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Use oligarchy in a sentence

Definition of oligarchy:

  • (noun) a political system governed by a few people;

Sentence Examples:

Owing to the machinations of Alcibiades a revolt is organized in Athens, by the aid of the clubs of the nobles and rich men; its object being to overthrow the democracy and establish an oligarchy.

No antiquity hallows, no public services consecrate, no gifts of lofty culture adorn, no graces of noble breeding embellish the coarse and sordid oligarchy that gives law to us.

An oligarchy with a property qualification was a plutocracy.

It was accepted by the lesser nations because it seemed impolitic and useless to oppose the united will of the controlling oligarchy.

It was also desirable, from my point of view, that the resolution should contain a declaration in favor of the equality of nations or one which would prevent the establishment of an oligarchy of the Great Powers, and another declaration which would give proper place to the administration of legal justice in international disputes.

The prospect of a Baptist oligarchy ruling in undivided sway disquiets them.

These defeats, although far more the result of their own perverseness and discordance than of the exertions of their opponents, were yet so many victories for the oligarchy.

Gallantly they did; and it was for this reason, when the Second Revolt was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the united oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being replaced by oligarchical governments.

In rule by a militarist oligarchy for some generations to come, lay the one hope of realizing the pan-Ottoman idea and educating the resultant nation to self-government.

Simply, because he is encouraging a practice which would, in time, deprive Parliament of most of its more competent members, and reduce it to an oligarchy of millionaires, as well as degrading himself by a sordid act.

These became the function of a hateful resident oligarchy, alien in everything to the Irish people, and of the English parliament, to which she was not admitted until the days of Daniel O'Connell.

Private property, and its derivative, unearned or property income, has enabled the ruling oligarchies of civilized communities to receive the first fruits of every enterprise.

One of the chief obstacles to such a development is the centuries of conflict during which modern nations have been built up and the strong bonds of nationalism have been established as a means of holding divergent groups of people in line by particular oligarchies operating in particular civilizations.

Hence, the popular assembly became virtually the city mob, while the ruling families tended more and more to form a close and greedy and plutocratic oligarchy.

Thus, appropriate democratic manners preserve and establish a democracy, and oligarchic an oligarchy.

The point is of very considerable importance, though not easy to seize for anyone unacquainted with the way in which the territorial oligarchy has been built up or ignorant of the present conditions of English village life.

The old palace is not kept wholly for show, but is made useful in the political economy of the kingdom by furnishing a retreat to impecunious members of the oligarchy.

The breast of the thoughtful writer heaved ever to animal instincts without measure in extolling the complex phases of court, ecclesiastic, and domestic oligarchy.

The government may no longer represent the ideas, the aspirations, the energetic will of a small oligarchy; it must make itself more yielding and gracious at the same time that it is becoming more contradictory and discordant.

It was to be expected, from the early habits and character of the Regent, that he would anxiously pursue the interests of the nation, if, instead of being in the hands of an odious oligarchy, he could act for himself.

Politics were from an early period repulsive to me, and, after my first sight of Washington in its shabby, sleazy, dirty, unkempt condition under the old slave oligarchy, political life became absolutely repugnant to my tastes and desires.

To attain progress in the full sense, not merely of an oligarchy or a caste, but of the whole people, there must not only be government by discussion, but the responsibilities of the government must be snared more or less fully by all the governed.

The Irish oligarchy has retained its supremacy in the Castle.

If we remember that the great majority of the Boers consist of farmers who do not concern themselves at all about the Administration, and who consequently get no slice of the cake, we can judge of the size of the junks which President Kruger and the chiefly foreign oligarchy on which he leans take to themselves.

For seven months the towns and villages of that republic had been a prey to pitiless warfare and systematic rapacity, a fate which the weak ruling oligarchy could neither avert nor avenge.

It creates an oligarchy that is more pernicious than one of class distinction, since such a one can be coped with, while an oligarchy of wealth possesses so many ramifications that it is practically unassailable except by direct and physical means.

Four years from now, if not before then, the conditions will be ripe for a revolution; the oligarchy of American manufacturers and bankers will have reached its height and will be on the point of dissolution.

It had not grown up, like the Venetian oligarchy, by the gradual assimilation to itself of all the vigor in the State.

The oligarchy, which these two men undertook to manage, had accumulated against itself the discontent of overtaxed, disfranchised, jealous burghers.

The government was in the hands of a close oligarchy of powerful burghers.

Nor was it obvious that a genuine kingship would have been worse than the oligarchy of the great Whig families.

He should use his "legal prerogatives" to check "the illegal claims of factious oligarchy."

"Well, Kent was the only man I ever knew who ever held out against the damnable oligarchy."

Corruption reigned everywhere; and the patrician oligarchy, by keeping for themselves and their relations all offices of profit, grew rich at the same time that the finances of the State fell into greater confusion.

He was able to combat the schemes of the Southern oligarchy composing and controlling the Cabinet of President Polk; unsuccessfully, it is true, yet with but slight diminution of his popularity at home.

We have already seen that their conception of municipal independence made a narrow oligarchy of enfranchised burghers lords of the city, which in its turn oppressed the country and the subject burghs of its domain.

The oligarchy had by its corrupt incapacity made a tyranny inevitable.

To rule the whole world so that a corrupt oligarchy might be aggrandized!

Though, there again, that all comes of letting a trade work mysteriously under the thumb of a benighted oligarchy ... which is beside the question.

The ordinance of secession is not fairly submitted to the people, but a mere oligarchy of desperate men themselves assume to declare war, and exercise all the prerogatives of an independent and sovereign government.

Usually, however, in the early Greek oligarchies, this ultimate crisis was anticipated by some ambitious individual, who availed himself of the public discontent to overthrow the oligarchy and usurp the powers of a despot.

The oligarchy had tried their best to enforce this law of debtor and creditor with its disastrous series of contracts, and the only reason why they consented to invoke the aid of Solon was because they had lost the power of enforcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly awakened courage and combination of the people.

It also appears, that had not agrarian laws been introduced, the great body of the plebeians would have become the clients of the patricians, and the form of government would have been a complete oligarchy.

And Maximilian Jones pours out whole drug stores of his wrath on oligarchies and potentates in red trousers and calico shoes.

Then his mood changed, and for a sparkling quarter of an hour he chaffed the Labour Party for its support of the Soviet Government, an unrepresentative self-appointed oligarchy.

The primitive English constitution was a pure republican aristocracy or oligarchy of householders, like that which still survives in the Swiss forest cantons.

He knew nothing about Muscovite consolidation, nor oligarchy, nor autocracy.

He was confident, however, that the militaristic oligarchy was determined to have its will, and would dethrone the Kaiser the moment he showed indications of taking a course that would lead to peace.

If he does not, our brave and beautiful experiment in self-government will surely fail, and we shall be ruled not even by a trained and skillful tyrant, but by a series of coarse and corrupt oligarchies.

This man had come, as Ham had come, from the hardness of some barren farm and had obdurately hammered his path by the sheer insistence of his brain into the inner circle of an oligarchy.

I, for instance, disbelieve in oligarchy; so I would no more mend the House of Lords than I would mend a thumbscrew.

Now this may be benevolent despotism, but despotism it is; and the people that accustoms itself to the acceptance of such despotism, whether at the hands of a monarch, or an oligarchy, or a democracy, has abandoned the cause of liberty.

There would be no traditions of government among them, as in a Greek or Italian oligarchy, and no individual would be responsible for any of their acts.

Such was the humiliation of this once proud and energetic, but now worn-out and enfeebled, oligarchy: so incapable was that hoary polity of contending with the youthful vigor of Napoleon.

Science is the constant and vigilant generator of all social improvement, and the most formidable enemy of the tyranny of a despot, of an oligarchy, or of the multitude, whether it take a religious or secular form.

And the oligarchy is so invincibly fortified!

Though the government was thus tempered by Lycurgus, yet soon after it degenerated into an oligarchy, whose power was exercised with such wantonness and violence, that it wanted indeed a bridle, as Plato expresses it.

You have, I think, some remarkable qualifications for the proposed enterprise; and if you could give your whole mind and life to it, I should augur more favorably of such a monarchy than of the proposed oligarchy.

Calhoun's own words, and he will probably be allowed to be a fair exponent of Southern sentiment: we may gather from these utterances how the free republicanism of the North is regarded by the slave oligarchy.

Passive obedience by force supports thrones and oligarchies, Spanish kings, and Venetian senates.

Then again, the infatuation of the military oligarchy has been evidenced in the plan by which all the railways except this new Siberian line have been designed for purely military purposes.

Before the nation is roused to its danger, the oligarchical object is often obtained; and then the oligarchy, entrenched in power, count upon the nation to defend them from their original and revolutionary allies.

Would it not look far more sensible if the banner bore the inscription, henceforth, I will boycott the tobacconist, and will vote for no man who is not pledged to suppress the saloon oligarchy?

Its principal acts were to narrow the county electorate to an oligarchy, to restrict the choice of constituencies to resident knights and burgesses, and to impair its own influence as a focus of public opinion.

She regarded it as an outrage for the most democratic nation in the world to foist upon them an exclusively masculine government, a "male oligarchy," as she called it.

The trade companies which vindicated civic freedom from the tyranny of the older merchant gilds themselves tended to become a narrow and exclusive oligarchy.

Madison yielded to this dictation, and from that day forward was, as he deserved to be, perplexed and harassed by a petty oligarchy.

The modern English oligarchy, the modern German Empire, are necessarily more efficient in making municipalities upon a plan, or rather a pattern.

In most cases they belonged to the nobles, and they generally became masters of the state by espousing the cause of the commonalty, and using the strength of the people to put down the oligarchy by force.

The Spartan government was essentially an oligarchy, and the Spartans were always ready to lend their powerful aid in favor of the government of the Few.

The protest was ignored; and for thirty years, while the Board of Trade fell almost to the level of a joke, the colonies were managed by a Secretary of State who was likely to be less interested in preserving the woods for the king's use than in advancing the interests of the Whig oligarchy which governed England.

This was gradually transformed from a government of the people to an oligarchy; and as the years passed there were no steps taken toward a return, but the authority and power was more and more centralized.

Though he is the advocate of all oligarchies, he is also a warm admirer of all kings, and of all citizens who raised themselves to that species of sovereignty which the Greeks denominated tyranny.

The fear of resistance and the sense of shame operate in a certain degree, on the most absolute kings and the most illiberal oligarchies.

By the great body of the clergy he was regarded as the ablest and most intrepid tribune that had ever defended their rights against the oligarchy of prelates.

Better a desert and universal poverty than disunion; better the war of the French Revolution than an oligarchy founded upon the labor of slaves.

It has often been asserted that the oligarchy are to be held accountable for the display of ruffianly violence which followed Mackenzie's retort to Macaulay's pamphlet.

It was abundantly clear to many persons unconnected with the Reform party that there was no justice in the land for a Reformer, and that the oligarchy by whom the country was dominated cared nothing for its best interests.

The peasantry had once before been prominent, but so long as the oligarchy held firmly together, their actual influence had been slight.

The religious oligarchies of Asia, either for their own guidance, or for the relief of their memory, or for the instruction of their disciples, seem in all cases to have ultimately embodied their legal learning in a code; but the opportunity of increasing and consolidating their influence was probably too tempting to be resisted.

Nothing can prevent it, unless all the cantons are vested into one central government, instead of so many petty oligarchies, as at present, and which will eventually tire out the patience of the people.

It is very far from being an illiberal and stupid oligarchy; but it is equally far from being an express image of the general feeling.

A semi-barbarous oligarchy fights because it loves war; a civilized people fights to establish civilization and peace.

"Federalism" had perished because it was tainted with oligarchy, but there had been other elements in it which were destined to live, and the "National Republicans," as they came to call themselves, revived them.

His success in overawing the oligarchy was complete, and a written promise of compliance to these demands was made by the Doge.

Stronger than ever this oligarchy would be enthroned upon their old seat of power, not upheld merely by slaves beneath it, but by the power of the General Government above and around it.

The great mass of the white races ever have been, and still are, governed by the strong hand of despotism, or by the more plausible, but ofttimes not less diabolical power of constitutional sovereignties, or hereditary or revolutionary oligarchies.

Lysander, however, threw his influence on the side of the oligarchical party, and the popular Assembly was compelled by sheer intimidation to pass a vote establishing the oligarchy.

He is there not as an individual, a personality, but as the outward and visible sign of an idea, the idea of the Venetian oligarchy.

Like its English prototype, it was founded on the report of a commission which had disclosed the grossest possible abuses in Irish municipalities, chiefly dominated by protestant oligarchies.

The everlasting war of classes, where the people are intelligent and free, was signally illustrated in the Grecian States, and democracy succeeded to the oligarchy which had prostrated kings.

A body of soldiers seized the fortress the oligarchy were constructing for a Spartan garrison, and demolished it.

Being numerically small they form an oligarchy in which, with few exceptions, each man holds rank in a chieftainship of which there are three grades.

Whereupon the patricians, or nobility, began to let out the hitherto dissembled venom which is inherent in the root of oligarchy and fell immediately upon injuring the people beyond all moderation.

A council without a balance is not a commonwealth, but an oligarchy; and every oligarchy, except it be put to the defense of its wickedness or power against some outward danger, is factious.

The oligarchy had doubtless connived at the accumulations.

I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary revolving chair, and prepared my editorial against the oligarchies.

He was an oligarch, but he wanted the oligarchy round him to be true and honest!

Gypsy, with the oligarchy of the Seniors fresh in her memory as a warning, did not wish the Upper Fourth to monopolize the Magazine by any means, and the younger girls were strongly urged to try their 'prentice hands at the art of composition.

To have acted otherwise would have been to bring down upon our heads the scorn and contempt of our enemies and of every foreign power, from the strongest oligarchy to the most benevolent form of monarchical government.