The expense of defence--the naval and military estimates--vary still more as the danger of attack seems more or less imminent, as the means of retarding such danger become more or less costly.
This statement discusses how defense expenditures vary based on perceived threats and costs.
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More from Walter Bagehot
One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
If those persons be people of different temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be done with excessive rapidity.
The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it.
All savage religions are full of superstitions founded on luck.
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