The conservatism of society has ever regarded liberty as the black flag of the moral marauder, the emblem of a piratical intention upon the casket of the world that contains the jewels of honor, justice, virtue and social order.
So persistently and malignantly has freedom been represented as a wrecker's light, kindled only to lure to destruction, that to represent it as worthy to be trusted is to arouse the spirit which pursued Voltaire to his grave with a lie, erected a shaft of calumny over the tomb of Paine, and which now, with the coward's weapon of slander, attacks the living who refuse to acknowledge that the voice of the Church is the voice of God.
But nevertheless we believe with Burns that:
Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit,
Its virtues a' can tell, man;
It raises man aboon the brute,
It maks him ken himsel', man;
Gif ance the peasant taste a bite,
He's greater than a lord, man,
And ni' the beggar shares a mite