They seem to have been so entirely occupied with the defence of the French Directory, so very eager in finding recriminatory; precedents to justify every act of its intolerable insolence, so animated in their accusations of ministry for not having at the very outset made concessions proportioned to the dignity of the great victorious power we had offended, that everything concerning the sacrifice in this business of national honor, and of the most fundamental principles in the policy of negotiation, seemed wholly to have escaped them.
"The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12)"
Edmund Burke
And this, of course, usually led to recriminatory statements, and history was ransacked to find something consolatory to English pride.
"Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands"
Mary Seacole Commentator: W. H. Russell
This recriminatory dialogue between the London and the Westminster of 1608 is now and then rather flatulent in its reciprocity of rhetoric, but is enlivened by an occasional breath of genuine eloquence, and redeemed by touches of historic or social interest.
"The Age of Shakespeare"
Algernon Charles Swinburne