too, have their weak point. They are full of
scruples--chained hand and foot by their morality and respectability.

LADY. Then you will beat the English; for all shopkeepers are middle
people.

NAPOLEON. No, because the English are a race apart. No Englishman is
too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from
their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous
power that makes him master of the world. When he wants a thing, he
never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there
comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is
his moral and religious duty to conquer those who have got the thing he
wants. Then he becomes irresistible. Like the aristocrat, he does what
pleases him and grabs what he wants: like the shopkeeper, he pursues
his purpose with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong
religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is
never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion
of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the
world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his
adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the
natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary: he flies
to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and
takes the market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island
shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross
on it to his top-gallant mast; and sails to the ends of the earth,
sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas
with him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches
British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age
to work under the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He
makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of
law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not
find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the
wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic
principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on
imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports
his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head on
republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never
forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the