one-only-man

Updated: June 10, 2025

Who had a better right than those men themselves, those statesmen, those heroes, who had waked and watched for their country's weal so long, who had fought her battles on land and sea, and planned them too, not in the tented field and on the rocking deck only, but in the more 'deadly breach' of civil office, whose scaling-ladders had entered even the tyrant's council chamber, who had a better right than those men themselves to say whether they would be governed by a government of laws, or by the will of the most despicable 'one-only-man power, armed with sword and lash, that ever a nation of Oriental slaves in their political imbecility cowered under?

Delia Bacon - The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded