral franchise, in choosing a Chief Magistrate of the Republic, I appeal, to vindicate the electoral franchise in Kansas. Let the ballot-box of the Union, with multitudinous might, protect the ballot-box in that Territory. Let the voters everywhere, while rejoicing in their own rights, help to guard the equal ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... still as a class of "half-slaves." He asserts as an historical fact that only extreme and decadent democracies gave them rights of citizenship, and theoretically he maintains that no sound government would give them the franchise of the city. "Hence in ancient times, and among some nations, the working classes had no share in the government—a privilege which they only acquired under the extreme democracy.... Doubtless in ancient times and among some nations the artisan class were slaves or foreigners, and ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... principles to dispose him favourably towards the movement for Female Emancipation. He approved of everything that had been done for the higher instruction of women, and would, not very long ago, have supported their admission to the Franchise. But he was so much displeased by the more recent action of some of the lady advocates of Women's Rights, that, during the last year of his life, after various modifications of opinion, he frankly pledged himself to the opposite view. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... the Hummel franchise that comes up in the Board next Tuesday. He won't vote for it, he says. I told him I thought it was in the interest of the city to multiply means of transit, and asked him why he refused. He replied that he thought the ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... apparent, therefore, that these provisions do not conform to the standard of republicanism which Congress seeks to establish. That there may be no mistake, it is only necessary that reference should be made to the original act, which declares "such constitution shall provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates." What class of persons is here meant clearly appears in the same section; that is to say, "the male citizens of said State 21 years old and upward, of whatever race, color, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... campaigning, electioneering; partisanship, ideology, factionalism. election, poll, ballot, vote, referendum, recall, initiative, voice, suffrage, plumper, cumulative vote, plebiscitum[Lat], plebiscite, vox populi; electioneering; voting &c. v.; elective franchise; straight ticket [U.S.]; opinion poll, popularity poll. issue; opinion, stand, position; program, platform; party line. [ideologies] democracy, republicanism; communism, statism, state socialism; socialism; conservatism, toryism; liberalism, whigism; theocracy; constitutional monarchy. [political ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... therefore not only my own confession of political faith, but that of an overwhelming portion of the German people's representatives—that is, of the German nation—which has constituted the Reichstag on the basis of a general, equal, and secret franchise and according to ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... and the agitation an epidemic madness that would presently pass. But it was manifest to any one who sought more than comfort in the matter that the streams of women and sympathisers and money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider things than an idle fancy for the franchise. The existing laws and conventions of relationship between Man and Woman were just as unsatisfactory a disorder as anything else in our tumbled confusion of a world, and that also was coming ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... navy-yards, and places under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress; to deny the National Government all power to hinder the transit of slaves through one State to another; to take from persons of the African race the elective franchise, and to purchase territory in South-America, or Africa, and send there, at the expense of the Treasury of the United States, such free negroes as the States may desire removed from their limits. And what does the Senator propose to concede to us of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... words: "Thou traitor, I don't care what becomes of thee." I replied, "Very well, Friend Franchise" (we gave him that nickname in our party); "you are a coward" (I told a lie, for he was certainly a brave man), "and I am a priest; but dueling is not allowed us." M. de Brissac threatened to cudgel him, and he to kick Brissac. The President, fearing these words ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... the attention of the Congress to one question which affects our insular possessions generally; namely, the need of an increased liberality in the treatment of the whole franchise question in these islands. In the proper desire to prevent the islands being exploited by speculators and to have them develop in the interests of their own people an error has been made in refusing to grant sufficiently ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... reason or explanation of his conduct. In the meantime the other party (as if each was destined to suffer more from the folly of its friends than the hostility of its foes) has been thrown into great confusion by Lord Milton's notice to propose an alteration in the franchise, and a meeting was called of all the friends of Government at Althorp, when Milton made a speech just such as any opponent of the Bill might make in the House of Commons, going over the old ground of Fox, Pitt, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... which victory will place in your hands to continue the same emancipating influences; and to surrender it into the hands of men avowedly hostile to your policy, and who have been conquered fighting for their franchise to enslave. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... with Winthrop as their leader and governor, emigrated to the new world, and settled first in Charlestown, and afterwards in Boston. In accordance with the charter which gave them such unexpected privileges, a General Court was assembled, to settle the government. But the privilege of the elective franchise was given only to the members of the church, and each church was formed after the model of the one in Salem. It cannot be said that a strict democracy was established, since church membership was the condition of the full enjoyment of political rights. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... excellence of a democratic constitution was a dogma which few cared to dispute; it appeared to his hearers as a mere paradox when Bismarck pointed out how little evidence there was that a great country could prosper under the government of a Parliament elected by an extended franchise. Strictly speaking, there was no evidence from experience; France, as he said, was the parent of all these theories, but the example of France was certainly not seductive. "I see in the present circumstances of France nothing to encourage us to put the Nessus robe of French political teaching ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... discuss some questions first. Should they not, for example: (1) Request an armistice; (2) Try to get into communication with their Deputation; (3) Make proposals in which the following points were raised: (a) Customs Convention; (b) Postal Union; (c) The Franchise; (d) Their Foreign Affairs; (e) Amnesty for Colonial Burghers; (f) Their relation to other Powers; (g) The Paramount Power of England, and (4) In order that they did not at once repulse the British by using the word "Independence," would it not be better to use ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell

... has been heralded so widely as being the most profound experiment in democracy that has ever been undertaken, we would naturally expect that the franchise would be along lines that would recognize all mankind embraced within the citizenship of the nation as standing upon an equal footing. The United States has for many years adhered to that principle. It was that principle largely for which our fathers died when they ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... Mr. Stockton's object to share with the railroad company the advantages which their line promised to give them. The enlargement of his company's franchise placed him in a position to dictate terms to the Camden and Amboy Transportation Company. The latter was given the choice, to prepare for competition with a rival railroad line, or to consolidate with the Delaware ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... to be satisfied with it?—I insist on the franchise, because it symbolizes full citizenship. I won't aim at anything less than that. Women must be taught to keep their eyes on that, as the ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... spring of pleasant and quaint fancies. Whereas I can imagine myself yawning all night long until my jaws ached and the tears came into my eyes, although my companion on the other side of the hearth held the most enlightened opinions on the franchise or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... prolonged, has been the subject of bitter and contemptuous criticism. Much of that criticism is unfair. In spite of the fact that its attention had first to be directed to questions directly affecting the War, it has passed the largest extension of the franchise ever made, and in doing so without doubt carried out the wish of the nation. It got rid of the fetters imposed on the free expression of the will of the electors, and the restrictions placed on the free selection of candidates ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... "ignorant and non-property-holding Negro" is, that he is a hopeless minority; nor could he, by any means, control the destinies of this country, if the intelligent voters of the land would but be vigilant and prompt in the exercise of the franchise, imposed in them. It is a sad reflection that the alleged fraud and corruption which existed under "carpet-bag rule" in the South during the reconstruction period could never have existed had the white voters ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... at last moved the convent itself to action. The monks were divided in opinion, but the saner part determined that their tenants "should enjoy equal liberty" with the townsmen. The cellarer's court was abolished; the franchise of the town was extended to the rural possessions of the abbey; the farmers "came to the toll-house, and were written in the alderman's ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... tendency of progressive thought was at one with the older Christian tradition which ignored "race," and the aim of the expansive liberalism movement, so far as it had a clear aim, was to Europeanise the world, to extend the franchise to negroes, put Polynesians into trousers, and train the teeming myriads of India to appreciate the exquisite lilt of The Lady of the Lake. There is always some absurdity mixed with human greatness, and we must not let the fact ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... the Ministry unpopular at the beginning of the session; and in February Mr. Locke King succeeded in passing, with the help of the Radicals, a measure for the extension of the franchise, in spite of opposition from the Government. Lord John had a measure of his own of a similar nature in view, as we have seen; but, in spite of his assurance that he would introduce it during the following year, the Radicals voted against ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... their own. The nineteenth century was to arrive before church and state were finally separated in Massachusetts. The new constitution of New Hampshire was similarly illiberal, and in Connecticut no change was made. Rhode Island nobly distinguished herself by contrast when in 1784 she extended the franchise to Catholics. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... aristocracy and monopoly, and, accordingly, after the merchant guilds had split into these corporate trade unions, boroughs waxed exclusive, and membership, instead of being an incident of citizenship, grew to confer citizenship itself; thus the franchise, being confined to freemen, and freedom or membership having come to depend on birth, marriage, election, or purchase, the constituencies which returned a majority of the House of Commons grew so petty and corrupt ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... incivilities (though pretending conscience) is as far from persecution, properly so called, as that it is a duty and command of God unto all mankinde, first in families, and thence unto all mankinde societies.'—It is also a matter of history that the colony settled by Mr. Williams refused their franchise to Roman Catholics, though even then the Roman Catholics of Maryland were tolerating people of his own faith, and Quakers also. Mr. Williams always seemed to me like one of our pious, zealous 'come-outers.' He even forsook his own denomination ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... theme, especially the reform of the whole voting system. He was a keen advocate of increased franchise and the ballot, and here the Parson differed from him. The Parson, in his heart of hearts, would have taken the vote away from most of the people he knew; he would certainly not have enlarged its scope, and as to the system of the secret ballot-box, he ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... gained by what had as yet been done. There was one way, and one way only, in which they could hope to effect their object. The charters of the boroughs must be resumed; and other charters must be granted confining the elective franchise to very small constituent bodies appointed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... clear that the functions of the assemblies were to be purely consultative. The elections took place according to the regulations, the number of members allotted to each province varying from 30 (Kirin province, Manchuria, and two others) to 140 in Chih-li. The franchise was restricted, but the returns for the first elections showed nearly 1000 voters for each representative. The first meetings of the assemblies ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... and not without reason, that ten years of military rule would have been better for the people themselves. Even now military government might be advantageously re-established in Samar Island, where the common people are not anxious for the franchise, or care much about political rights. A reasonable amount of personal freedom, with justice, would suffice for them; whilst the trading class would welcome any effective and continuous protection, rather than have to shift for themselves with the risk of being persecuted ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... numerous class of the important, cultivated, and often wealthy metics. To get Athenian citizenship is notoriously hard. For a stranger (say a metic who had done some conspicuous public service) to be given the franchise, a special vote must be passed by the Ecclesia itself; even then the new citizen may be prosecuted as undeserving before a dicastery, and disfranchised. Again, only children both of whose parents are free Athenian citizens can themselves be ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... proprietor of Knole,) the best poet of his time, and 'the immediate father-in-verse of Spenser,' sufficiently redresses the stigma of so churlish a proscription, and the nightingales may well claim perpetual franchise under sanction of a name to which the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... the abstract rights of man, but the concrete wrongs of Scotland that would be there discussed. And wrongs no doubt there were, under which Scotland was suffering, ever since the Union had destroyed not only her nationality, but almost her political existence. The franchise had become very close—in the counties restricted to a few of the chief families—in the boroughs thrown into the hands of the Baillies, who were venal beyond conception. It was the day, too, of Henry Dundas. A prominent member of the Pitt administration, he ruled Scotland as an autocrat, and as ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... listened to charges which exposed them to exile and their estates to confiscation. It increased the public burdens by unwise expenditures to please the men of the lower classes who possessed political franchise. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... lands,) which he holds in his own right, and may transmit to his heirs. In the constitutions of the newer states, property has not been made a qualification of an elector; and in the amended constitutions of the old states this restriction upon the elective franchise has been removed, until it has nearly ceased to exist in the United States. It is now enjoyed by all white male freemen, with few exceptions, in almost every ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... that democracy has yet to widen its borders. Progress to democracy in the last one hundred years is visible not only in the enlarged number of enfranchised citizens, but in the general admission that every extension of the franchise has been to the public good; not only in the fact that men of all classes and trades now have their representatives in Parliament, but in the very wide acknowledgment that women without votes cannot ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... of the Third Estate as the House of the People, and not as the House of a privileged class, the Ministry and Parliament of 1831 virtually conceded the principle of Universal Suffrage. In this point of view the ten-pound franchise was an arbitrary, irrational, and impolitic qualification. It had, indeed, the merit of simplicity, and so had the constitutions of Abbe Sieyes. But its immediate and ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... slave-raiding, cattle-rustling and intercommunal warfare. They have a few ramshackle steam railways, and some steamboats on the rivers. We sell them coal and manufactured goods, mostly in exchange for foodstuffs and tobacco. Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs has the sector franchise. That's one of the companies Thalvan Dras gets ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... with great franchise entered into details of her situation and embarrassment, whether she might venture, like Madame de Broglie, to go over to France, in which case she was dans le cas o elle pouvoit toucher sa fortune(32) immediately. She said she could then settle in England, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... and of essential faith in man, above all his errors and wickedness—few suspect how deep, how deep it really strikes. The world evidently supposes, and we have evidently supposed so too, that the States are merely to achieve the equal franchise, an elective government—to inaugurate the respectability of labor, and become a nation of practical operatives, law-abiding, orderly and well off. Yes, those are indeed parts of the task of America; but ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... very outset the Compulsory Female Franchise produced little or no elation even in circles which had been loudest in demanding the vote. The bulk of the women of the country had been indifferent or hostile to the franchise agitation, and the most fanatical Suffragettes began to wonder ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous adulteration of goods, the retail cheating and the political bribery which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A majority has the power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and his-s before we had the franchise: if we had groaned and hissed in the right place, if we had discerned better between good and evil, if the multitude of us artisans and factory hands and miners and laborers of all sorts had been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober—and I don't see how there can be wisdom and virtue ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... MARCH. Published in the third edition of 1890, and written not long before for the Workmen's Union in Christiania. It is a plea for the universal franchise and party organization. Vard northernmost, Viken ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... prove a failure, we verily believe it will be owing to the extension of the political franchise to whites and blacks who were unfit to use it, and cared for it not because of its honor, or the good use to which it might be put, but as a piece of merchandise to be sold to the highest bidder or used as a weapon of assault against good order ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... arduous labors has since accomplished more than any of us in the effort to procure the franchise for women, for even then we all took for granted the righteousness of that cause into which I at least had merely followed my father's conviction. In the old-fashioned spirit of that cause I might cite the career of this companion as an illustration of the efficacy of higher mathematics for women, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... in England to successive attempts and measures towards the due extension of the franchise in the election of the members of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... purposes of mere party profit. It has been so in Louisiana, where laws were enacted under which penniless and illiterate Negroes cannot vote, while the ignorant and vicious classes of whites are enabled to retain and exercise the franchise. So far as we are concerned—and we believe that the best element of the South in every State will sustain our proposition-we hold that, as between the ignorant of the two races, the Negroes are preferable. They are conservative; they are ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... to vote the first time. We should cherish against them no ill-feeling. The elective franchise is conferred upon them; let them exercise it freely, and in their own way. No effort should be made to control their votes, except such as may tend to enable them to vote intelligently, and such as may be necessary to protect them against mischievous influences ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... prophesied. It abolished the Councils of Appointment and of Revision; it abolished the power of the governor to prorogue the Legislature; it abolished the property qualification of the white voter; it extended the elective franchise; it made a large number of officers elective; it modified the management of the canals and created a canal board; it continued the Court of Errors and Impeachments; it reorganised the judicial department, making all judges, surrogates, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... All right, maybe I don't," Mr. Oliver returned growlingly to his meal, only to break out a moment later, "The Kirkwoods! Yes; that's a rare old bunch! They're still holding the city to the franchise they swindled the Government out of, right after the Civil War! ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... much in what you say, friend Patrick,' said I: 'The boys from Donegal do with the elective franchise much that native-Homers in their carelessness leave undone. Mr. Patrick acknowledged this, shook his head, and said the fact, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... equally with him, received similar honors and offices, and have been a great while now in possession of them? Yet of all of them, so far as is in his power, I have been deprived; I have become a private citizen instead of a leader, an outcast from the franchise instead of consul, and this not by the action of the people or the senate but by his own act and that of his adherents, who do not comprehend that they are preparing a sovereign for themselves first of all. For how could one speak of enactments of people and senate, when ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... physical strength, skill in arms, pride of ancestry and blood, the very grounds on which feudal society rested, went for nothing in the lecture-room. The University was a state absolutely self-governed, and whose citizens were admitted by a purely intellectual franchise. Knowledge made the "master." To know more than one's fellows was a man's sole claim to be a regent or "ruler" in the schools. And within this intellectual aristocracy all were equal. When the free commonwealth of the masters gathered in the aisles of St. Mary's all had an equal right to ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... farming, or of the mechanic arts, to be able to work well and faithfully under appropriate supervision; they may attain a sufficient knowledge of the government and laws under which they live, to be qualified to exercise the electoral franchise quite as well as many of those who do exercise it; they may make such advances in morals, as to act with justice and honor toward their fellow-men, and exhibit the influence of Christianity in changing their degraded and wayward natures to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... see, the universal franchise reduced Democracy ad absurdum fifty years ago. Even the uneducated saw that. And then there came the reaction to ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson



Words linked to "Franchise" :   concern, legal right, licence, grant, vote, business, business organization, right to vote, law, enfranchisement, jurisprudence, dealership



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