Aristocracy (from the Greek meaning best rule) is a form of government in which the sovereign power is vested in a small number of citizens who are theoretically the best qualified to rule, as opposed to monarchy, in which the supreme authority is vested in one person, and to democracy, in which the ultimate authority is exercised by the entire body of citizens or their representatives. In an aristocracy, although the power of government is wielded by a few, theoretically the administration of government is carried on for the welfare of the many. Whenever the interests of the people as a whole are made subservient to the selfish interests of the rulers, aristocracy becomes a form of government known as oligarchy. Athens, before the period of the Persian wars of the 5th century BC, and Sparta, during practically its entirehistory, were aristocracies. The same was true of Rome during the period of the Republic, lasting from the 6th to the 1st century BC.
During the Middle Ages no true aristocracy existed, for although political power reposed in the hands of a few, each feudallord was sole master in his own domain. In England, the government from the accession of the house of Hanover in 1714 through the 19th century, although parliamentary in form, was in fact an aristocracy, since king and Parliament alike were under the control of a few great Whig families. Research Aristocracy
The British Medical Association (BMA) was founded at Worcester in 1832 as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association. Its aims were the advancement of medical science and the maintenance of the dignity and welfare of the profession. In 1853 the name was altered to
British Medical Association. Research British Medical Association
A coronation is the placing of the crown on a monarch's head with solemn rites and ceremonies. Part of the ceremony usually consists in the oath which the monarch takes, that he will govern justly, will always consult the real welfare of his people, and will conscientiously observe the fundamental laws of the state. In England kings and queens have been anointed and crowned in WestminsterAbbey, even to the latest times, with great splendour. The form of the coronation oath is that settled after the revolution of 1688. The Archbishop of Canterbury puts it to the sovereign, who swears to govern according to the statutes of parliament, to cause law and justice in mercy to be executed, and to maintain the Protestant religion. Research Coronation
Criminal law is the law relating to crimes. The general theory of the common law is, that all wrongs are divisible into two species: first, civil or private wrongs or torts; secondly, criminal or public wrongs. The former are to be redressed by private suits or remedies instituted by the parties injured. The latter are redressed by the state acting in its sovereign capacity.
The general description of the private wrongs is, that they comprehend those injuries which affect the rights and property of the individual, and terminate there; that of public wrongs or offences being, that they comprehend such acts as injure, not merely individuals, but the community at large, by endangering the peace, the comfort, the good order, the policy, and even the existence of society. In the first, therefore, so far as the law is concerned, the compensation of the individual whose rights have been infringed is held to be a sufficient atonement; but in the second class of offences it is demanded that the offender make satisfaction to the community as acting prejudicially to its welfare. The exact boundaries between these classes are not, however, always easy to be discerned, even in theory; for there are few private wrongs which do not exert an influence beyond the individual whom they directly injure. The divisions, torts and crimes, are thus not necessarily mutually exclusive, cases sometimes occurring in which the person injured obtains damages, while at the same time the criminal is subjected to punishment, not as against the individual, but as against the state. It is, moreover, obvious that legal criminality is not in any strict sense the measure of the morality of actions, though the legal enactment tends to enforce itself as a moral law. In large part it is only an approximate expression of the current sense of justice, this expression being both aided and hindered by the historical and constantly reflexive character of legal method.
The basis of the criminal law of Great Britain is to be found in a series of loose definitions and descriptions, of which many, and those among the more important, date from the 13th century. The irregular superstructure reared upon these consists mainly of parliamentary enactments which originated in the 18th century, but have been twice re-enacted in the 19th century - the first time between 1826 and 1832, and the second time in 1861, with an intermediary attempt at amendment in 1837. The laws as formulated, however, by no means always represent the law as interpreted, the whole system being further complicated by a mass of judicial comments and particular constructions. Thus while there is a statutory division of crimes into treasons, felonies, and misdemeanours, the distinctions between them are so uncertain that it is possible to regard the first head as merely the isolation of a sub-case of felony; while in respect of the second and third classes, the distinction can only be clearly marked by an enumeration of the crimes arbitrarily assigned to each in the common law and judges' decisions.
Even in severity of punishment a misdemeanour may rank as high as a felony. The Criminal Statutes Consolidation Acts - the result of a series of commissions extending over thirty years - accomplished little more in the way of systematization than the introduction of greater exactitude into the definition of certain individual offences and the gradation of penalties. The aim of criminal law as at present constituted, and since the end of the 19th century, is both retributive and preventive - in its former aspect being based upon the primitive passion of retaliation, in the latter primarily upon the fundamental instinct of self-preservation. The prevention of crime may, however, be effected in a threefold manner: by imposing a penalty which shall operate by fear to deter people from committing crimes, or by rendering it physically impossible for a person of known criminal tendency to repeat an offence, or by the reformation of the criminal. With the higher evolution of society the principle of retaliation has fallen into theoretic disrepute, though still a practical legal factor; and the problems of penology are made to turn almost exclusively upon the principle of prevention in these three aspects, and especially on the two last. The discovery in the 19th century that fear of a penalty only operated up to a certain point, beyond which an excessive punishment exercised a brutalizing tendency, led to a large mitigation of penal severity accompanied by a wide desire for the abolition of capital punishment, though this took almost one hundred years to be realised in Great Britain; while, on the other hand, various schemes have been devised for making punishment reformatory. These original changes in criminal law date in a large measure from the publication of Beccaria's Dei Delitti e delle Pene (On Offences and Penalties) in 1764. Research Criminal Law
The Health and Safety Commission is a commission appointed by the Secretary of State for Employment to look after the health, safety, and welfare of people at work; to protect the public from risks arising from work activities; and to control the use and storage of explosives and other dangerous substances. It is composed of representatives from trade unions, employers, and local authorities with a full-time chairman. The Health and Safety Executive is a statutory body that advises the Commission and carries out its policies through 20 area offices. It includes HMFactory Inspectorate and a Medical Division, which itself includes the Employment Medical Advisory Service. Research Health and Safety Commission
The Holy Alliance was a league concluded at Paris, on September the 26th, 1815, between Alexander I, emperor of Russia, Francis of Austria, and Frederick William III of Prussia, and signed with their own hands, and without the countersign of a minister. It consisted of a declaration, that, in accordance with the precepts of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the principles of justice, charity, and peace should be the basis of their internal administration, and of their international relations, and that the happiness and religious welfare of their subjects should be their great object. Its real aim, however, was to maintain the power and influence of the existing dynasties. It was offered for signature to all the European Powers except the pope and the sultan of Turkey, and accepted by all except Britain. The events of 1848 broke up the Holy Alliance. Research Holy Alliance
Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organisation based upon the public ownership of the means of production and support of the poor, weak and needy by the strong and rich, and first proposed by philanthropic churchmen of the 19th century, men like Samuel Barnett. The term socialism (first coined in England by Robert Owen in 1816) covers a wide range of positions from communism at one extreme to social democracy at the other, and is therefore difficult to define with precision. It is less easy to say what socialists are for than what they are against, namely untrammelled capitalism, which in socialist eyes enriches the owners of capital at the expense of their employees, provides no security for the poor, and sacrifices the welfare of society to private gain. Most socialists have responded by arguing that the community as a whole should own and control the means of production, distribution, and exchange to ensure a more equitable division of a nation's wealth, either in the form of state ownership of industry, or else in the form of ownership by the workers themselves. They have also often advocated replacing the market economy by some kind of planned economy. The aim of these measures is to make industry socially responsible, and to bring about a much greater degree of equality in living standards. In addition, socialists have argued for special provision for those in need, in the form, for instance, of a welfare state.
Socialism as a political ideal was revolutionised by Karl Marx in the mid-19th century, who tried to demonstrate scientifically how capitalist profit was derived from the exploitation of the worker, and argued that a socialist society could be achieved only by a mass movement of the workers themselves. Both the methods by which this transformation was to be achieved and the manner in which the new society was to be run remained the subject of considerable disagreement and produced a wide variety of socialist parties, ranging from moderate reformers to ultra left-wing communists dedicated to upheaval by violent revolution. A revolutionary upheaval is represented by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto published in 1848 as necessary in order to replace capitalism. Bernstein in his book Evolutionary Socialism published in 1898 states that capitalism can be modified and changed by gradual, parliamentary methods. These debates have been somewhat overshadowed in recent years by the question of whether socialism is viable at all as an alternative to capitalism. Most Western socialists now opt for social democracy, others for market socialism. It is only in certain developing countries that traditional socialist aims still attract widespread support among political leaders. Research Socialism
In 1789 William Mooney, an Irish-American politician, founded in New York City, the Columbian Order, a secret society, which in 1805 was incorporated as the Tammany Society, named after the Indian Tammany, and wearing Indian insignia, especially a buck's tail.
The Tammany Society was reputedly founded for the purpose of preserving democratic ideas against Alexander Hamilton's aristocratic doctrine.
In 1800, by careful work under Aaron Burr, the order controlled New York City politics. Next, under Daniel Tompkins, it became the administration wing of the Democratic party in New York City, upholding Madison and opposing the Clintons. The Bucktails and the Albany Regency controlled the State for a long period. In 1822 the power over the society had gone into the hands of its general committee. Stricter and stricter organization followed, and the Tammany Society developed into a machine for securing success in elections and power and plunder for its chieftains. Always indifferent to principles, it grew worse after the influx of foreigners into the city, until after the American Civil War its corruption culminated in the scandalous performances of the Tweed Ring. Since the defeat of the Tweed Ring in 1871, the Tammany Society, under the control of John Kelly, Richard Croker and others, was famous for strict control over a large body of voters, strict devotion to the spoils-system, looseness of allegiance to the Democratic party, and indifference to the welfare and interests of New York City which it had almost constantly ruled. Research Tammany Society
Bella Abzug (born Bella Savitzky) was an American feminist, lawyer and politician She was born in 1920 at the Bronx, New York City and died in 1998, Educated at Hunter College, New York and Columbia University, she practised as a lawyer in New York between 1944 and 1970. She became noted for defending those accused of un-American activities and was a prominent peace campaigner, founding the Women Strike for Peace movement in 1961 and the National Women's Political Caucus. She was elected to Congress in 1971, and championed welfare issues, and subsequently became known as 'Battling Bella'. After being unsuccessful in the Senate elections of 1976 and failing to be elected Mayor of New York in 1977, she returned to her lawyer's practice in 1980, but continued her involvement in political issues. Her works include Gender Gap: Bella Abzug's Guide to Political Power for American Women, published in 1984. Research Bella Abzug
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Aristocracy
