Nation of shopkeepers

Your meddling in continental affairs, and trying to make yourselves a great military power, instead of attending to the sea and commerce, will yet be your ruin as a nation.

Had I meant by this, that you were a nation of cowards, you would have had reason to be displeased; even though it were ridiculous and contrary to historical facts; but no such thing was ever intended.

I meant that you were a nation of merchants, and that all your great riches, and your grand resources arose from commerce, which is true.

[4] The supposed French original as uttered by Napoleon (une nation de boutiquiers) is frequently cited, but it has no attestation.

The oration delivered on that occasion was by M. BARRERE [sic], in which, after describing our beautiful country as one "on which the sun scarce designs to shed its light", he described England as a nation of shopkeepers.Napoleon would have been correct in seeing the United Kingdom as essentially a commercial and naval rather than a land-based power, but during his lifetime it was fast being transformed from a mercantile to an industrial nation, a process which laid the basis for a century of British hegemony after the Battle of Waterloo.

The United Kingdom's economy and its ability to finance the war against Napoleon also benefitted from the Bank of England's issuance of inconvertible banknotes, a "temporary" measure which remained from the 1790s until 1821.

It has been suggested that Napoleon may have heard it during a meeting of the French Convention on 11 June 1794, when Barère quoted Adam Smith.

The phrase has also been attributed to Samuel Adams, but this is disputed; Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, produced a slightly different phrase in 1766: And what is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.Benjamin Franklin used a similar idea about Holland in a letter to Charles W. F. Dumas on 6 August 1781: Some writer, I forget who, says that Holland is no longer a nation but a great shop and I begin to think it has no other principles or sentiments but those of a shopkeeper.Though the original supposed usage by Napoleon was meant to be disparaging,[10] the term has since been used positively in the British press.

Margaret Thatcher used the phrase in an interview to the press on 18 February 1975:[11] We used to be famous for two things—as a nation of shopkeepers and as the workshop of the world.