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Elective   /ɪlˈɛktɪv/   Listen
Elective

adjective
1.
Subject to popular election.  Synonym: elected.
2.
Not compulsory.  "An elective course of study"



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"Elective" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the South had reached the point of greatest activity and influence in public life, so far as the mere holding of elective office was concerned. From that date those who have kept up with the history of the South have noticed that the Negro has steadily lost in the number of elective offices held. In saying this, I do not mean that the Negro has gone backward in the real ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington

... slew every chick in one night; how my pigs were always practicing gymnastic exercises over the fence of the sty, and marauding in the garden. I wonder that Fourier never conceived the idea of having his garden land ploughed by pigs; for certainly they manifest quite a decided elective attraction for turning up ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... have broadened, and you begin to have something similar to the elective system. You can choose more freely how to spend your time. Your development to this point, I have already said, may be called the rounding of the handle; and your education will be normal if you have average application, intelligence, and memory. During ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"

... government is assuming daily, more and more, a character of cabal and preparation, not for the next presidential election, but for the one after, that is working and counterworking, with many of the worst features of elective monarchies. Jackson has made for himself a multitude of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... persisted in some degrees and then disappeared, reappearing in a slight degree, however, every winter at the normal period of sexual activity. But when the testicular substance of actively sexual frogs was injected into the castrated frogs it exerted an elective action on the sexual reflex, sometimes in a few hours, but the action is, Steinach concludes, first central. The testicular secretion of frogs that were not sexually active had no stimulating action, but if the frogs were sexually ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... by, which she, with a motion of her neat little gloved hand, bid stop. She stepped lightly into it, while I, with my usual impetuosity, without knowing exactly what I was doing, sprang after her. I consoled myself for my apparent rudeness by throwing the entire blame upon the elective affinities. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... of the Vladika had been formerly purely elective; yet towards the close of the seventeenth century, through the influence of Vladika Daniel Petrovitch of Niegosh, it became hereditary in his own family; a member of which since that time has always been appointed by the Russian ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... acceptance, why do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair, as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy. ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... ungrateful. Wyatt had been re-elected member of the legislature, however, in spite of Hardin's opposition, and now wished to revenge himself, by ousting Hardin from his office. With this end in view, Wyatt had Douglass draft a bill making the State's attorneys elective by the legislature, instead of subject to the governor's appointment. Since the new governor was a Whig, he could not be used by the Democrats. The bill met with bitter opposition, for it was alleged that it had no other purpose than to vacate Hardin's office ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... conception of love greatly affected him. One of the first distinctions of language and of mythology was that of gender; and at a later period the ancient physicist, anticipating modern science, saw, or thought that he saw, a sex in plants; there were elective affinities among the elements, marriages of earth and heaven. (Aesch. Frag. Dan.) Love became a mythic personage whom philosophy, borrowing from poetry, converted into an efficient cause of creation. The traces of the existence of love, as of number and figure, were ...
— Symposium • Plato

... which the coronation, strictly so called, begins, is an elective rite, in which some of the more direct terms of appeal to the people are disused. Its title, "the Recognition," is of modern date[33]. After reciting the coronation oath, a respectable writer of queen Elizabeth's time thus gives ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... revolutionists, and by French and Germans settled in our own country, it is essentially barbaric and anti-republican. The characteristic principle of barbarism is, that power is a private or personal right, and when democrats assert that the elective franchise is a natural right of man, or that it is held by virtue of the fact that the elector is a man, they assert the fundamental principle of barbarism and despotism. This says nothing in favor of restricted suffrage, or against what ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... the inhabitants are long-lived; they trade in brass, lead, iron, steel, copper, skins, furs, deals, oak, pitch, and tar: They are civil, and so industrious that a beggar is not to be seen among them; good soldiers, strong and healthy. It was formerly elective, but now hereditary. It is governed by a King and the States, which consist of the nobility, clergy, and the merchants; their religion is Lutheranism, and dialect ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... all culture under the general term of "Music," but gave voice and instrument a vital place in education. Three of our most prominent composers fill the chairs at three of the most important universities. In all these cases, however, music is an elective study, while the rudiments of the art should, I am convinced, be a required study in every college curriculum, and in the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... a delegate to represent Cecil county in the Constitutional Convention, his colleagues being Thomas P. Jones, George Earle and the late Joseph B. Pugh. He was assigned to a place upon the Committee on the Elective Franchise and had more to do with originating that section of the Constitution which provided for the passage of a registration law than any other person on the committee—probably more than any other member of the Convention. He was an intimate ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... people so completely happy as they are, or enjoy so great a share of liberty. The king is elective by the whole people, but none are allowed to stand as candidates for that honour, but such as have been long in their society, and perfectly studied the nature and institution of it; they must likewise have given repeated proofs of their personal wisdom, courage and capacity; ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... women the right of suffrage, is now pending in Congress. Some phase of this question is being debated every year in State Legislatures. Propositions for so amending their constitutions as to extend the elective franchise to women will be voted upon by the people in four of the Western States within the coming two years. These successive steps of progress during forty years are as surely a part of the History of Woman Suffrage as will be the events of the closing period in which victory shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... recognized as Caliph (661). He succeeded in making the office hereditary, instead of elective, as it hitherto had been, and thus established what is known as the dynasty of the Ommiades [Footnote: So called from Ommaya, an ancestor of Moawiyah.], the rulers of which family for nearly a century issued their commands ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... at its head, if it is governed in consonance with the wishes of the greatest number of its inhabitants, is freer than a republic where a minority rules by force of arms. They make a principle out of what is a mere detail of government—whether the chief of the state be elective or hereditary—but the fundamental principle of good government, namely, that the will of the majority shall be the law of the land, is trampled under foot and treated as ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... shouting "Get out of that and let me take your place!" the members of which always make themselves up as austere patriots. And I cannot help, in this place, looking sadly back at the fatal consequences which this impotence of the elective, as compared with the monarchical regime, has had for us. Why did the Emperor refuse to treat with M. de Bismarck in the name of France, when he met him, on the evening of Sedan, and asked him to do so? Why did the unfortunate prince not do the same as ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... Constitution, quoting Monsieur Necker as saying that "it was the only government in the world which unites government strength with individual security." He analysed and explained your Constitution as it then was and advocated an elective monarchy in form though not in name. It is true that he called the executive a "governor" and not a king, but the governor, so-called, was to serve for life and was given not only "a negative on all laws ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... about the period above mentioned disclosed, thinly draped with rhetorical flowers, the dark outlines of a scheme to thwart political aspiration in the Antilles. That project is sought to be realized by deterring the home authorities from granting an elective local legislature, however restricted in character, to any of the Colonies not yet enjoying such an advantage. An argument based on the composition of the inhabitants of those Colonies is confidently relied upon to confirm the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... word, and the Suffrage party has been fortunate in its attempt to invoke the sorcery of the thought that it enfolds, and to blend it with the claim of woman to share in the public duty of voting. Possession of the elective franchise is a symbol of power in man's hand; why should it not bear the same relation to woman's upward impulse and action? Modern adherents ask, "Is not the next new force at hand in our social evolution to come from ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... instructions, more or less precise, to party conventions for larger areas, these would send delegates to the State Convention and these in turn to the National Convention of the Party. The party candidates for the Presidency, as well as for all other elective positions, were and are thus chosen, and the party "platform" or declaration of policy was and is thus formulated. Such machinery, which in England is likely always to play a less important part, has acquired an evil name. At the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... instance,—expound me that! Why do you so shudder at sight of this or that innocent object? You cannot reason it away,—'t is always there; you cannot explain it, nor diagnose its symptoms,—'t is a part of you, governed by the same laws that govern your 'elective affinities' throughout. But note, Monsieur! You and I and man in general are not alone in this: the whole organic world—nay, some say the entire universe, inorganic as well as organic—is subject to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on the Republic of Venice. As little will it avail us that they are chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... Virginia was not a co-equal State in the Union but "Military District No. 1," governed by a Federal general, who appointed the local officers in the several counties. The affairs of the State were managed by carpetbaggers in close agreement with despicable scalawags and ignorant negroes. The elective franchise was granted to the emancipated slaves regardless of character or intelligence, while it was denied to many white men. In Lancaster county the negroes had a registered majority of a hundred voters; it was represented ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway

... unanimously decided that these bonds were valid, and that the State Legislature, instead of paying the money, had repealed the appropriation. But there came a new court, all chosen by the people, under the wretched system, in many of the States, of an elective judiciary, but unknown to the independent Federal judicial system. A suit was brought in 1851, under the act of 1833, on one of the Union Bank State bonds and coupons before the Chancellor. After elaborate argument, the Chancellor decided against the State, and entered a decree ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... years earlier, an honourable place by the side of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius: this mediocrity, so characteristic of the genuine Optimate and the genuine Roman, contributed not a little to the elective affinity which subsisted at all times between Pompeius and the mass of the burgesses and the senate. Even in his own age he would have had a clearly defined and respectable position had he contented himself with being the general of the senate, for which he was from the outset destined. With ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Congregationalists setting up superintendents (overseers, Bishops) over their churches because the needs of the time demand such supervision. And on the other hand we find Anglicans inclining to exchange prelacy for a more modest and elective form of episcopacy. In this respect the two extremes are drawing together to an extent which would have been incredible twenty years ago, and, given good will, it should be possible to find even here a real ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... Secure, at any rate, with what you've got. The public servant who has stolen or lied, If called on, may resign with honest pride: As unjust favor put him in, why doubt Disfavor as unjust has turned him out? Even it indicted, what is that but fudge To him who counted-in the elective judge? Whitewashed, he quits the politician's strife At ease in mind, with pockets filled for life; His 'lady' glares with gems whose vulgar blaze 60 The poor man through his heightened taxes pays, Himself content ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... union with thy nature and to the return into thy home goes astray. Know that the exalted and majestic Originator of things, is himself the noblest of all things. Take then the noble things as a model, in order by that means to get nearer thy Creator on the path of elective affinity. And know that the noble attaches itself to the noble and the vulgar to the common." (Fleischer, Herm. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... interesting in the history of an artistic talent than the moment at which its "elective affinity" declares itself, and the interest is great in proportion as the declaration is unmistakable. I mean by the elective affinity of a talent its climate and period of preference, the spot on the globe or in the annals of mankind to which it most ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... framed, but in 1897 approved an amended Act which provides that no persons shall be hereafter admitted to be electors "who (not being of European origin) are natives or descendants in the male line of natives of countries which have not hitherto possessed elective representative institutions founded on the parliamentary franchise, unless they first obtain from the Governor in Council an order exempting them from the provisions of this Act." Under this statute the right of suffrage will ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... inhabiting different stations, and naturally living under the most opposite climates, can often be crossed with ease. The difficulty or facility apparently depends exclusively on the sexual constitution of the species which are crossed; or on their sexual elective affinity, i. e. Wahlverwandtschaft of Gaertner. As species rarely or never become modified in one character, without being at the same time modified in many, and as systematic affinity includes all visible resemblances and dissimilarities, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... enchanting youthful composition of Werther, did venture very close to the lyrical, but in his later novels his style at times dangerously approached a dry statement of facts, or a rhetorically inflated declamation; and even in The Elective Affinities, which stands stylistically higher than any of his other novels, he has not always avoided a certain stiltedness that forms a painful contrast to the warmth of his sympathy for the characters. On the other hand, in scientific compositions he succeeded in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... refugees, who were quite numerous in the colony, were in sympathy with the arbitrary assumptions of the governor. They greatly strengthened his hands by sending a Memorial to the West India Company, condemning the elective franchise which the ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... general; nor of an oscillating ether which was to effect the same service for the nerves of the brain considered as solid fibres, as the animal spirits perform for them under the notion of hollow tubes, as Hartley teaches—nor finally, (with yet more recent dreamers) of chemical compositions by elective affinity, or of an electric light at once the immediate object and the ultimate organ of inward vision, which rises to the brain like an Aurora Borealis, and there, disporting in various shapes,—as the balance of plus and minus, or negative ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... selecting and of which no woman was a member. With the sole exception of Wyoming, not one woman in the forty-five States was permitted a vote on the constitution, and every one except Wyoming and Utah confined its elective franchise strictly ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... The nacon was an elective war chief, who held his position for the term of three years (Landa, Relacion, pp. 161, 173). The name is derived from nacal, to rise, go up, and hence as a delegate or elected representative (as is stated by the ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various

... being truly liberal or resolutely royalist, gave birth to the 221 on that famous day when the struggle openly began between the most august, grandest, and only true power, /royalty/, and the most false, most changeful, most oppressive of all powers,—the power called /parliamentary/, which elective assemblies exercise. The salon du Ronceret, secretly allied to the ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... garrisoned it with a Roman colony. The strangers thus brought to Rome were not admitted to a participation of civic rights; they were like the inhabitants of a corporate town who are excluded from the elective franchise: by successive immigrations, the number of persons thus disqualified became more numerous than that of the first inhabitants or old freemen, and they naturally sought a share in the government, as a means of protecting their persons ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... applying to the superior-general of the order, or in Rome to the Holy Father, whose authority naturally supersedes all others. Sometimes the power to dispense lies with the local superior, but it is a prerogative seldom used, and wisely so. In every order the internal government of each house is of an elective form, but when once chosen the superiors exercise absolute authority. The community meets every three years (in some orders every year) and chooses by vote a superioress, an assistant superioress and a mistress of novices. Only the professed nuns have a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... life by helping his friends and not his enemies. For this practice, among other things, he was impeached and removed from office; but how many judges are there who yield to this temptation without avowing it? A French critic of the elective judiciary has thus referred to these remarks of ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD

... was precious. Salemina wrapped herself in Francesca's long black cloak, and climbed into the cart. Dinnis hauls turf in it, takes a sack of potatoes or a pig to market in it, and the stubborn little ass, blind of one eye, has never in his wholly elective course of existence taken up the subject ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... reject the idea of all subordination, even in the mildest form, with utter scorn. They claim for woman absolute social and political equality with man. And they seek to secure these points by conferring on the whole sex the right of the elective franchise, female suffrage being the first step in the unwieldy revolutions they aim at bringing about. These views are no longer confined to a small sect. They challenge our attention at every turn. We meet them in society; we read them in the public prints; we ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... proper to remark, that, had he even restored the republic, there is reason to believe that the nation would again have been soon distracted with internal divisions, and a perpetual succession of civil wars. The manners of the people were become too dissolute to be restrained by the authority of elective and temporary magistrates; and the Romans were hastening to that fatal period when general and great corruption, with its attendant debility, would render them an easy ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... locality being kept in mind. In the rural schools the programme of studies is somewhat general, comprising the German language, arithmetic, mensuration, nature study; and in some instances may be added to these, geography, German history, drawing, gymnastics and music. This programme is elective to the extent that the capacity and previous education of the pupil are considered, and too, the ability of the teacher, local conditions and the time spent by the individual student. Such schools are admonished not to take on the character of technical institutions, but rather ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain

... localities embarrassed the giver without satisfying the recipients. The provinces without land revenue looked with hungry eyes at those which had it. There was quarrelling, too, within each little provincial circle. The elective superintendents were wont to make large promises and shadow forth policies at the hustings. Then when elected they often found these views by no means in accord with those of their council and their executive. Yet, but for one great blunder, the provinces should and probably ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... revealing of her whole nature, is readily perceived. But when we inquire, To what end? we should remember, that, like Parrhasius, Goethe was before all things an artist; and furthermore, the correspondence of time will show that from this crowning knowledge the "Elective Affinities" sprang. It may be that her admiration was for his genius alone; if so, she chose love's language for its wealth of expression. Were it so received, it could not but be regarded as a peerless offering, for she was certainly a kindred spirit. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... 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, though deplorable, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... whatever race, color, or previous condition, who have been resident in said State for one year previous to the day of such election, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion, or for felony at common law; and when 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; and when such constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratification ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... battle of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been made and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the quality of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the Popish ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... the absence of any contrary provision, all officers of this State, whether heretofore elected or appointed by the Governor, shall hold their positions only until other appointments are made by the Governor, or if the officers are elective, until their successors shall have been chosen and duly qualified according to ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... the exact phraseology used was twofold. In the first place, many of my supporters were insisting that, as I had served only three and a half years of my first term, coming in from the Vice-Presidency when President McKinley was killed, I had really had only one elective term, so that the third term custom did not apply to me; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion. I believed then (and I believe now) the third term custom or tradition to be wholesome, and, therefore, I was determined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble over ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... administration of Gaul. Caesar was even then considered as the leader of the popular party, and as an opponent of the senate and its influence in the constitution. [238] It was at that time that Caesar, on going from home to the elective assembly, said to his mother, 'To-day you shall see your son either as pontifex, or you shall never see him again.' Caesar, however, is here called an adolescentulus only in comparison with the aged Catulus, for he was at that time thirty-six years old. [239] 'In public life by ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... a General Course for which the degree of B.A. was granted, with summa cum laude for special distinction in scholarship. There were the courses for Honors, in Classics, Mathematics, Modern Languages, and Science; and students doing suitable work in them could be recommended for the degree. These elective courses made a good showing on paper; but it seems to have been possible to complete them by a minimum of study. There were also courses in Music and Art, extending over a period of five years instead of the ordinary four allotted to the General Course. Under Miss Freeman, the courses for ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... Victorian Englishman did not understand the words "Emperor of the French." The type of title was deliberately chosen to express the idea of an elective and popular origin; as against such a phrase as "the German Emperor," which expresses an almost transcendental tribal patriarchate, or such a phrase as "King of Prussia," which suggests personal ownership of a whole territory. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... celibacy, even when it falls a good deal short of her primary hopes, and she is also well aware that the differences between man and man, once mere money is put aside, are so slight as to be practically almost negligible. Thus the average woman is under none of the common masculine illusions about elective affinities, soul mates, love at first sight, and such phantasms. She is quite ready to fall in love, as the phrase is, with any man who is plainly eligible, and she usually knows a good many more such men than one. Her primary demand in marriage is not for the agonies of romance, but for comfort ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... and daring. History was the one form of literature outside Goethe and Burns for which he really cared. He had translated Wilhelm Meister in 1824, and it was probably at his suggestion that Froude translated Elective Affinities for Bohn's Library in 1850. Scottish history and Scottish character Carlyle knew as he knew his Bible. His assistance and encouragement, which were freely ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... womanhood to make him do his military duty, and do it well. I never heard that argument made that I do not suspect that there is something amiss in that man's lungs, or his liver, or at any rate his brain. The military duties of the nation have nothing to do with the elective franchise. Every soldier who comes back from military service finds the way to the polls blocked up by dozens of men who, at the time of the draft, suddenly developed lamenesses, either of limbs, or of excuses; men who wanted to see if there wasn't some wound ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and in ascent,—yet the other (and repulsive) phasis is concealed upon the hidden or averted side of the golden arras, known but not felt; or is seen but dimly in the rear, crowding into indistinct proportions. The effect of the music is, to place the mind in a state of elective attraction for every thing in harmony with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... the licensing authorities be appointive or elective? By whom should they be appointed, and for what term ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... glittering generalities, he never made a speech or proposed a measure in support of the system of parliamentary government as explained by Baldwin and Howe, and even W. Lyon Mackenzie. His energy and eloquence were directed towards the establishment of an elective legislative council in which his compatriots would have necessarily the great majority, a supremacy that would enable him and his following to control the whole legislation and government, and promote his dominant idea of a Nation Canadienne in the valley of the St. Lawrence. After the ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... common consent. But nowhere is it stated that the tribal government or authority assigned locations to any of its fractions. This is only attributed to the chiefs, on the supposition that they, although elective, were still hereditary monarchs.] ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... care not to confound this frequent difficulty of transmission of our ideas with want of ideas. I suppose that a man's mind does in time form a neutral salt with the elements in the universe for which it has special elective affinities. In fact, I look upon a library as a kind of mental chemist's shop filled with the crystals of all forms and hues which have come from the union of individual thought with local ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... feminine judgment which are doing more and more, every day, to establish the positive necessity of woman's superior insight, and natural dispassionate fairness of mind, for the future wisest exercise of the elective franchise and most just administration of the highest judicial office. It may be said that the mother-in-law is the highest development of the supernaturally perceptive and positive woman, since she usually has ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... the Gulf of Finland, were now overcome. The treaty of Thorn (1466) confined their dominion to Eastern Prussia. The misfortune of Poland was its political constitution. Although the monarchy was not yet completely elective, but hereditary in the house of Jagellon, the election of every king had to be sanctioned by the nobles. They alone took part in the diet, and held the offices and honors. There was no burgher class, no "third estate." Every man who owned and was able to equip a horse ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... opportunity which has set William among the foremost statesmen of the world. The struggle which ended in the fens of Ely had wholly changed his position. He no longer held the land merely as its national and elected King. To his elective right he added the right of conquest. It is the way in which William grasped and employed this double power that marks the originality of his political genius, for the system of government which he devised was in fact the result of this double origin ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... 912, when, upon the death of Louis III, the last prince of the Carlovingian race, Conrad, Duke of Franconia, was elected Emperor and the Empire, which had till then been hereditary in the descendants of Charlemagne, became elective and remained thenceforth ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... as a convenient political compromise, the least objectionable of all possible methods of public control, because it will permit only the minimum of general unhappiness.... I know of no case for the elective Democratic government of modern States that cannot be knocked to pieces in five minutes. It is manifest that upon countless important public issues there is no collective will, and nothing in the mind of the average man except blank indifference; that an electional system simply places ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... our critics so uniformly accuse us of subjectivism, of denying the reality's existence? It comes, I think, from the necessary predominance of subjective language in our analysis. However independent and elective realities may be, we can talk about them, in framing our accounts of truth, only as so many objects believed-in. But the process of experience leads men so continually to supersede their older objects by newer ones which they find it more satisfactory to believe in, that ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... it all was that upper-classmen as well as Freshmen put themselves absolutely under the Sophomore's rule when it was a question of an examination. Thus does the elective system level all ranks and ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... the fate of the two Bills in the Lords, I apprehend the first half of George's (granting the elective franchise) will pass, the other miscarry. I can hardly think it possible that the Tithe Bill should, notwithstanding Liverpool's ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... The first elective assembly of the New World met in 1619. It was opened by prayer. Its first enactment was to protect the Indians from oppression. Its next was to found a university. In the first legislative assembly which met in the choir of the Church in ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple

... Irish representation, and the laws regulating the elective franchise, both in the cities and counties, form a prominent portion of Irish grievances; yet if the efficiency of the representation is to be judged by the influence which it exercises on the councils of the empire, or the registration laws be tested by the results which they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... are generally Patriarchial, the Kings being elective from ancient Royal families by the Council of Elders, which consists of men chosen for life by the people, for their age, wisdom, experience, and service among them. They are a deliberative body, and all cases of great importance; of state, life and death, ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... time, let us note, the head of the Roman religion, pontifex maximus. So with the augurs as the interpreters of the magisterial spectio; proud as Cicero was of becoming an augur, with all the old surviving elective ritual,[641] he never, we may be sure, believed for a moment that he had the power of interpreting the will of the gods. A century before his augurship the whole business of public divination had been regulated ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... truth in what you say. But would not the Romans have done better if, after the expulsion of Tarquin, they had vested the regal power in a limited monarch, instead of placing it in two annual elective magistrates with the title of consuls? This was a great deviation from your plan of government, and, I think, an unwise one. For a divided royalty is a solecism—an absurdity in politics. Nor was the regal power committed to the administration of consuls continued ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... more powerful tendency to alienate the affection of the people, and produce those direful consequences which are now boldly said to have arisen unprovoked. When the Irish Catholics perceived, from the manner in which their petition for the elective franchise was treated, that in the Irish House of Commons they were not to look for friends, they resorted to the Throne. The supplications which had met only with contumely when addressed to the Irish Commons, was received with ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... key to Stanford's elective system of instruction. The ordinary class divisions were not officially recognized. Even the students until recently made far less of the terms "freshmen," "sophomore," "junior" and "senior," than is made of them at most colleges. Each student elected at the start some major study, by which he steered ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... elective officers of a village are a president, three trustees, a treasurer, and a recorder, who are chosen for one year, and two justices of the peace and a constable, elected for two years. [Footnote: The difference in term ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... Spencer has well expressed the same idea by the Survival of the Fittest. The term "natural selection" is in some respects a bad one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity. No one objects to chemists speaking of "elective affinity;" and certainly an acid has no more choice in combining with a base, than the conditions of life have in determining whether or not a new form be selected or preserved. The term is so far a good one as it brings ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... thirteen original States colored persons then possessed the elective franchise, and were among those by whom the Constitution was ordained and established. If so, it is not true in point of fact that the Constitution was made exclusively by the white race, and that it was made ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... futile hope of rendering themselves popular, may not the members of an elective legislature, the majority of whom cannot be Richelieus, Pitts, or Louvois, in a misconceived spirit of economy, allow the institutions necessary for a large, well-appointed, and disciplined army to fall into decay? Deceived by the seductive fallacies of an exaggerated philanthropy, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... monarchy had had no settled form, no fixed and recognised public right. Under the first races the crown was elective, the nation sovereign, and the king a mere military chief, depending on the common voice for all decisions to be made, and all the enterprises to be undertaken. The nation elected its chief, exercised the legislative power in the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... another objection, which, I think, was first raised by the honourable and learned Member for Newport. (Mr Horace Twiss.) He tells us that the elective franchise is property; that to take it away from a man who has not been judicially convicted of malpractices is robbery; that no crime is proved against the voters in the close boroughs; that no crime is even imputed to them in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... been said, is that which will combine some personal acquaintance with the facts and the possibility of some research for material. Many such subjects may be found in the larger educational questions when applied to your own school or college. Should the elective system be maintained at Harvard College, Should the University of Illinois require Latin for the A.B. degree, Should fraternities be abolished in——High School, Should manual training be introduced in——High School, are all questions of this sort. A short list of similar ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... before, and had been succeeded by his son Cacama, the present king, a young prince who was two-and-twenty years old when he ascended the throne, after a sanguinary war with an ambitious younger brother. In Tezcuco, as in Mexico, the office of king was elective and not hereditary. It was, indeed, confined to the royal family; but the elective council, composed of the nobles and of the kings of the other two great confederate monarchies, selected the member of that family whom they ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... assistance of the Greeks with two hundred horse, and a great supply of money. Yet his anger did not so come down, but he thenceforward pursued the design of wresting the kingdom out of the hands of the two families which then enjoyed it, and making it wholly elective; and it is thought that he would on account of this quarrel have excited a great commotion in Sparta, if he had not died in the Boeotian war. Thus ambitious spirits in a commonwealth, when they transgress their bounds, are apt to do more harm than good. For ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... remained aliens. Slaves, manumitted here, became freemen, and therefore, if born within North Carolina, are citizens of North Carolina, and all free persons born within the State are born citizens of the State. The Constitution extended the elective franchise to every freeman who had arrived at the age of twenty-one, and paid a public tax; and it is a matter of universal notoriety, that, under it, free persons, without regard to color, claimed and exercised the franchise, until it was taken from free men of color a few years ...
— 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

... elective, because—at a time when man produced but little and possessed nothing—property was too weak to establish the principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father; but as soon ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... instrument for securing unity is the convention. It may be a mass meeting, or, as is more usual among the large and well-organized parties, a convention of delegates. In either case it is, be it remembered, not a part of the elective machinery designed by the legislature, but a political device to increase the chances of victory through ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... the Reformed Presbyterian Church can, without contracting guilt, in the present state of society, take the oath of allegiance to the government of these United States, hold office, exercise the elective franchise, act as a juror, or hold communion in other ecclesiastical bodies, by what is commonly styled occasional ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... Boston, New York, and elsewhere, it became manifest that there was a radical difference of opinion on the subject of political action; the non-resistant and no-government influence, operating decidedly against the employment of the elective franchise in the anti-slavery cause; and the agitation of this question, as well as that of the rights of women, in their meetings, gave to them a discordant and party character, painfully contrasting with the previous peaceful and harmonious action of the societies. ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... 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 loving ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... and not Authority alone, not even of law, nor by that favorite standard of the eminent writer, the rule of the best men, the born heroes and captains of the race, (as if such ever, or one time out of a hundred, get into the big places, elective or dynastic)—but higher than the highest arbitrary rule, to train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves. What Christ appear'd for in the moral-spiritual ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... in which he proposes, to use his own quaint phrase, "to exhaust the free life of collective Hellas," still remain to be accomplished. But the history of Greece is written. Stirring events and great names are still to come; the romantic enterprise of Cyrus and the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the elective trust of Thebes, and the chivalrous glories of her one great man. Demosthenes has yet to prove how vain is the divinest eloquence when poured to degenerate hearts. Agis and Cleomenes have yet to exhibit the spectacle, ever fraught with melancholy interest, of noble natures ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... political power into the hands of the natives, so that to-day, after fourteen years' possession, municipal and provincial government are almost wholly native. To crown all, we have given the Filipinos an elective legislature, an Assembly, all the members of which are native. Students of the subject at first hand, impartial observers on the spot, declare freely that we have gone much too fast, and that we have granted a measure of political administration and government beyond the native power of assimilation ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... sister, put his arms about her neck and kissed her. The action was so unusual as both to surprise the sister and to arouse her intelligent suspicions. Goethe makes much use of this type of emotional discharge in his "Elective Affinities," and Tennyson alludes to it in ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell

... Austria-Hungary in 1914 (the empire has no prime minister), has passed into oblivion, while Von Jagow gave up the management of Germany's foreign affairs last autumn. Von Bethmann-Hollweg, the last of the group to lose his grip, has just gone down, despite the fact that he was not responsible to any elective body. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... recent legislation by Congress. When at the first movement toward independence, the Congress of the United States instructed the several States to institute governments of their own, they left each State to decide for itself the conditions for the enjoyment of the elective franchise. During the period of the Confederacy there continued to exist a very great diversity in the qualifications of electors in the several States, and even within a State a distinction of qualifications prevailed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... The disembodied spirit is conveyed to some fixed region,7 a penal or a blissful abode, where it is to tarry unalterably. This idea of the banishment or admission of souls, according to their deserts, or according to an elective grace, into an anchored location called hell or heaven, a retributive or rewarding residence for eternity, we shall pass by with few words, because it recurs for fuller examination in other chapters. In the first place, the whole picture is a gross simile drawn from ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Van Buren was chosen to the United States Senate and was made a member of the convention to revise the State constitution. In the latter body he advocated the extension of the elective franchise, but opposed universal sufferage, as also the plan of appointing justices of the peace by popular election. He voted against depriving the colored citizens of the franchise but supported ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... influence was is seen in the political statistics of the times. When the Utah Commission entered on their duties in August, 1882, almost every office in the territory was held by a polygamist. By April, 1884, about 12,000 voters, male and female, had been disfranchised by the act, and of the 1351 elective officers in the territory not one was a polygamist, and not one of the municipal officers of Salt Lake City then in office had ever been ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... never more needed than it is to-day. There is a mighty work to be done that was directly in the line of its operations. First and foremost, it will not be denied that a citizen of our Republic who is deprived of the elective franchise is robbed of one of his most valuable privileges—one of his most essential rights. The ballot, under a political system like ours, is both the sword and the shield of liberty. Without it no man is really a freeman. He does not stand on an ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... death, in 1572, of Sigismund II., Augustus, the last of the Jagellons, the power of the king, already limited by that of two chambers, was still further diminished, and the crown became elective. While occupied in besieging the Huguenots at Rochelle, and at a time when Poland enjoyed more religious liberty than any other country in Europe, Henry of Valois was elected to the throne, in succession to Sigismund II.; but he quickly absconded from Cracow in order ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... Theseus first, and after him Draco and Solon, instituted the government of Athens. Lycurgus was the lawgiver of Sparta. The foundation of the original government of Rome was laid by Romulus, and the work completed by two of his elective successors, Numa and Tullius Hostilius. On the abolition of royalty the consular administration was substituted by Brutus, who stepped forward with a project for such a reform, which, he alleged, had been prepared ...
— The Federalist Papers

... I wasn't thinking of precedence. But this is to be an Elective Session—new Ministers to replace Prince Havaly, of Defense, deceased, and Count Frask, of Science and Technology, elevated to the Bench. There seems to be some difference of opinion among some of the Ministers and Counselors. It's very ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper

... to the constitution of the chief executive office. After the initial question, whether the office should be single or plural, was decided, the manner of election remained to be considered. The early proposal to make the President elective by the national legislature was dropped as the office assumed greater importance in the general scheme. If the independence of the legislature was to be maintained, some form of indirect popular choice was favored. But if the people were ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... demoralizing to both students and teachers. I refer to the inevitable outcome of such a system; some students (sometimes few and sometimes many) develop considerable skill in "working the Prof." Teachers offering elective courses are constantly under great temptation and students are shrewd enough to know it. And again, under the same count: it is freely claimed by both teachers and students that the cheating in examinations, of which we doubtless have our share (some claim much more than our share, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... on in private and in public. It was soon indicated that Sinn Fein would take no part, on the double ground, first, that the Convention was not elective in any democratic sense, for all the representatives of local bodies had been elected before the war, before the rebellion, before the new movement took hold in Ireland; and secondly, that it was committed in advance ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... at that time, it seems, in Calcutta, a wicked, skeptical set of people, who somehow or other believed that human agency was concerned in this elective flash, which came so very opportunely, and which was a favor so thankfully acknowledged. These wicked, ill-natured skeptics disseminated reports (which I am sure I do not mean to charge or prove, leaving the effect of them to you) ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of the whig ministry, drawn on broad and simple lines, struck at the root of this system. Its twofold basis was a liberal extension of the suffrage with a very large redistribution of seats. The elective franchise in counties, hitherto confined to freeholders, was to be conferred on L10 copyholders and L50 leaseholders; the borough franchise was to exclude "scot and lot" voters, "potwallopers" and most other survivals of antiquated electorates, but ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... emperor, and named the seven "electors" who were to vote. This simplified matters so far as the repeatedly contested elections went; but it failed to strike to the real difficulty. The Emperor remained elective and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... notion—punished in the spiritual world for excessive attachment to gold, by degradation to the office of its guardian; and from this office the tortured spirit can release itself only by revealing the treasure and transferring the custody. It is a penal martyrdom, not an elective passion for gold, which is thus exemplified in the wanderings of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... Oriental, were held up to admiration by these two writers, diametrically opposed in their way of looking at life, but similar in their utter want of comprehension of all that was not European and contemporary. Next after the government of the sages and the elders Rousseau placed elective government, which, in common with some other abstract writers, he classes as aristocratic. An hereditary aristocracy he calls the worst of all governments. He intimated that his remedy for the weakness of small countries, as against foreign enemies, would be found in federation, but ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... the most distant sight of their modern despair. We still find it necessary to have a reserve of philanthropists, but we trust it to men who have made themselves rich, not to men who have made themselves poor. Finally, the abbots and abbesses were elective. They introduced representative government, unknown to ancient democracy, and in itself a semi-sacramental idea. If we could look from the outside at our own institutions, we should see that the very notion of turning a thousand men into one large man walking to Westminster is not only an act ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... embodiment of the unity of the country,[24] Jackson stamped upon the Presidency the outstanding features of its final character, thereby reviving, in the opinion of Henry Jones Ford, "the oldest political institution of the race, the elective Kingship."[25] The modern theory of Presidential power was the contribution primarily of Alexander Hamilton; the modern conception of the Presidential office was the contribution primarily of Andrew ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... is thought to be least dangerous when suffered to preach and arm in peace. And here is nothing between him and his task of supervision—no pampered soldiery to repress his rising, no iron authority to lay him by the heels. The militia is fraternal, the magistracy elective. Europe may hold out a little longer. The Great Powers may make what stage-play they will, but they are not maintaining their incalculable armaments for aggression upon one another, for protection from one another, nor for fun. These vast forces are purely constabular—creatures and creators ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... of resistance they were enabled to exert against their Roman and Turkish masters. We shall not enter into the history of this institution, under the Turks, at present; as it is sufficient for our purpose to give our readers a correct idea of the existing state of things. A local elective magistracy is formed, which prevents the central government from goading the people to insurrection by the insolence of office which the inferior agents of an ill-organized administration constantly display. Fortunately for the tranquillity of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... He thought, very sensibly, that any reasonable human being, if permitted to summon spirits from the vasty deep, would base his choice upon personal qualities, and not on mere general reputation. There would be an elective affinity, a principle of natural selection, (not Darwinian,) by which each would aim to draw forth a spirit to his liking. One would not summon the author of such and such a book, but this or that man. Milton wrote ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... science; candidacy, campaign, 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... that (and this only in appearance) to the arbitrament of the people, has fully satisfied all the demands of the principle of Popular Sovereignty! Their other questions are all "political"; the questions as to the organization of their executive, legislative, and judicial departments, as to their elective franchise, their distribution of districts, their banks, their rates and modes of taxation, etc., etc., are not domestic questions, but political; and provided the people are suffered to vote on the future (not the existing) condition of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... be obtained but through the medium of popular election, and popular election is a mighty evil. It is such, and so great an evil, that though there are few nations whose monarchs were not originally elective, very few are now elected. They are the distempers of elections, that have destroyed all free states. To cure these distempers is difficult, if not impossible; the only thing therefore left to save the commonwealth ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... or public man, agent or contractor, legislator or magistrate, secretary or president,—who dares, with indignity and wrong, to strike the bosom of the Public Welfare, to encourage venality and corruption, and shameful sale of the elective franchise, or of office; to sow dissension, and to weaken the bonds of amity that bind a Nation together! What a huge iniquity, he who, with vices like the daggers of a parricide, dares to pierce that mighty heart, in which the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... hardly prepared for the erection of such machinery: I doubt whether it would work well here: and the only other remedy which presents itself is, to endeavour to make both branches of the legislature elective.' Howe had thus diagnosed the disease, but he was inclined to prescribe an ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant

... destruction of the rights of the minority, the theft of public utilities, the subordination of public interests to private gain, the debauchery of our local legislatures and executive officers, and the corruption of the elective franchise, have resulted from the facility afforded by the law to corporations to concentrate the control of colossal wealth in the hands of a few men . . . . The question presses ever more importunately for ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... or revulsion at contact with them, and execute their respective movements on this ground." He also says: "We may ascribe the feeling of pleasure or pain (satisfaction or dissatisfaction) to all atoms, and thereby ascribe the elective affinities of chemistry to the attraction between living atoms and repulsion between hating atoms." He also says that "the sensations in animal and plant life are connected by a long series of evolutionary stages with the simpler ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... and their committees. The cabecerias [i.e., headships], much more ancient in origin than the reductions [i.e., native villages of converts], were doubtless hereditary. At present they are hereditary and elective. When they fall vacant, whether for want of an heir or through the resignation of the regularly appointed incumbent, the substitute is appointed—by the superintendent, in the provinces near the capital; and in those distant from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... Poland was in truth an outrage committed upon the law of nations. And this outrage was rendered tenfold more iniquitous by the new constitution imposed upon Poland. This constitution excluded all reform; perpetuated the elective monarchy with the liberum veto, the exorbitant privileges of the nobles, and every other inherent defect; and contracted the regal power, by appointing a co-operative council, and depriving the sovereign of more than half his patronage. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... be an unavoidable inference that the ultimate executive agency must become in some way or other elective. From such evidence as existing society will afford us, it is to be inferred that the highest State-office in whatever way filled will continue to decline in importance. No speculations concerning ultimate political ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... nation; as a matter of course, the higher her lovers the higher her rank becomes and the greater her influence. Here is female suffrage in its primitive form, brought about, it is true, by environment, and not by elective franchise. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... than that of any of the neighboring countries? At some time or other, to be sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europe were at a remote period elective, with more or fewer limitations in the objects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here or elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties of England or France may have begun, the king of Great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... by the leaders among the Massachusetts Whigs. But the pledge of secrecy could not be kept. The letters were read in the Assembly and then published. "He had written," says Bancroft of Hutchinson, "against every part of the Constitution, the elective character of the Council, the annual choice of the Assembly, the New England organization of the towns; had advised and solicited the total dependence of the judiciary on the Crown, had hinted at making the experiment of declaring Martial Law, and of abrogating English liberty; had advised to the ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... population, and instinctive patriotism, are all vital elements of American liberty, 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 deterioration, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... blockade, on which there were differences in the Administration. In the Pennsylvania convention of 1836 he was probably the most eloquent speaker, but his ideas were often visionary and radical. He ultimately refused to sign the Constitution because the colored people were denied the elective franchise. Severe as he exhibited himself toward the rebels during and subsequent to the civil war, Mr. Stevens was not by nature, as might be supposed, inhuman in his feelings and sympathies toward his fellow men. To the colored race he seemed always more attached and tender than to the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... de Berwick (in Petitot'e Collection, Paris, 1828), ii. 303.] Sardinia, Spain, declare alliance with Fleury; and not Lorraine only, and the Swabian Provinces, but Italy itself lies at his discretion,—owing to your treatment of the Grandfather of France, and these Polish Elective methods. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... number of facts, and would have kept its place as a law of nature, had it not been disproved by the discovery of cases in which though A detached B from C in some circumstances, C detached it from A in others, showing the law of elective chemical combination to be a less simple one than had at first been supposed. In this case, therefore, M. Comte made a mistake: and he will be found to have made many similar ones. But in the science next after chemistry, biology, the empty mode of explanation ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... experimenting is done I find some particular color scheme fits a certain rug as no other does. It seems to clothe or to fulfill the pattern as if it belonged personally to it. When I once discover this elective affinity of a pattern for its special coloring, I never make it again save in ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd

... Elective Officers.—The usual elective officers of a village are a president, three trustees, a treasurer, and a recorder, who are chosen for one year, and two justices of the peace and a constable, elected for two years. ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... of Shaftesbury, acted at various times as sheriffs of their respective counties. They were direct successors of Chaucer's Franklyn, of whom we are told, "A schirreeve had he been." With some exceptions, such as those cities which had their own elective sheriffs, and those pairs of counties which were conjoined under one sheriff, each shire had one sheriff, appointed in the following manner: every year, on November 1, a special meeting of the Privy ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... discovered. Perhaps he lives at Aleppo; perhaps, like the father of a heroine of comic song, at Jerusalem. Till he is discovered the shaver wins no secure happiness, and in the search for the barber who has an elective affinity for the shaver may be found material for an operetta or an epic. The shaver figures as a sort of Alastor, seeking the ideal setter of razors, as Shelley's Alastor sought ideal beauty in the neighbourhood ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... to whom he seems to have been drawn by the strongest elective affinity was Dr. John Owen. "Sir, you are a person I must be acquainted with," he had said to Owen in Fairfax's garden; laying his hand on his shoulder, one day in April 1649, just after he had first heard Owen preach;[1] and so, from being ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson



Words linked to "Elective" :   electoral, course of instruction, elect, nonappointive, class, appointive, course of study, elective course, course, non-elective, optional



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