Chapter 37

Upon the whole, I think these anti-Englishmen are an advantage to the State. You may be perfectly certain that they will never go to the length of doing anything active to the hurt of England, and they lend variety and criticism to the external action of England. They make the rivals of England admire a social structure in which such internal strains (which foreigners always exaggerate) are rendered innocuous. If they do any harm, it is by inflating, through reaction, that growing and very dangerous vanity which th…