Look you: I shall go over all the mobs and
all the courts of Europe as a plough goes over a field. It is the
middle people who are dangerous: they have both knowledge and
purpose. But they, 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.
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