Harold J. Laski: “It seems to me that this power to deny admission to citizenship, as it is exercised, is a complete denial of natural…”

He is able, accordingly, to indulge in the twofold luxury not only of preserving his own authority, but also of assisting the persons attacked to enter, if they so choose, the way of truth.

Ultimately, that denial is always made upon the same ground: it is insisted that the doctrines or practices attacked are subversive of the civil order.

The intolerance may be Catholic, when it insists that a unity of outlook is essential for the preservation of society; or it may be Protestant when, as with Calvin and the Socinians, it holds that the blasphemous nature of the belief…

When attacks on liberty are political or economic, it is their motive rather than their nature that changes.