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Use oligarchy in a sentence

Definition of oligarchy:

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

Sentence Examples:

Above the position which they had occupied, an oligarchy of wealth had reared itself; beneath that position a degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting.

Wilson there was little that appealed to one who was opposed to the employment of force in compelling the observance of international obligations and to the establishment of an international oligarchy of the Great Powers to direct and control world affairs.

Its adoption would mean that the destiny of the world would be in the hands of a powerful international oligarchy possessed of dictatorial powers.

Here the local legislature was a democratic oligarchy, partly composed of landowners, but chiefly of overseers, with no permanent stake in the country.

The industrial-commercial-financial oligarchy that dominated society for the century preceding the Great War is the result of the first; Russia, today, is an exemplar of the second.

Unfortunately political development, though great, has not by any means kept pace with the economic; in other words, it is still possible in most countries, and in some more possible than in others, for a small oligarchy to gain control of the political machine.

The victory of the oligarchy by force of arms had, in spite or because of its moderation, engendered manifold discontent.

The oligarchy might play the tyrant as respected other citizens; but that the generals also, who with their good swords had replaced the overthrown senators in their seats, should now be summoned to yield implicit obedience to this very senate, seemed intolerable.

By intrigue, by cabal, and faction, a pernicious oligarchy is sure to succeed, and end, at last, in the tyranny of a single ruler.

An oligarchy will be confirmed upon the ruin of the democracy; a government most hateful will descend to our posterity and all our exertions in the glorious cause of freedom will be frustrated.

We have churches which profess democracy, but there is reason to fear that many of them are little better than oligarchies; that some of them come near to being monarchies.

Wherever, on the other hand, they are betrayed, hindered, or oppressed, the actual state is a monarchy or an oligarchy, even though it goes under the name of a republic.

The laws that were passed resemble the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and even vindictive oligarchy, rather than institutions adopted for the common welfare, by the representatives of a free people.

I was, as you are no doubt aware, merely asserting my rights as a free citizen to protest against the presumptions of the unprincipled oligarchy which is at present ruling this fair city.

Then the oligarchy advocated by the Affirmative becomes not a "safeguard" but a band of raiders equipped by the very form of government to loot the treasury.

The conflict is not simply between autocracy or oligarchy and democracy, but between different ideals and diametrically opposed notions of duty.

The government was in the hands of narrow oligarchies, who took good care to oppose jealously any extension of the privileges which placed so much valuable patronage at their disposal.

To the official oligarchy, however, even their moderate leaders came to be viewed as rebels, and were often subjected to imprisonment or to banishment.

Thwarted in his attacks on the oligarchy, he degenerated into violent courses, and ultimately organized, or rather was provoked into organizing, the rebellion of 1837.

This terrible despot, who was beloved by the common people and hated by the oligarchy, left behind him a constitution that might well be adopted by the most democratic countries.

The Russians, ever strongly attached to their sovereigns, now found themselves under the reign of an oligarchy which they detested.

In a land where the dollar is almighty, "where the sin of not being rich is only atoned for by the effort to become so," do they doubt that such an oligarchy will generally succeed?

It affects to be a pure democracy, though I think it in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy.

Nor is there any narrow or invidious exclusiveness in such an aristocracy, which differs in its free hospitality from an oligarchy of artificial prescription.

Solon, who enjoyed a universal reputation for wisdom and uprightness, was called upon by the oligarchy, which again held rule, to assume what was, in fact, almost absolute power.

Florence had never possessed political liberty of any sort whatever; she was ruled by the great families, by the guilds, by an oligarchy, by a despot.

Parliamentary government cannot be used to impose and maintain a dictatorship, whether of autocracy or oligarchy, bourgeoisie or proletariat.

Edward thereupon stirred up the oligarchy to issue an installment of the promised reforms in the document known as the Provisions of Westminster.

In an oligarchy, taxes are not levied with a view to the general good of the community, but for the benefit of the ruling class; and this is the political conception of the Boers.

What was new was the theory that the two party oligarchies were secretly one, that the fights between the parties were little more than sham fights.

His it was to help to apply the first impulse to the movement which eventually broke down the strong bulwarks of territorial oligarchy.

That system placed the government of the country in the hands of a territorial oligarchy, composed of a few families of large possessions, fairly enlightened principles, and shrewd political sense.

We believe that every struggling nationality on the globe will be stronger if we conquer this odious oligarchy of slavery and that every oppressed people in the world will be weaker if we fail.

As a matter of fact it was an oligarchy, the political power residing in but a small proportion of even the church-going freemen.

You see, our government is, in effect, an oligarchy of the big landowners and ranchers, who, in combination, have enough military power to overturn any Planetary government overnight.

The poorer orders (in an oligarchy) sometimes lurch about when they are slightly drunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous scenes, they stand or sit in constrained attitudes.

Or, to vary the metaphor, the new mercantile oligarchy might be symbolized even in the externals of its great sister, the mercantile oligarchy of Venice.

It is but one stride from despotism to democracy, in logic as well as in history; and oligarchy is equally remote from both.

He was ready to emancipate Catholics as such, for religious bigotry was not the vice of the oligarchy; but he was not ready to emancipate Irishmen as such.

Many Greeks, bred up in the practice of war during the long struggle between that city and Sparta, were now deprived of their employment, whilst many more had been driven into exile by the establishment of the Spartan oligarchies in the various conquered cities.

The first contest after the abolition of royalty was between oligarchy and the despot, the next was between oligarchy and democracy.

They will not suspect us of any disposition to advocate the cause of absolute monarchy, or of any narrow form of oligarchy, or to exaggerate the evils of popular government.

Separated from its base, imprisoned within those tradition-haunted walls, it would lose touch with the people, would become in its turn a mere oligarchy.

Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

One or many, an assembly of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be equally despotic, if love be not the ruling principle.

The Americans for the most part governed themselves, and the oligarchy came in only as an alien and unnatural thing levying taxes.

We will give up the control as soon as there is an Indian people which can control its native rulers; we will not give up the control to an Indian oligarchy.'

Whether the oligarchy or its assassin was the more loathsome still remains an academic question, debatable only in an idle hour.

This arrogant and insolent slave-holding oligarchy would not even wait to hear what the President of your choice would say.

The force was wholly a Protestant one, commanded by Protestant officers, and it was turned to account by the Protestant oligarchy.

Now a new oligarchy, called "The Thirty," and mostly composed of the returned exiles, came into despotic power, and the ancient constitution was once more ignored.

Afterwards, falling out with these tyrants, Alcibiades turned democrat again, was made admiral of the fleet, and wrought the ruin of the oligarchy which he had raised to power.

Just presents the plan, is that by which every oligarchy of invaders installs and maintains itself over a subjugated nation.

We should thus get, neither the resident oligarchy nor the non-resident mob; we should have a body of real masters and doctors worthy of the name.

He amended the constitution, cut down the power of the ignoble oligarchy, checked corruption, and placed the city's finances on a sounder footing.

And a few weeks later, as we shall notice, he let his zeal for the Boer oligarchy outrun his discretion in an even more amazing manner.

There was even no public examination of this savage inhumanity, which shows that Sparta was governed, as Venice was in the Middle Ages, by a small but exceedingly powerful oligarchy.

It is a political fault which is often committed in oligarchies as well as in democracies, and where the multitude has control of the laws, the demagogues make this mistake.

It is a very close oligarchy, for those beneath it are quite defenseless, levelled down to an equality of poverty and misery.

He has the French, the Latin attachment to a vigorous central power, and, of all political forms, he most fears and hates an oligarchy.

It is not the genuine, virtual democracy which conspired against the republic, and which rebels, but an unprincipled, infamous oligarchy, risen in arms to destroy democracy.

The princess knew that the power of Wilcox, his supporting oligarchy and the interplanetary bankers, was all based on the skillful use of propaganda.

The small farmers and slaveholders acted as a restraint upon any tendency toward oligarchy which the gentry might have entertained.

Nearly every American city, in a greater or less degree, for longer or shorter periods, has been dominated by oligarchies.

No one but the Paul I had known could cling so tenaciously to his dreams; no one but he could be so blind to the actual horror of the new oligarchy he would impose upon the world.

The French having passed from feudalism to monarchy, and from monarchy to a financial oligarchy, will easily pass from a financial oligarchy to anarchy.

It is a corrupt oligarchy, with such autocratic powers and under such a stubborn and autocratic president that even the judgments of the courts can be tampered with.

And an oligarchy of fourteen persons, different in rank and profession, even if we should impute criminal designs to all of them, was ill calculated for permanent union.

He deposed the governing oligarchy, changed the constitution of the town, forbade all alliances and laid the foundations of a castle.

The constitution had been thus converted into a narrow oligarchy; the democratic element, the public assembly, being too feeble to put an end to these dissensions.

The two combined evidently meant death to Protestant ascendancy and to oligarchy, both of which naturally shrank from suicide.

Something was needed to induce a powerful and selfish oligarchy to part with the field of its ascendancy and its ambition.

In all their plans, schemes and calculations, this slave-holding oligarchy have thrown the Almighty overboard, and every sacred right of the human race.

This oligarchy of merchant princes, in whom patriotism, pride of place, and love of gain harmoniously accorded, was an exceedingly competent body of men.

The story is that he wished to revenge himself for a gross insult from a young nobleman, and it seems likely that a personal quarrel had some connection with a general plot which aimed to overthrow the oligarchy, and substitute a government of the old nobility supported by the people.

The government has also undergone a change; for the sultan, who among other Malay races is usually despotic, is here a mere cipher, and the government has become an oligarchy.

He found the management of the Crown Lands and the Clergy Reserves in the hands of a selfish and grasping oligarchy, who cared very little for the advancement of the country, and whose attention was chiefly directed to enriching themselves at the public expense.

Yet, before proceeding to the election, a constitution was formed, embodying all the privileges of the oligarchy, and conferring on that order, the unequivocal sovereignty.

They were military positions occupied during the general struggle which the oligarchies had decided never to close but by the abasement of France.

In common with most literary and scientific bodies, the power of government rested in an oligarchy, and I have specially mentioned these three names, being those in whom the real control of the society was vested, however wisely they accepted the services or adopted the advices of others.

This fact being so well established that no reasonable man denies it, it is evident that the oligarchy will have to devise another subterfuge for even temporary relief.

He opposed the war of conquest which Pitt was waging, desiring to break the power of the Whig oligarchy which long had dominated English politics.

More than sixty years of a government of singular corruption had alienated all hearts from the oligarchy; never indeed much affected by the great body of the people.

Most of them resigned their liberties into the hands of oligarchies, and others allowed themselves to be annexed by ambitious princes.

Convinced that the Indians were not fit for self-government, he also believed that it would be disastrous to permit the white oligarchy to rule.

The municipalities, governed by local oligarchies of landowners, exercised functions not contemplated by the Portuguese code.

Meanwhile, the old machinery of the constitution had fallen into the hands of a close oligarchy or commission of a few powerful patricians.

Her descendants in America have, after a long and bloody struggle between freedom and oligarchy, banished slavery also forever from the New World.

The Puritan oligarchy stoutly objected to being deprived of the right to withhold from others than their own sect the privileges of religious liberty.

Again and again the demos had to fight for its own hand against the cliques who sought to restore oligarchy; and apathy was not likely to be common.

If, on the contrary, the rich and poor were allowed to mingle, then, if the country were commercial, an oligarchy would be established; and if it were not, an unlimited democracy would ensue.

It seems probable that the so-called communism was really an oligarchy of the favored, and that the masses lived in subjection, cut off from all but a meager share in the public property.

Up to Wallenstein's appearance the commercial oligarchies by which those cities were governed, had shown themselves at the best but lukewarm in the Protestant cause.

"The so-called 'republics' of antiquity and the Middle Ages were only oligarchies resting upon the slavery or serfdom of the masses, and in fact the reverse of republics."

The political affairs of a Virginia county were then directed by the vestry, which, having the power to elect its own members, was an important instrument of the oligarchy of Virginia.

For more than a quarter of a century, however, he held power, nominally as the elected head of a Republic, really as the despotic center of a tiny oligarchy.

It was "a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy," wrote the "Sage of Monticello."

Venice and Florence, strong in the strength of their resentful oligarchies, offered a determined resistance; nor was Filippo equal in ability to his father.

It would recognize as the political people of a state the loyal minority, which would be an oligarchy, and the principle of the rule of majorities would thus be repudiated.

They swayed backwards and forwards between the power of the people and the power of the few; but democracy and oligarchy passed sooner or later into the hands of a master who veiled his lordship under various titles, and generally at last into the hands of a family.