We have no Caesar over us in free England, and shall not have, while
Queen Victoria, and her children after her reign; but if ever one, or
many (which God forbid!), should arise and try to set themselves up as
despots over us, I trust we shall know how to render them their due, be
they native or foreigner, in the same coin in which our forefathers have
always paid tyrants and invaders. No. The only Caesar which we have to
fear--and he is a tyrant who seems ready, nowadays, to oppose and exalt
himself above all that is called God, or is worshipped,--patronizing, of
course, Religion, as a harmless sanction for order and respectability,
but dictating morality, while telling us all day long, with a thousand
voices and a thousand pens--"Right is not the eternal law of God.
Whatever profits me, whatever I like, whatever I vote--that and that
alone is right, and you must do it at your peril." Do you know who that
Caesar is, my friends? He is called Public Opinion--the huge anonymous
idol which we ourselves help to make, and then tremble before the
creation of our own cowardice; whereas, if we will but face him, in the
fear of God and the faith of Christ, determined to say the thing which is
true, and do the thing which is right, we shall find the modern Caesar
but a phantom of our own imagination; a tyrant, indeed, as long as he is
feared, but a coward as soon as he is defied.
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