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Page 45
STEPHEN [rising and looking at him steadily] I know the
difference between right and wrong.
UNDERSHAFT [hugely tickled] You don't say so! What! no capacity
for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no
pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret
that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers,
muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists:
the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, master
of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!
STEPHEN [keeping his temper with difficulty] You are pleased to
be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable
English gentleman claims as his birthright [he sits down
angrily].
UNDERSHAFT. Oh, that's everybody's birthright. Look at poor
little Jenny Hill, the Salvation lassie! she would think you were
laughing at her if you asked her to stand up in the street and
teach grammar or geography or mathematics or even drawingroom
dancing; but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach
morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people.
You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is
a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the
bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle
high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and
truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another
at that game. What a country! what a world!
LADY BRITOMART [uneasily] What do you think he had better do,
Andrew?
UNDERSHAFT. Oh, just what he wants to do. He knows nothing; and
he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political
career. Get him a private secretaryship to someone who can get
him an Under Secretaryship; and then leave him alone. He will
find his natural and proper place in the end on the Treasury
bench.
STEPHEN [springing up again] I am sorry, sir, that you force
me to forget the respect due to you as my father. I am an
Englishman; and I will not hear the Government of my country
insulted. [He thrusts his hands in his pockets, and walks angrily
across to the window].
UNDERSHAFT [with a touch of brutality] The government of your
country! _I_ am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus.
Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you,
sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern
Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US.
You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it
doesn't. You will find out that trade requires certain measures
when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to
keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a
national need. When other people want something to keep my
dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in
return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers,
and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman.
Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play
with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and
great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys.
_I_ am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call
the tune.
STEPHEN [actually smiling, and putting his hand on his father's
shoulder with indulgent patronage] Really, my dear father, it is
impossible to be angry with you. You don't know how absurd all
this sounds to ME. You are very properly proud of having been
industrious enough to make money; and it is greatly to your
credit that you have made so much of it. But it has kept you in
circles where you are valued for your money and deferred to for
it, instead of in the doubtless very oldfashioned and
behind-the-times public school and university where I formed my
habits of mind. It is natural for you to think that money governs
England; but you must allow me to think I know better.
UNDERSHAFT. And what does govern England, pray?
STEPHEN. Character, father, character.
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