No one who reads his private correspondence will admit that even his least defensible acts were dictated by dishonourable motives.
John Morley (Oliver Cromwell, p. 2 9 7) has truly observed of the execution of Charles I., that it was "an act of war, and was just as defensible or just as assailable, and on the same grounds, as the war itself."
Almost immediately afterwards an agitation of a still less defensible character broke out in various towns under the guise of anti-clericalism.
The Church of Rome has discouraged these daring tactics in favour of the more cautious and probably more defensible positions of Aquinas.
With this use of the word, philologically inexact, but historically quite defensible, may be compared the use of the word English, which is not exactly the language of the Angles, or of the word French, which is not exactly the language of the Franks.
As to the marquess, his use of lettres de cachet is perfectly defensible on the theory of lettres de cachet, and Mirabeau, if any son, surely deserved such correction.
On the other hand, his desertion of the army on the 5th of December, not long after the crossing of the river Beresina, is a thoroughly defensible act.
5 It is significant that notwithstanding this he did not figure the pterylosis of any one of them, and the thought suggests itself that, though his editor assures us he had convinced himself that the group must be here shoved in (eingeschoben is the word used), the intrusion is rather due to the necessity which Nitzsch, in common with most men of his time (the Quinarians excepted), felt for deploying the whole series of birds into line, in which case the proceeding may be defensible on the score of convenience.
At any rate he wavered in his estimate of their taxonomic value, for he gave an alternative proposal, arranging all the genera in a single series, a proceeding in those days thought not only defensible and possible, but desirable or even requisite, though now utterly abandoned.
The provinces were unsettled, the barbarians on the borders restless and menacing, and Hadrian wisely judged that the old limits of Augustus afforded the most defensible frontier.
Henry's demands were more defensible in substance than might be supposed from the manner in which he pressed them on the bishops.
It had probably not been completed, though it was already defensible, when Prince Llewelyn ab Griffith, incensed by its construction and claiming its site as his own, laid siege to it in 1271 and refused to retire except on conditions.
It is not, however, defensible in the rear: hence Dionysius's success against the Carthaginians.
The assertion of Mommsen that the Tigris was a more defensible frontier than the desert line which separated the Parthian from the Roman Empire can hardly be accepted.
He opposed woman suffrage on the ground that the majority of women did not want it and never would, and declared that until woman should "emancipate herself from the thraldom to etiquette," he "could not see how the ` woman's rights theory ' is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction."
It is the capital of a sanjak bearing the same name, and was formerly important as the headquarters of the local Moslem aristocracy, partly owing to the mountainous and easily defensible nature of the district.
In his last campaigns he had completed with signal last cam - success the task which, as a military commander, he had set himself, - of giving to the United Provinces a thoroughly defensible frontier of barrier fortresses.
Langport (Llongbooth, Langeberga, Langeport) owed its origin to its defensible position on a hill, and its growth to its facilities for trade on the chief river of Somerset.
Dr Wallich's attribution of this and other specimens subsequently sent in to the genus Camellia, although scientifically defensible, unfortunately diverted attention from the significance of the discovery.
They were applied to other P Y PP uses less justifiable or defensible; they served to execute the will of the despotic master upon all who set themselves in opposition to his authority, or were decreed, more or less wisely but still arbitrarily, by a government in the best interests of society, organized for the general good.
The fertile and easily defensible delta of the Vistula was now occupied and Gustavus treated it as a permanent conquest, making his great minister Axel Oxenstjerna its first governor-general.
The native name "Bauchi," which is of great antiquity, signifies the "Land of Slaves," and from the earliest times the uplands which now form the principal portion of the province have been the hunting ground of the slave-raider, while the hill fastnesses have offered defensible refuge to the population.