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Self-government   Listen
noun
Self-government  n.  
1.
The act of governing one's self, or the state of being governed by one's self; self-control; self-command.
2.
Hence, government of a community, state, or nation by the joint action of the mass of people constituting such a civil body; also, the state of being so governed; democratic government; democracy. "It is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, the system that lets in all to participate in the councels that are to assign the good or evil to all, that we may owe what we are and what we hope to be."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Self-government" Quotes from Famous Books



... independence, he found the object of his inquiry in the manners, habits, and opinions, of a people who had been gradually prepared, by a long course of peculiar circumstances, and by their local position, for self-government; and he has explained, with a pencil of light, the mystery that has baffled Europeans and perplexed Americans. He exhibits us, in our present condition, a new, and to Europeans, a strange people. His views ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... When they are pinched with hunger or thirst, they endure them with constancy, till they can relieve themselves without being troublesome to any one. When at any time their desires for the enjoyments of love grow violent and headstrong, then reason, or self-government, lays hold on the reins, checks the impetuosity of the passion, keeps it within due bounds, and will not allow them to transgress the great rule of their duty. They enjoy what is lawfully their own, and are so far from usurping ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... local governor residing at Reykjavik. It also fully guaranteed the independence of the tribunals, individual freedom, liberty of faith, of the press, of public meetings, the individuality of property, the self-government of principalities, and the equality of all citizens before ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... born in all the most fundamental relationships and activities of our national life. For Americanization is the uniting of new with native-born Americans in fuller common understanding and appreciation to secure by means of self-government the highest welfare of all. Such Americanization should perpetuate no unchangeable political, domestic, and economic regime delivered once for all to the fathers, but a growing and broadening national life, inclusive of ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek

... hitherto as spoiled and imperious as Magda, whose body had been the actual temple of her art, and so, almost inevitably, of her worship, this utter renouncing of physical self-government was the supremest expiation she could make. As with Hugh Vallincourt, whose blood ran in her veins, the idea of personal renunciation made a curious appeal to her emotional temperament, and she was momentarily filled with something ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... within the larger system represented by the individual organism. It is just as if within the state with its central government there were a number of county councils, municipal corporations, and so on, each of them enjoying a certain measure of self-government on its own account. Thus we can see in a very general way how it is that so much variation is possible. The selective organization, which from amongst the germinal elements precipitates ever so many and different ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... the time, the residents in the towns had desired it for the sake of law and order, and in the general helplessness of the State many of the country Boers acquiesced, and to many it seemed the only way to save the country from the Zulu. But it was expected and promised that some form of self-government would be left to the Dutch community. As time went on, the discontent grew, and it was fomented by the speeches of party leaders in England, where the Liberal party were violently attacking the colonial ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... to be the most powerful under the sun, claiming a common origin, quarrelled for self-government; the mild sway of a limited monarchy was tyranny and bigotry; established laws and a state religion were swept away under a feeling that the child was strong enough to defy the parent. A more perfect ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... the close of these pages that I do not believe the new spirit we have produced will lead to any system of self-government, economic or political. I think the decay has gone too far for that. In this I may be wrong; it is but an opinion with regard to the future. On the other matter I have experience and immediate example before me, and I am ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... that is, to such government as is self-made. They are not necessarily entitled to a special and elaborate machinery that somebody else has made. It is their right to make it for themselves, but it is also their duty to think of it for themselves. Self-government of a simple kind has existed in numberless simple societies, and I shall always think it a horrible responsibility to interfere with it. But representative government, or theoretically representative government, of an exceedingly complicated kind, may exist in certain complicated ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... Boston, "good my lord, We pay your governors here Abundant for their bed and board, Six thousand pounds a year. (Your highness knows our homely word,) Millions for self-government, But for tribute ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... 1763 all of the French possessions east of the Mississippi were ceded to England, it was largely true that the French colonies had not yet taken root in the country. Infinite courage, devotion, and self-sacrifice were ultimately wasted, largely because of the lack of homes, the absence of self-government, and the failure to develop an industrial ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... course, but it has been found that when the matter has been presented fairly and supervised skilfully, they have always risen to the responsibility placed upon their shoulders. We therefore recommend that self-government be inaugurated in the boy choir, that the boys be allowed to elect officers out of their own ranks, and that the rules and regulations be worked out largely by the members themselves with a minimum of assistance ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... wished to please both sides, so he argued that it was not a question for him or for the Federal Government to decide, but one which each State and Territory must settle for itself. In answer to this plea of his that it was not a matter of morals, but of "State rights"—a mere matter of local self-government—Mr. Lincoln replied, "When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... of the civilized Filipinos opinion seems to differ among the Americans of the Islands. That they are not yet capable of self-government seems to be almost universally believed by Americans who have lived among them; and that they are not energetic as a class is only what might be expected in such a climate. Some Americans have a rather high opinion of the moral character and general trustworthiness of the average ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... France began with Louis XIV and ended with the Revolution. It is the period which bridges the gulf between autocracy and self-government, between Roman Catholicism and toleration, between the classical spirit and the spirit of the Romantic Revival. It is thus of immense importance in the history not only of France, but of the civilized world. And from the point of view of literature ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... that the French would take any part with Great Britain; but that it was their interest, and, the Americans had reason to believe, their inclination, to cultivate a friendly intercourse with the colonies." They were to have religious freedom, and have the power of self-government, while a free press was to be established, to reform all abuses.[8] The Committee, or, more properly speaking, the Commission, were, however, far from being successful in their attempt to negotiate Canada into revolt. The clergy of Canada ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... afterwards meditating on this subject, "the Turks have for centuries proved themselves to be utterly unworthy of self-government; they have shown themselves to be ignorant of the first principles of righteousness,—meum and tuum; they (or rather their rulers) have violated their engagements and deceived those who trusted them; ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... effect. The demand for intelligence rose when increasing culture, hand in hand with the material progress of the bourgeoisie, quickened the longing for political activity, popular representation and self-government on the part of municipalities. These were small governmental bodies for small countries and circles, nevertheless they contributed towards the general schooling, and caused the sons of the bourgeoisie to covet seats in them and to ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... vice-regal tour in South India there were no nautch entertainments; the necessity of understanding expressions like "general election" and "public spirit," and of comprehending in some measure the working of local self-government—all such constant pressure must effect a change in the mental standpoint. The army of Britain in India, representative of the imperial sceptre, has now for many years been gathered into cantonments, and its work is no longer to quell hostilities within India, but only to ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... forth and establish dominion over the inferior race, and to hold and develop vast imperial possessions and colonial dependencies. They saw their interest and duty in developing systems of docile tutelage; we sought our inspirations in the rough school of self-government. Under this head the result then is distinct, clean cut, indisputable. To this conclusion have we come at last. The Old World, Europe and Great Britain, were, after all, right, and we of the New World ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams

... The conditions offered are that Incredulity, Forget Good, and Will be Will shall retain their offices; Mansoul shall be continued in all the liberties which it enjoys under Diabolus; and a further touch is added which shows how little Bunyan sympathised with modern notions of the beauty of self-government. No new law or officer shall have any power in Mansoul without ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... the people. But what was suited to Massachusetts would not be fit for England or France. See how our government has insensibly drifted towards a strong central power. What must be the future necessities of such great cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago,—where even now self-government is a failure, and the real government is in the hands of rings of politicians, backed by foreign immigrants and a lawless democracy? Will the wise, the virtuous, and the rich put up forever with such misrule as these cities have had, especially since ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... is to be exercised mainly, or at least as one very important form of it, in regard to our use and estimate of the pleasures of this present life. Yes! it is not only from the study of a man's make that the necessity for a very rigid self-government appears, but the observation of the conditions and circumstances in which he is placed points the same lesson. All round about him are hands reaching out to him drugged cups. The world with all its fading sweet comes tempting him, and the old fable fulfils itself—Whoever ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... residence of virtue and happiness! In this city may that piety and virtue, that wisdom and magnanimity, that constancy and self-government, which adorned the great character whose name it bears be forever held in veneration! Here and throughout our country may simple manners, pure morals, and true religion ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... matter some attention, and I fear Mrs. Heaven is right. A duck, a goose, or a hen in which I have developed a larger brain, implanted a sense of duty, or instilled an idea of self-government, is likely, on the whole, to be leaner, not fatter. There is nothing like obeying the voice of conscience for taking the flesh off one's bones; and, speaking of conscience, Phoebe, whose metaphysics are of the farm farmy, says that hers "felt ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... would wreck the empire. The Stuarts wrecked even the tight little island which was the nucleus of the empire by their Scottish logic and theological dogma; and it may be sustained very plausibly that the alleged aptitude of the English for self-government, which is contradicted by every chapter of their history, is really only an incurable inaptitude for theology, and indeed for co-ordinated thought in any direction, which makes them equally impatient of systematic despotism ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... sequel to a little book entitled Nationalism and Internationalism, and was originally designed to be printed along with it: that is the explanation of sundry footnote references. The two volumes are to be followed by a third, on National Self-government, and it is my hope that the complete series may form a useful general survey of the development of the main political factors ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... of earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,—of man as an animal into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where the perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an inward idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... well-remembered speeches in New England and New York pictured the Afro-American as incapable of self-government. Through him and other leading men the cry of the South to the country has been "Hands off! Leave us to solve our problem." To the Afro-American the South says, "the white man must and will rule." There is little difference between the Antebellum ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... After all, this self-government is a difficult thing to carry out. What man really does govern himself?—either through his brain, or heart, some one else governs him. He gives himself up by the wholesale to a crowd, or by retail to his ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... with a disastrous retreat. Thereupon they made blunder after blunder. Public interest and parliamentary control are the very life of armies and navies in every country which enjoys the blessings of self-government. But civilian interference is death. Yet Chase and Carroll practically abolished rank in the disintegrating army by becoming an open court of appeal to every junior with a grievance or a plan. There never was an occasion on which ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... useful as light upon a state of things which, whether it existed wholly in fact or partly in the suspicion of the Italians, is equally interesting and curious. The poem was written in 1847, when the Italians were everywhere aspiring to a national independence and self-government, and their rulers were conceding privileges while secretly leaguing with Austria to continue the old order of an Italy divided among many small tyrants. The reader will readily believe that my English is not as ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... manifest this. I do not profess to understand Napoleon's design in Mexico, and I do not, see that his taking military possession of Mexico concerns us. We have as much territory now as we want. The Mexicans have failed in self-government, and it was a question as to what nation she should fall a prey. That is now solved, and I don't see that we are damaged. We have the finest part of the North American Continent, all we can people and can take care of; and, if we can suppress rebellion in our own land, and compose the strife ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... turn the world into one "City of the Dead," than yield one point of Freedom, Enlightenment, or Self-government to man. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... we've got to begin at the bottom —with the body politic itself. You can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear, nor Sovereigns of men who were born to be Slaves. We've got to grade up or we're gone. Only superior Intelligence is capable of self-government— Ignorance and Tyranny go hand in hand. You may theorize until the Bottomless Pit is transformed into a skating park; you may vote tariffs high or low and money hard or soft; you may inaugurate the Single-Tax or transform the American Republic into a commune, but the condition of the hewers of wood ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... must, however, have been subject to the Byzantine authorities, as inscriptions testify to restorations of its walls by Byzantine officials. Under Theophilus the central government sent out a governor to take the place of the elected magistrate. Even so it seems to have preserved a measure of self-government and may be said to have been the last of the Greek city states. Its ruin was brought about by the commercial rivalry of the Genoese, who forbade the Greeks to trade there and diverted its commerce to Caffa and Sudak. Previous to this it had been the main emporium ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... first stirred the compassion of John Eliot, there is little that is good to tell, or rather there is little good to tell of the White man's treatment of them. Self-government by the stronger people always falls hard on the weaker, and Mission after Mission has been extinguished by the enmity of the surrounding Whites and the corruption and decay of the Indians. A Moravian Mission has been actually persecuted. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... faults on both sides, both alike showed a spirit worthy of their common stock, the colonists by their insistence on self-government, the mother-country by its steadfast adherence to the imperial idea as it then existed. Massachusetts again took the lead in resistance; the merchants renewed the non-importation agreements, and the assembly sent a petition to the king, and on February 11, 1768, a circular letter ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... overcoming them. Unless helped by something supplied from outside the Roman world, civilization must have succumbed to these evils, the progress of mankind must have been stopped. What was needed was the introduction of a fierce spirit of personal liberty and local self-government. The essential vice of the Roman system was that it had been unable to avoid weakening the spirit of personal independence and crushing out local self-government among the peoples to whom it had been applied. It owed its wonderful success to joining Liberty with Union, but as it went ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... are always like that. Perhaps it's our strong point, really, the faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we overdo it, we comfort ourselves with irony which we always have on the tip of our tongues. All I say is, give such rights as our local self-government to any other European people—why, the Germans or the English would have worked their way to freedom from them, while we simply turn ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... most modern schools had adopted a modified form of self-government. Each of the four Houses had its quota of prefects appointed by the staff, and a House captain; the Senior House captain was known as the Captain of the School, and this year South House had the honour of providing the School Captain—Eleanor Ormsby. The prefects, usually members of ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... Kueichow, known as the Miao-Tz{u}, offered a determined resistance to all attempts to bring them under the regular administration; and although they were ultimately conquered, it was deemed advisable not to insist upon the adoption of the queue, and also to leave them a considerable measure of self-government. Acting under Manchu guidance, chiefs and leading tribesmen were entrusted with important executive offices; they had to keep the peace among their people, and to collect the revenue of local produce to be forwarded to Peking. These posts ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... by everyone interested in the Home Rule controversy, and that I believe the circulation of this volume will serve to stimulate thought about Ireland, and so to hasten the advent of that brighter day when the grant of full self-government to Ireland will reveal to England the open secret of making Ireland her friend and helpmate, the brightest jewel ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... just on this superior part of the functions, on their adaptation to present circumstances, that the disorders of conduct (self-government) which occupy us to-day bear. If one is willing to understand by the word "evolution" the fact that a living being is continually transforming himself to adapt himself to new circumstances, neuroses and psychoses are disorders ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... thirsting for her destruction, and fearing her escape, seized her so roughly that she screamed with pain and terror, when Franklin dragged him back and hurled him to the wall. His impulse was to strike him to the earth, but with one of the highest qualities attained by man, self-government, he recollected ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... status, no objective existence. He has no sort of public being, except in the affection of his subjects. It took an upheaval little short of an earthquake to unseat him. His rule, as we understand it, was bad for all classes; the poor suffered more than the rich; the people have now had three years of self-government; and yet this wonderful man has such a hold upon the masses that he is going home to win the cause of oppression at the head of the oppressed. When he's in power again, he will be as subjective as ever, with the power ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... close. Another series, with less attention to minute details, and carrying the story through a longer range of years, will paint the progress of the Republic in its palmy days, and narrate the establishment of, its external system of dependencies and its interior combinations for self-government and European counterpoise. The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the maintenance of rational ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... emperor. Such a noble! Of such high talents! What is human greatness? I often said, this can't end happily. His might, his greatness, and this obscure power Are but a covered pitfall. The human being May not be trusted to self-government. The clear and written law, the deep-trod footmarks Of ancient custom, are all necessary To keep him in the road of faith and duty. The authority intrusted to this man Was unexampled and unnatural, It placed him on a level with his ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... my preceding lecture my method of procedure in the investigation of the corresponding properties of curves and States. You have perceived that we have here the elements of a new science, which may be extended indefinitely, and applied to the various departments of self-government and State control. This new science of polemical mathematics is in itself an extension of the principle of continuity, for the discovery of which Poncelet is so justly renowned. We can prove by geometry that ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... say, I can't see how it affects our position. There are some things worse than hanging or extermination. We reckon giving up the right of self-government one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... a wonderful work. It stopped piracy on the seas and robbery on the land. Industrially, it encouraged self-government and obedience to constitutional authority. Shipbuilding and navigation so greatly improved that the ocean traffic resulting from the discovery of the cape route to India quickly fell into the hands of Hanse ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... be with the apostles. They had to learn, as we all have to learn, self-help, self-government, self-determination. They were to think for themselves, and act for themselves; and yet not by themselves. For he would put into them a spirit, even his Spirit; and so, when they were thinking for themselves, they ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... dictate a ruler and government to France, and follow the example he had set of parcelling and usurping to themselves their neighbor nations, I hope he will give them another lesson in vindication of the rights of independence and self-government, which himself had heretofore so much abused, and that in this contest he will wear down the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. So far, good. It cannot be denied, on the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... taxation, to model their own internal taxation accordingly, and to continue to insist on that requirement, whatever their own change either of opinion or condition might be, would be simply destructive of local self-government. 'Free Trade is of extreme importance, but Freedom ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley

... the case is much the same. Mrs. Eddy starts out bravely by saying that they are to have "local self-government." But on reading the Manual we find that they are ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... to the people of England, and contrary to the Bill of Eights and of every principle of civil government, if soldiers were posted in London without the consent of Parliament; in a word, that it was as violative of their local self-government as the Stamp Act or the Revenue Act, and was also an impeachment of their loyalty. They, therefore, as a matter of right, were opposed to a continuance of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... speaking in the manner prescribed by the Constitution, was heard, and instant submission followed. Our own country could alone have exhibited so grand and striking a spectacle of the capacity of man for self-government. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... spread themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free and independent Americans, unconnected with us except by ties of blood and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government.' Even Jefferson's mind, wide as it was, could not take in the idea of a national unity embracing both ends of the continent; but not so thought Astor. The merchant saw farther than the statesman. It was precisely this political unity which gave ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... Union was and is still the possessor of Territories not included in any State, and in the Territories, whatever subordinate self-government they might be allowed, the Federal authority has always been supreme and uncontrolled in all matters. But as these Territories have become more settled and more populated, portions of them have steadily from the first been organised ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... had got hold of the right thing this time! And now all at once Pelle knew which way they ought to go. If they were outside the existing conditions and their laws, why not arrange their own world upon the laws that were theirs? Through the organizations they had been educated in self-government; it was about time that they took charge of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people a man who will declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this country, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place the legislative control of our affairs in the hands ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... on Interim Self-Government Arrangements ("the DOP"), signed in Washington on 13 September 1993, provides for a transitional period not exceeding five years of Palestinian interim self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Permanent status negotiations ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... between the British, Americans, and French, those three great peoples who will, we hope, go on as friends henceforward, leading the world ever closer to the glorious goal of true democracy: that happier time when every boy and girl shall have at least the chance to learn the sacred trust of all self-government, and when most men and women shall have learnt this lesson well enough to use their votes for what is ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... biscuit with butter and currant jelly for the youngest Miss Brimmer, "I am afraid that, with the fastidiousness of your sex, you allow your refined instincts against a race who only mix with ours in a menial capacity to prejudice your views of their ability for enlightened self-government. That may be true of the aborigines of the Old World—like our friends the Lascars ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... intelligence or property should compel the people of the District of Columbia to try an experiment which their own constituents have thus far shown an unwillingness to test for themselves. Nor does it accord with our republican ideas that the principle of self-government should lose its force when applied to the residents of the District merely because their legislators are not, like those of the States, responsible through the ballot to the people for whom they are the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... their own King. There was already a Liberal Ministry under Count Arnim, Bismarck's old chief at Aachen; the Prussian troops were being sent to support the people of Schleswig-Holstein in their rebellion against the Danes; the Ministers favoured the aspirations of Poland for self-government; in Prussia there was to be a Constituent Assembly and a new Constitution drawn up by it. Bismarck did what he could; he went down to Schoenhausen and began to collect signatures for an address of loyalty to ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... certain affairs for the Kreis, an administrative unit smaller than an English county, and averaging about one hundred thousand inhabitants. In the same proportion as German unity made progress, it was believed that self-government ought to become more extensively introduced, and the "tendency of the blood toward the head" or capital, be obviated. The example of home rule presented by the "Kreis" and the provinces of Prussia since this reform, is not assuredly of a nature to frighten weak ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... customary during the Middle Ages; the goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, and weavers had their own places, for the Alexandrian Jews seem to have partially adopted the Egyptian caste-system. The Jews enjoyed a large amount of self-government, having their own governor, the ethnarch, and in Roman times their own council (Sanhedrin), which administered their own code of laws. Of the ethnarch Strabo says that he was like an independent ruler, and it was his function to secure the proper fulfilment of duties by the community and compliance ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... Northern Forests; Voluntary Exile; The Village Priest; A Peasant Family of the Old Type; The Mir, or Village Community; Towns and Mercantile Classes; Lord Novgorod the Great; The Imperial Administration; The New Local Self-Government; Proprietors of the Modern School; The Noblesse; Social Classes; Among the Heretics; Pastoral Tribes of the Steppes; St. Petersburg and European Influence; Church and State; The Crimean War and Its Consequences; ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... January 6, 1853.—Self-government with tenderness—here you have the condition of all authority over children. The child must discover in us no passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself powerless to deceive or to trouble us; then he will recognize in us his natural superiors, and he will attach ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... presence of this vast assemblage of my countrymen I am about to supplement and seal by the oath which I shall take the manifestation of the will of a great and free people. In the exercise of their power and right of self-government they have committed to one of their fellow-citizens a supreme and sacred trust, and he here consecrates himself ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... whether as boast or as sneer, called Evangelical, what an insufferable tyranny would this introduce! Who would not rather live in Algiers? This alone would make this minute history of the ecclesiastic factions invaluable, that it must convince all sober lovers of independence and moral self-government, how dearly we ought to prize our present Church Establishment with all ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... which became law during the session, were those for enabling companies to be formed with limited liability, and for granting self-government to some of the Australasian Colonies. The Committee appointed by the House of Commons held its meetings in public (after a proposal to keep its investigations secret had been rejected), and, by the casting vote of the Chairman, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... wearing the broad Presidential ribbon, set me thinking. How at the bottom of his heart does the Autocrat of All The Russias view these representatives of the great French Republic! How does he really feel towards France, the first nation of the western world to set the example of officially recognised self-government, the initiator of a system as opposed to Russian despotism as is white to black? Whatever may be the secret of this strange Franco-Russian alliance, it is apparently in the interest of peace, and, as such, should be warmly welcomed by all advocates ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... power. They do this, not by debating nor by marching in the street; they do this by the slow process of organization. In their union halls, the workers learn class consciousness. In their union halls, the workers learn self-government. In their union halls, the workers are disciplined and solidified for the 'final conflict.' Every strike is a revolution in miniature. Every gain which organized workers make, by a conscious act of their own, weakens capitalism and is revolutionary. In ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... which ruffles the surface of public affairs most, at present, is furnished by the transmission of the "Territory" of Missouri from a state of nonage to a maturity for self-Government, and for a membership in the Union. Among the questions involved in it, the one most immediately interesting to humanity is the question whether a toleration or prohibition of slavery Westward of the Mississippi would most extend its evils. The human part of the argument against the prohibition ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... up to wonderful and vast dimensions, but as far as the principle of representation was concerned there had been no great change, though it was perfectly true that during the past few years a certain number of the Colonies had obtained what was called self-government, or what he called the shadow of English government on the parliamentary system, as retained in its original principle and plan up to our own times. The Imperial policy of the British Empire was entirely conducted at Home, and Imperial Federation meant that this system should be changed, ...
— A Winter Tour in South Africa • Frederick Young

... independent; they will never be sovereigns, as heretofore, and God forbid they ever should! but they may be subjects without being slaves. Our colonies are not independent, but they are free and industrious, and such may Greece be hereafter." These words show that he considered Greece incapable of self-government, should she ever regain her liberty; and he therefore deprecated a return to her ancient sovereignty. That this was his view, and that he subsequently designed to give it effect in his own person, we are assured ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... of our Revolution to the present day almost forty years have elapsed, and from the establishment of this Constitution twenty-eight. Through this whole term the Government has been what may emphatically be called self-government. And what has been the effect? To whatever object we turn our attention, whether it relates to our foreign or domestic concerns, we find abundant cause to felicitate ourselves in the excellence of our institutions. During a period fraught with difficulties and marked by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... now!" said he to himself. "No more trouble from that source! Another milestone passed along the road of self-control, self-government and communal spirit. Ah, but the road's a long one yet—a long and hard and stony ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... independence and importance, through the very necessity of performing many functions left unheeded by the ruler of all; and if the people are self-reliant in character, they will in time develop a sort of self-government which, although it would not at first think of questioning the theoretical right and overlordship of the central power, will eventually brook but little interference with its modes of procedure and with its exercise of functions, which the lapse of time has transformed from enforced duties ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... representation? Is it not primarily a lack of courage and of trust in the principle of democracy? But does it need a greater courage, a greater belief in the value of the democratic principle than the grant of self-government to the Transvaal and to the Orange River Colony within a few years of the Boer War? The courage and faith in the latter case have been abundantly justified, and were statesmen actuated by a similar courage and ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... their religions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social functions. It will keep alive .degrading social evils in all their great towns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be corrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts at self-government. Self-government works best among those who have learned ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... the world, so that the love and feeling of the east would appease the discord of the west, diluting its discipline and its logic with true religious intuition and humility, and eventually the idealized relationship of autocracy for the Czar and self-government for the people—the old system so rudely strained by Peter the Great—would permeate the ruled and rulers of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... different states mentioned above as representatives of federalism, possess an equal value for us in our search after improvements in the art of self-government. The study of the constitutions of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires can only be of secondary importance to us Americans, because these states are founded upon monarchical principles, quite foreign to our body ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... heavy hand of poverty, until 1699, when, with his daughter and second wife, Hannah Callowhill, he sailed to Philadelphia. Meanwhile, his colony, under his old deputy, William Markham, had asserted their right to self-government ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... her laws, and by the benefits of her citizenship, yet the Roman unity was external, and did not spring from the intimate sense of a common lineage. While the nations were so closely united to Rome by brute force, the subject peoples were agitated by a desire for their ancient independence and self-government. Some of these pagan multitudes advanced in civilization through their education in the learning of the Romans, and in morality through their spontaneous activity, but they did not possess any deep sense of a general providence, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... argument a few simple propositions,—that self-government is the natural condition of an adult society, as distinguished from the immature state, in which the temporary arrangements of monarchy and oligarchy are tolerated as conveniences; that the end of all social compacts ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... written the great charter of civil liberty, the Declaration of American Independence. We pay to the heroic hand who signed that wager of battle the honors which are paid to the heroes of the battlefield. It was not valor alone which secured to us self-government. The leaders in the revolt against the tyranny and the established institutions of the old world had courage of opinion and were full of mature wisdom and incorruptible patriotism. The men who signed the paper pledging their lives, their ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... 1893, Britain made the southern Solomon Islands a protectorate. Other islands were added to the group, including some ceded to Britain by Germany. The Solomon Islands were occupied by the Japanese during World War II. Following the war, internal self-government was established in 1976, and independence from the UK came two years later. Current issues include government deficits, deforestation, ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... respects he desired the maintenance of the status quo, being content to leave the rest to the future. So much for the Imperial relations. That in all matters relating to its internal affairs Canada should continue to possess the fullest rights of self-government, including exclusive powers of {182} taxation, he considered as an ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... Professor Burrows, who believed in the possibility of such an arrangement, thought that it would take generations for this people "to pass from blood feud and tribal jealousy to the good order of a unified State, unless they have tutorage in the art of self-government." There seem to be grave difficulties, both external and internal, in the way of setting up such a tutorage over the whole of the 1913 Albania; and if a majority of the northern and north-eastern tribes prefer to turn to Yugoslavia, rather than to ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... farm, and is excellent in the completeness of his defence of it so far. What he finds already written he will defend. Lucky that so much had got well written when he came, for he has no faith in the power of self-government. Not the smallest municipal provision, if it were new, would receive his sanction. In Massachusetts, in 1776, he would, beyond all question, have been a refugee. He praises Adams and Jefferson, but it is a past Adams and Jefferson. A present Adams ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... Asiatic provinces enjoyed self-government under the supremacy of Egypt, and the disadvantages of this condition of things are revealed in numerous letters. These end almost invariably with a request to the king to come in person to the aid of his distressed vassals, or ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... Norway the people and commonalty ran together in crowds, and would hear of nothing but that Olaf should be king over all the country, although some afterwards, who thought that the people upon account of his power had no self-government left to them, went out of the country. Many powerful men, or rich bondes sons, had therefore gone to Canute the Great, and pretended various errands; and every one who came to Canute and desired his friendship was loaded ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "Irish National flag" to be raised over the City ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... you, and to our whole country, and to all the crowned heads and aristocratic powers and feudal systems that exist, that it is to self-government, the great principle of popular representation and administration, the system that lets in all to participate in the counsels that are to assign the good or evil to all, that we may owe what we are and what we hope ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... been reading the life of Madame de Stael and 'Corinne.' I have felt an intense sympathy with many parts of that book, with many parts of her character. But in America feelings vehement and absorbing like hers become still more deep, morbid, and impassioned by the constant habits of self-government which the rigid forms of our society demand. They are repressed, and they burn inwardly till they burn the very soul, leaving only dust and ashes. It seems to me the intensity with which my mind has thought and felt on every subject ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... independence was drawn up in such haughty terms as to resemble rather the offer of an equal alliance than the renunciation of imperial rights. Soon, however, the apathy which invariably benumbs the faculties of a people too entirely relieved from the discipline and obligation of self-government, lapped in complete inactivity, moral, political, and intellectual,—these once stirring islanders. On the amalgamation of the three Scandinavian monarchies, at the union of Calmar, the allegiance of the people of Iceland was passively ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... freedom? What is happiness? Freedom is the maximum of self-government finally becoming automatic, and the minimum of government from without finally reduced to the vanishing-point. Happiness is the ultimate bourne, the Olympian goal, the intense and burning star towards which we travel. Does not its light even now fall upon us? even now we are palely happy. And how ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... unfearful of the attempted return of the old royalist bureaucrats to their baleful power, and convinced that the heart of this great, courteous, patient, longsuffering Slavic people is groping for expression of self-government, and that America is their ideal—a hazy ideal and one that they aspire toward only in general outlines. Their ultimate self-government may not take the shape of American constitutionalism, but Russian self-government must in time come out of the very wrack of foreign and internecine ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... all, the restored Union will be the only representative left of those principles for which we have so manfully battled during the last four years—the principles of liberty and equal rights and local self-government. We Confederates believe, and will always believe, that our cause was just and right, that it represented the fundamentals of that American system which our forefathers sealed and cemented with their blood. But our effort has failed. The Confederacy is eternally dead. The Union survives. What ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... 1853.—Self-government with tenderness,—here you have the condition of all authority over children. The child must discover in us no passion, no weakness of which he can make use; he must feel himself powerless to deceive or to trouble ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... settlement of the Greek question. This treaty, dated July 6, 1827, was almost the last public act of Canning. It was moderate in its terms, embodying the conditions laid down in the previous year at St. Petersburg, and making the self-government of Greece subject to a payment of tribute to the Porte. It provided for a combination of the British, French, and Russian fleets in the event of a second refusal from Turkey; but Canning died in the hope that ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... missions they formed in various parts of the country, introduced a superficial civilisation among some of the tribes; but their system failing, as it ever has done, to raise the moral character of the people, and fit them for independent thought and self-government, has left them as ignorant and superstitious, and scarcely less savage, than before. Thus they have become the facile tools of every leader who, by greater audacity, craft, or determination, has risen ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... well-being in the well-being of that society. This has been, ever since Arnold, sedulously fostered in the games of the public schools, and fruitful of good results in that limited sphere; it has been applied with conspicuous success to the development of self-government, and it has reached its fullest expression in the little Commonwealth of Mr Homer Lane. But we are beginning to recognise its wider applications, it is capable of transforming the spirit of the class-room activities as ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... the thing a family could settle. Scores of young criminals have been fined and sent to jail when they ought to have been thrashed and sent to bed. Scores of men, I am sure, have had a lifetime at Hanwell when they only wanted a week at Brighton. There IS something in Smith's notion of domestic self-government; and I propose that we put it into practice. You have the prisoner; you have the documents. Come, we are a company of free, white, Christian people, such as might be besieged in a town or cast up on a desert island. Let us do this thing ourselves. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... counsel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to be suggested; freedom and virtue, if they triumphed, triumphed in a fair field. And so be it an everlasting testimony for them, and so much ground of assurance of man's capacity for self-government." ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... the Transvaal and Orange River Colony will at the earliest possible date be succeeded by Civil Government, and, as soon as circumstances permit, representative institutions, leading up to self-government, will ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... Of local self-government there was practically none. It is true that so-called "Provincial Synods" were held; but these Synods had no power to make laws. At this period the Moravian Church was divided, roughly, into the six Provinces of Upper Lusatia, Silesia, Holland, England, Ireland, and America; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... professed the greatest regard for Mrs. Wesley, and declared that both of us were good enough to be Southrons. He promised that in future he would take all the care he could not to run against her prejudices, which merely grew out of her confused conception of State rights and the right of self-government. Women never understood anything about political ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... other relationships, and unless we are to continue to perpetuate many evils and injustices, that fact has to be faced and recognized. We have also seen that the line of our advance involves a constant increase in moral responsibility and self-government, and that, in its turn, implies not only a high degree of sincerity but also the recognition that no person has any right, or indeed any power, to control the emotions and actions of another person. If our sun of love stands still at midday, according to Ellen Key's phrase, that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... original feature. It had already been adopted by the American branch of the Anglican communion. During the years that followed the promulgation of Grey's scheme, American theological halls were echoing to such sentiments as this: "The power of self-government is advocated over all the Colonial Churches of the British Empire. Why is it that the Churches in New Zealand and New South Wales are demanding synodical action and lay representation? It is our influence and our example." The American origin ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... in Portugal; while the next year witnessed the outbreak of the Greek struggle for independence. Thus in all three of the peninsulas of Southern Europe the people were struggling for the right of self-government. The great powers at once took alarm at the rapid spread of revolutionary ideas and proceeded to adopt measures for the suppression of the movements to which these ideas gave rise. At Troppau and Laybach ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... had schooled them to co-operation. They were ready, helping one another, to advance together to a common prosperity. They were under the leadership chiefly of the man who had guided them out of a most desperate condition of oppression toward the freedom of sovereign self-government. In that progress he had saved everything that was worthy in the Mormon communism; he had discarded much that was a curse. I knew that he had no thought but for the welfare of the people; and with such a man, leading such a following, ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... and impartial,—the self-government of the whole; equal rights and privileges, irrespective of birth or complexion; the morality of the Gospel of Christ applied to legislation; Christianity reduced to practice, and showering the blessings of its impartial love and equal protection upon all, like the rain and dews ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... yielded to everything that was proposed to him. Emparan was deposed and the first locally chosen government of Spanish America was established. The principle that the provinces of America possessed the right of self-government, since no general government existed, ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... there for free institutions in countries where kings and nobles and marshals and hereditary institutions and laws of primogeniture have existed for ages? Sir, when the masses of any people, inspired by the love of country, have demanded in modern times the right of self-government, they have been pointed to France with its revolution of 1798, to South America, where changing republics rise and disappear so rapidly that not ten men in this House can tell me their names, and also ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... two hundred or five hundred is rich, and lives like a nabob; the rest are peons, or servants sold for debt, who work for their masters, and are as subservient as the slaves of the South, and look like Indians, and, indeed, are not more capable of self-government. One man, Jacobus Sanchez, owns three fourths of all the land our column has passed over in Mexico. We are told we have seen the best part of Northern Mexico; if so, the whole of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... excesses, or, as at Florence, was strong enough to defy even an Imperial assailant. Religion found its bitterest enemy in such a Pope as Boniface VIII., or the church over which he ruled. Whatever might have been its fortune under happier circumstances, the great experiment of democratic self-government, of free and independent city-states, had failed, whether from the wars of city with city, or from the civil feuds that rent each in sunder. The papacy could furnish no centre of union; its old sanctity was gone, its greed and worldliness weakened it every ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... is thus government by the mentally and morally inferior. And yet—a Bill for giving at last some scant measure of self-government to persecuted Ireland has to run the gauntlet, in our nineteenth-century England, of an ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... clause of the Constitution which empowers Congress to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the United States. Perhaps the power of governing a territory belonging to the United States, which has not, by becoming a State, acquired the means of self-government, may result, necessarily, from the facts that it is not within the jurisdiction of any particular State, and is within the power and jurisdiction of the United States. The right to govern may be the inevitable consequence of the right to acquire territory. ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... throne, could wholly mask their trepidation. They looked upon it, in the privacy of their chambers, as the challenge of a mighty rebellion of the people against all kingly rule and administration; they saw in it the embodiment of those popular ideas of freedom, equality, and self-government, which for so many centuries had been struggling for adequate utterance in England and France, and they knew that the success of this sublime experiment must eventually break asunder the colossal bones of the European ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... little self-command and self-respect he once possessed: formerly, he would have been ashamed to act thus—at least, before any other witnesses than his boon companions, or such as they. His friend Hargrave, with a prudence and self-government that I envy for him, never disgraces himself by taking more than sufficient to render him a little 'elevated,' and is always the first to leave the table after Lord Lowborough, who, wiser still, perseveres in vacating the dining-room immediately after ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... founded, it is clear to what it goes. The House of Commons, in that light, undoubtedly, is no representative of the people, as a collection of individuals. Nobody pretends it, nobody can justify such an assertion. When you come to examine into this claim of right, founded on the right of self-government in each individual, you find the thing demanded infinitely short of the principle of the demand. What! one third only of the legislature, and of the government no share at all? What sort of treaty of partition ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... shone his glory. Here REASON manifests its laws. Here the WILL puts forth its volitions. Here is the crown of IMMORTALITY. Why such endowments? Thus furnished—the image of Jehovah—is he not capable of self-government? And is he not to be so treated? Within the sphere where the laws of reason place him, may he not act according to his choice—carry out his own volitions?—may he not enjoy life, exult in freedom, and pursue as he will the path of blessedness? If not, why was he so created ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... safe and proper. Such a practice will assist the teacher very much if he manages it with any degree of dexterity; for it will interest his pupils in the success of the school, and secure, to a very considerable extent, their co-operation in the government of it. It will teach them self-control and self-government, and will accustom them to submit to the majority—that lesson which, of all others, it is important for a republican ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... scent for the trails that lead to it, all exist; and if there be in the future any fields calling for colonization, it cannot be doubted that Americans will carry to them all their inherited aptitude for self-government and independent growth. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... people of proud tradition in sea—battles and land-battles. Appeals for the rescue of "the little nations" struck old chords of chivalry and sentiment—though with a strange lack of logic and sincerity Irish demand for self-government was unheeded. Base passions as well as noble instincts were stirred easily. Greedy was the appetite of the mob for atrocity tales. The more revolting they were the quicker they were swallowed. The foul absurdity of the "corpse-factory" was not rejected any more than ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... region under their distinguished patronage would bring settlers in a rush; and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offering lands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popular self-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlement at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedingly barren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile in the more southerly region nothing was ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... is fine example of what, I think, is the best rule in the world for the inferior races—the absolute rule of a devoted, intelligent, capable gentlewoman. We are but now writing the indentures of their apprenticeship to self-government in the elective village councils we have set up; it is good for them to serve it under this ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... and death, must yet relieve their statesmen, especially after supper, and neatly arrange the Tariff, Resumption, or whatever else. Like oracles the ex-Confederates held forth that the Yankees had only driven out the French to march in themselves, and so tutor the Mexicans in self-government. To which the Kansan ventured a minority opinion, though being thus a judge of the bench, as it were, he had no need of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacrifice and every generous manifestation. The peace, prosperity, and contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than merely an enlarged field for our commerce and enterprise. They mean an enlargement of the field of self-government and the realization of the hopes and rights of a nation with whose best aspirations, so long suppressed and disappointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet prove to the Mexican people that we know how to serve them without first thinking how ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... by whom he conceived himself so deeply injured, at first rendered him immovable, but instantly gave way to such a thirst for revenge as the pilgrim in the desert feels for the water-brooks. He had but sense and self-government enough left to prevent his stabbing to the heart the audacious villain, who, after the ruin he had brought upon him, dared, with such unmoved assurance, thus to practise upon him further. Determined to suppress for the moment every symptom ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... years, as everybody is aware, a demand has sprung up for 'local self-government' in India—a demand not originating with natives themselves, but with the sentimentalists and philosophers who are doing their best and their worst to take all the manliness out of the English character. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... Spirit in his heart, will walk amongst men the wielder of an unmistakable power, and will be able to bear witness to God, and move men's hearts, and draw them to goodness and truth. The only power for Christian service is the power that comes from being clothed with God's Spirit. The only power for self-government is the power that comes from being clothed with God's Spirit. The only power which will keep us in the way that leads to life, and will bring us at last to the rest and the reward, is the power that comes from being ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... of debate, would any one select Ireland as the administrative district in which to make trial of the new system? Would any one, in his desire to relieve the Imperial Parliament of some of its functions, select as an area of self-government a region where one part is divided against another by passions, and, if you will, by prejudices, more violent, and more deeply-rooted than those which afflict any other fraction of the United Kingdom, choose that other fraction where, and ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... lying cowardly, thieving, worthless, half-breed mongrel; born of a mongrel spawn of Europe, crossed upon the fetiches of darkest Africa and aboriginal America. He is no more capable of self-government than the Hottentots that roam the wilds of Africa or the Bushmen of Australia. He can not be trusted like the Indian, will not work like a negro, and will not fight like a Spaniard; but he will lie like a Castilian with polished suavity, and he will ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... Democracy, pure democracy, has at least its foundation in a generous theory of human rights. It is founded on the natural equality of mankind. It is the corner-stone of the Christian religion. It is the first element of all lawful government upon earth. Democracy is self-government of the community by the conjoint will of the majority of numbers. What communion, what affinity, can there be between that principle and nullification, which is the despotism of a corporation—unlimited, unrestrained, sovereign power? Never, never was amalgamation so preposterous and absurd ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... infinite discretion, never yielding to dictates of passion but always determined to be patient and calm at moments of violent public excitement, conscious of the advantages of compromise and conciliation in a country peopled like Canada, entering fully into the aspirations of a young people for self-government, ready to concede to French Canadians their full share in the public councils, anxious to build up a Canadian nation without reference to creed or race—this distinguished nobleman must be always placed by a Canadian historian in the very front rank of the great administrators happily chosen from ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... and daughter in New York. His stay was brief, and he was apparently unable to bring himself to view what Euphemia's uncle, Mr. Butterworth, who gave her away at the altar, called our great experiment of democratic self-government, in a serious light. He smiled at everything and seemed to regard the New World as a colossal plaisanterie. It is true that a perpetual smile was the most natural expression of countenance for a man ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... suggesting that Swift was merely a just man righteously indignant at the destruction of Irish manufactures. At least, one would never gather from the present book that Swift was practically the father of the modern Irish demand for self-government. Swift was an Irish patriot in the sense in which Washington was an American patriot. Like Washington, he had no quarrel with English civilization. He was not an eighteenth-century Sinn Feiner. He regarded himself as a colonist, and his Nationalism was Colonial Nationalism. As such he was the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... army was ever enlisted for a nobler service than ours. Not only is it national life and a foremost place among nations that is at stake, but the vital principle of Law itself, the august foundation on which the very possibility of government, above all of self-government, rests as in the hollow of God's own hand. If democracy shall prove itself capable of having raised twenty millions of people to a level of thought where they can appreciate this cardinal truth, and can believe no sacrifice too great for its defence and establishment, then democracy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... of the Roman Empire all Europe was in a state of anarchy. The long domination of Rome, and the general acceptance of the Roman idea that "the state is everything and the individual man nothing," had unfitted the people for self-government. While Rome fell, the system of Rome, leading to absolute monarchy, persisted, and out of it grew the present governments of Europe. The conquering Goths brought in a modifying condition which changed the whole relations of monarch to people. In their social and ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... Eleians, who viewed with a jealous eye the Lacedaemonians at Skillus, and protested against the peace and convention promoted by Athens after the battle of Leuktra, because it recognized that place, along with the townships of Triphylia, as having the right of self-government. Every year he made a splendid sacrifice, from the tenth of all the fruits of the property; to which solemnity not only all the Skilluntines, but also all the neighboring villages, were invited. Booths were erected for the visitors, to whom ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... them to cast off the slough of hopeless poverty, which once threw its deadening influence over them, repressing all their energies, and destroying that self-respect which is so necessary to mental improvement and self-government, The change in their condition is apparent ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... northern dependencies into transient wakefulness and energy, until the great day of Boyaca dawned, and New Granada and Venezuela, as Spanish colonies, ceased to be. Fit or unfit as they might have been for self-government at the time, these peoples set out to make histories as independent States, and the Spanish colonial era, having lasted over two and a half centuries, came to ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... fifth day from that on which Stephen and Maggie had left St. Ogg's, Tom Tulliver was standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He was master there now; he had half fulfilled his father's dying wish, and by years of steady self-government and energetic work he had brought himself near to the attainment of more than the old respectability which had been the proud inheritance of the Dodsons ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... quit it, I believe. But to you, my indigent friends, the time for quitting it has palpably arrived! To talk of glorious self-government, of suffrages and hustings, and the fight of freedom and such like, is a vain thing in your case. By all human definitions and conceptions of the said fight of freedom, you for your part have lost it, and can ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... deal of drunkenness here, and I wanted to make it better if I could. The people are very ignorant, and have been much neglected, and I wanted to make THAT better, if I could. My utmost object was, to help them to a little self-government and a little homely pleasure. I only show the way to better things, and advise them. I never act for them; I never interfere; above ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... the Stuarts meant the return of something like absolute government, of taxation without sanction of law, and of religious persecution. Under the Hanoverian George the English people had begun to exercise a considerable measure of self-government. Sharp opposition in Parliament compelled him time and again to yield; and when he was in Hanover the English were left to work out the ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... policy of Rome to strip the countries of which she became mistress of all power. She flattered them by leaving in their hands at least the insignia of self-government, and she conceded to them as much home rule as was compatible with the retention of her paramount authority. She was specially tolerant in matters of religion. Thus the ancient ecclesiastical tribunal of the Jews, the Sanhedrim, was still allowed to try all ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... of an agent, whose character they seem not sufficiently to, have known, we have been urged by motives of duty to ourselves and justice to others, which cannot but be approved by those who are just themselves; and finally, that after independence and self-government, there is nothing we more sincerely wish than ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come to seem to have sense and meaning—the sense and meaning implied when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being "capable of self-government"; and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some time or other which wasn't capable of it—wasn't as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... ballot. Secondly, it was required that as soon as the graduates of the university numbered fifty they should select one trustee each year, thus giving the alumni one third of the whole number elected. Third, there was to be a system of self-government administered by the students themselves. As to this third point, I must frankly confess that my ideas were vague, unformed, and finally changed by the logic of events. As the fourth and final main division, I presented "Permeating Ideas''; and of ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... society in the first quarter of the eighteenth century sought a haven of refuge in the "Quackerthal" of William Penn, with its trustworthy guarantees of free tolerance in religious faith and the benefits of representative self-government. From East Devonshire in England came George Boone, the grandfather of the great pioneer, and from Wales came Edward Morgan, whose daughter Sarah became the wife of Squire Boone, Daniel's father. These were conspicuous representatives of the Society ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson



Words linked to "Self-government" :   local option, sovereignty, liberty, self-rule, self-determination



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