Daily Inspiration Quote by Charles Inglis

Loyalty here isn’t a feeling; it’s a discipline, drilled into speech until it hardens into public order. Inglis, an Anglican clergyman and prominent Loyalist voice in Revolutionary-era America, is not merely requesting politeness toward the King. He’s prescribing a social technology: regulate language (“speaking of him with Affection, with Esteem and Reverence”) and you regulate thought; regulate thought and you regulate the possibility of dissent. The repetition of virtues acts like a litany, borrowing the cadence of worship to make monarchy sound less like a political arrangement and more like a moral obligation.

The intent is pastoral but also strategic. As imperial authority frayed, respect for the Crown became a proxy battle for whose institutions would command legitimacy: church and monarchy or the emergent rhetoric of popular sovereignty. Inglis frames reverence as “honour,” a word that flatters the listener into compliance. You’re not being coerced; you’re being invited to participate in virtue. That’s the subtextual sleight of hand: loyalty becomes a marker of personal decency, while criticism of the King can be cast as not just rebellious but vulgar, impious, socially contagious.

Most revealing is the final clause: “promoting a like Spirit and Conduct in others.” Private sentiment isn’t enough. The audience is deputized into soft surveillance, tasked with spreading the correct tone and policing their neighbors’ talk. In a moment when pamphlets and sermons were political weapons, Inglis is trying to keep the King’s authority alive in the only place it can survive during crisis: the everyday habits of deference.