Whether rightly or wrongly, foreign governments are afraid of meddling with English subjects, and act accordingly.

Then, too, Englishmen as a body care very little about foreign politics, and are known to live almost entirely among themselves abroad, and seldom to interfere in the concerns of foreigners; and lastly, I am afraid that the moral influence of England, of which our papers are so fond of boasting, is very small indeed on the continent generally, and especially in Italy.
All the articles the _Times_ ever wrote on Italian affairs did not produce half the effect of About's pamphlet or Cavour's speeches.

I am convinced that the influence of English newspapers in Italy is most limited.

The very scanty knowledge of the English language, and the utter want of comprehension of our English modes of thought and feeling, render an English journal even more uninteresting to the bulk of Italians than an Italian one is to an Englishman; and the Roman rulers are well aware of this important fact.

Hard words break no bones, and the Vatican cares little for what English papers say of it, and looks upon the introduction of English Anti-Papal journals as part of the necessary price to be paid for the residence of the wealthy heretics who refuse to stop anywhere where they cannot have clubs and churches and papers of their own.