have no standard except the standard of custom, and who regard
any attack on custom--that is, on morals--as an attack on
society, on religion, and on virtue.

A censor is never intentionally a protector of immorality. He
always aims at the protection of morality. Now morality is
extremely valuable to society. It imposes conventional conduct on
the great mass of persons who are incapable of original ethical
judgment, and who would be quite lost if they were not in
leading-strings devised by lawgivers, philosophers, prophets and
poets for their guidance. But morality is not dependent on
censorship for protection. It is already powerfully fortified
by the magistracy and the whole body of law. Blasphemy,
indecency, libel, treason, sedition, obscenity, profanity, and
all the other evils which a censorship is supposed to avert, are
punishable by the civil magistrate with all the severity of
vehement prejudice. Morality has not only every engine that
lawgivers can devise in full operation for its protection, but
also that enormous weight of public opinion enforced by social
ostracism which is stronger than all the statutes. A censor
pretending to protect morality is like a child pushing the
cushions of a railway carriage to give itself the sensation of
making the train travel at sixty miles an hour. It is immorality,
not morality, that needs protection: it is morality, not
immorality, that needs restraint; for morality, with all the dead
weight of human inertia and superstition to hang on the back of
the pioneer, and all the malice of vulgarity and prejudice to
threaten him, is responsible for many persecutions and many
martyrdoms.