Another characteristic instance of the blindness of human nature to everything but its own interests is the complaint made by the king of ‘the ill neighbourhood’ of the Scot in attacking England when she was attacking France.

     For once the eagle England being in prey,
     To her unguarded nest the weazel Scot
     Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs.

It is worth observing that in all these plays, which give an admirable picture of the spirit of the good old times, the moral inference does not at all depend upon the nature of the actions, but on the dignity or meanness of the persons committing them.  ’The eagle England’ has a right ‘to be in prey’, but ‘the weazel Scot’ has none ‘to come sneaking to her nest’, which she has left to pounce upon others.  Might was right, without equivocation or disguise, in that heroic and chivalrous age.  The substitution of right for might, even in theory, is among the refinements and abuses of modern philosophy.

A more beautiful rhetorical delineation of the effects of subordination in a commonwealth can hardly be conceived than the following: 

     For government, though high and low and lower,
     Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
     Congruing in a full and natural close,
     Like music. 
     —­Therefore heaven doth divide
     The state of man in divers functions,
     Setting endeavour in continual motion;
     To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
     Obedience; for so work the honey bees;
     Creatures that by a rule in nature, teach
     The art of order to a peopled kingdom. 
     They have a king, and officers of sorts: 
     Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
     Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
     Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
     Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds;
     Which pillage they with merry march bring home
     To the tent-royal of their emperor;
     Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
     The singing mason building roofs of gold;
     The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
     The poor mechanic porters crowding in
     Their heavy burthens at his narrow gate;
     The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
     Delivering o’er to executors pale
     The lazy yawning drone.  I this infer,—­
     That many things, having full reference
     To one consent, may work contrariously: 
     As many arrows, loosed several ways,
     Fly to one mark;
     As many several ways meet in one town;
     As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
     As many lines close in the dial’s centre;
     So may a thousand actions, once a-foot,
     End in one purpose, and be all well borne
     Without defeat.

Henry V is but one of Shakespeare’s second-rate plays.  Yet by quoting passages, like this, from his second-rate plays alone, we might make a volume ‘rich with his praise’,