A dim consciousness that their servitude is not to God’s law but to man’s ambition is creeping over the people here.  That is a very hopeful sign.  When a man first feels he is a slave he begins to grow grey inside, to get moody and irritable.  The sore spot becomes more sensitive the more he broods.  At last to touch it becomes dangerous.  For, from such pent-up musing and wrath have sprung rebellions, revolutions, the overthrow of dynasties and the fall of religions, aye, thrice as mighty as this.  That Thought of freedom lets loose the flood-gates of an illimitable fire into the soul; it emerges from its narrow prison-cell of thought and fear as the sky-reaching genie from the little copper vessel in the tale of Arabian enchantment; it lays hand on the powers of storm and commotion like a god.  It would be politic not to press the despotism more; but it would be a pity perhaps if some further act did not take place, just to see a nation flinging aside the shackles of superstition; disdainful of threats, determined to seek its own good, resolutely to put aside all external tradition and rule; adhering to its own judgment, though priests falsely say the hosts of the everlasting are arrayed in battle against it, though they threaten the spirit with obscure torment for ever and ever:  still to persist, still to defy, still to obey the orders of another captain, that Unknown Deity within whose trumpet-call sounds louder than all the cries of men.  There is great comfort, my fellows, in flinging fear aside; an exultation and delight spring up welling from inexhaustible deeps, and a tranquil sweetness also ensues which shows that the powers ever watchful of human progress approve and applaud the act.

In all this I do not aim at individuals.  It is not with them I would war but with tyranny.  They who enslave are as much or more to be pitied than those whom they enslave.  They too are wronged by being placed and accepted in a position of false authority.  They too enshrine a ray of the divine spirit, which to liberate and express is the purpose of life.  Whatever movement ignores the needs of a single unity, or breeds hate against it rather than compassion, is so far imperfect.  But if we give these men, as we must, the credit of sincerity, still opposition is none the less a duty.  The spirit of man must work out its own destiny, learning truth out of error and pain.  It cannot be moral by proxy.  A virtuous course into which it is whipt by fear will avail it nothing, and in that dread hour when it comes before the Mighty who sent it forth, neither will the plea avail it that its conscience was in another’s keeping.