The essential vice of the Roman system was that it had been unable to avoid weakening the spirit of personal independence and crushing out local self-government among the peoples to whom it had been applied.
The protectionist party determined to oppose the government on every measure which afforded a chance, by small defeat, of weakening its influence over the house and the country.
This is a powerful principle in the natural constitution of things for weakening government, which no contrivance can prevent.
The powers from whom she forced her ascendency, in spite of themselves, still live, and some of them have recovered from the weakening she gave them.
Nor, what is equally important, has there for the purpose of these operations been any weakening of the grand fleet.
In the midst of the uncertainty over the outcome of the Conference two important events took place in France, the second of which came near seriously weakening the French position.
The one, endeavoring partly at his wife's instigation to renew the prestige of a weakening Empire, and the other, furthering the ambitions of the Prussian Kingdom, set in motion the forces which culminated in the Fourth of September.
And, despite the weakening drop of his voice on the final phrases, the doctor believed him.
The look of waxiness had been increasing, all night long; the breathing was becoming fitful; the tiny figure seemed relaxed in every weakening limb.
Then she was gone in a flurry of snow, and Reivers went forth on his quest of power with a curse on his lips and in his heart the determination that no weakening memories of a girl's wistful eyes should interfere with his aim.
I felt my will weakening then, she looked so perfectly exquisite there in the corner of the sofa.
And what proves the hitherto backward state of the country in such matters is, that this consisted of an edict against mortmain, a simple contrivance for weakening the ecclesiastical power, which we in England had adopted long before.
Having done this, the government supposed that it had taken a decisive step towards weakening ecclesiastical power, particularly as the sovereign cordially approved of the proceeding.
At the same time, by superseding the geometry of the ancients, he aided in weakening that inordinate respect with which antiquity was then regarded.
This, by weakening the influence of the artificial system of Linnaeus,[1124] prepared the way for an innovation more complete than has been effected in any other branch of knowledge.
One can't deal with love in such a cold, calculating fashion," thought she, by way of bolstering up her weakening confidence in the reality and depth of those sensations which had seemed so thrillingly romantic an hour before.
Nor was there any weakening of resolution in him, any dimming of the new dawn within his heart.
A deep weariness was in him, weakening self-control.
If anyweakening of resolve were in himself, it disappeared long before Tony's arrival on the scene.
All this was partly prompted by the Bakufu's policy of weakening the feudatories.
In Echizen, Owari, and Totomi the great Shiba family was subjected to weakening onsets by the Asakura, the Oda, and the Imagawa.
These two circumstances enabled him to form an army in the Jerseys sufficient for the reduction of fort Mercer, without weakening himself so much in Philadelphia as to put his lines in hazard.
Again, in the ninth and tenth centuries, pestilence and famine accelerated the extinction of predial slavery by weakening the numbers of the free population.
But where these notions can be realised without unlawful interference of that kind, then the forcible hindrance of such realisation is a direct weakening of the force and amount of conscience on which the community may count.
Pleasure saps high interests, and the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for pleasure.
Besides, no device for weakening France was deemed more effective than that of seizing her wealthiest group of colonies.
He aimed solely at curbing the aggression of the Jacobins upon Holland; and the obvious device of weakening France by expeditions to the West Indies further helped to bring events back into the arena of eighteenth-century strife.
Far from degrading andweakening the peerage, Pitt strengthened it by an infusion of new blood which was sorely needed at that time of strain and stress.
Thenceforth it revolved more and more around colonial questions, to the weakening of the royalist and republican motives which had worked so potently in its early stages.
He cannot object to any part of the Peace in public, withoutweakening the grounds upon which he contends peace upon the whole to be preferable to war, and that he will not do.
Donny, has an immense effect in weakening the cohesion of its particles; recent experiments of my own show that this is also the case in an eminent degree with many volatile liquids.
What is the effect ofweakening the converter field?
In his middle period he was distinctly Dutch, but in his later days he came under Italian influence, and with a weakening effect upon his art.
The blunder Napoleon hoped the British Admiralty would make was that of weakening the blockading squadrons in order to pursue Villeneuve's fleet, and thus release the imprisoned French squadrons, making a great concentration possible.
Ordinarily both players castle on the same side of the board so that neither of them can advance his Pawns in an attack against the opposing King withoutweakening his own King's position.
