Liang Ch‘i-ch‘ao

“ I reply that liberty connotes equal rights for all; it is an important factor in human life, and there is no direction in which it will fail to serve such a purpose. At the same time it should be noted that a distinction must be made between real liberty, false liberty, complete liberty, partial liberty, the liberty of civilization, and the liberty of savages. ”

“ The gentry, bullies of the countryside, gobble up their poorer neighbours like fish, and there are no means of resisting them; traders abscond, leaving their debts unpaid, and those who have been swindled have no means of redress. Now, it is open to all men to become gentry or traders; it follows, therefore, that the liberty of the community is also a point of importance. Is not this so? In the highest classes there are men and women who make a perfect cesspool of official life;―is this liberty? In the towns there are young and old who look on opium as a necessary food;―is this liberty? ”

“ The object of the first was to protect the people against their own government; of the second, to protect members of a church against the church; of the third, to protect one's own nation against foreign nations ”