All 10 Uses of
expedient
in
Resistance to Civil Government
- Government is at best but an expedient;
*expedient = a practical action that accepts negative tradeoffs from an ideal
- Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.†
inexpedient = not practicalstandard prefix: The prefix "in-" in inexpedient means not and reverses the meaning of expedient. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
- For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it.†
expedient = convenient, speedy, or practical; or an action that is speedy or practical
- For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it.†
- —in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable?†
- Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil Government," resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that "so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconvenience, it is the will of God ...that the established government be obeyed—and no longer.†
- But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may.†
- Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency.†
- They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency.†
- The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.†
Definition:
a practical action -- especially one that accepts negative tradeoffs due to circumstances
or:
convenient, speedy, or practical
or:
convenient, speedy, or practical