by bribes. The constant compensation tyranny brings,
which keeps it from at once exhausting its victims, is the silence it
imposes on their private squabbles. One distant universal enemy is less
oppressive than a thousand unchecked pilferers and plotters at home. For
this reason the reader of ancient history so often has occasion to
remark what immense prosperity Asiatic provinces enjoyed between the
periods when their successive conquerors devastated them. They
flourished exceedingly the moment peace and a certain order were
established in them.

[Sidenote: Nominal and real status of armies.]

Tyranny not only protects the subject against his kinsmen, thus taking
on the functions of law and police, but it also protects him against
military invasion, and thus takes on the function of an army. An army,
considered ideally, is an organ for the state's protection; but it is
far from being such in its origin, since at first an army is nothing but
a ravenous and lusty horde quartered in a conquered country; yet the
cost of such an incubus may come to be regarded as an insurance against
further attack, and so what is in its real basis an inevitable burden
resulting from a chance balance of forces may be justified in
after-thought as a rational device for defensive purposes. Such an
ulterior justification has nothing to do, however, with the causes that
maintain armies or military policies: and accordingly those virginal
minds that think things originated in the uses they may have acquired,
have frequent cause to be pained and perplexed at the abuses and
over-development of militarism. An insurance capitalised may exceed the
value of the property insured, and the drain caused by armies and navies
may be much greater than the havoc they prevent. The evils against which
they are supposed to be directed are often evils only in a cant and
conventional sense, since the events deprecated (like absorption by a
neighbouring state) might be in themselves no misfortune to the people,
but perhaps a singular blessing. And those dreaded possibilities, even
if really evil, may well be less so than is the hateful actuality of
military taxes, military service, and military arrogance.

[Sidenote: Their action irresponsible.]

Nor is this all: the military classes, since they inherit the blood and
habits of conquerors, naturally love war and their irrational
combativeness is reinforced by interest; for in war officers can shine
and rise, wh