#214: “Liberty Hath a Sharp and Double Edge”

Reflection: What does our society merit? What does it need?

“For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.”*

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* The Prose Works of John Milton, Volume II, Book III. (1847) | bold emphasis in copy at 
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Milton