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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: while your thief disembowels a portmanteau, your hero sacks a city,
while your thief sacks a cellar: your hero marauds on a larger scale,
and that is all the difference, for the principle and the virtue are one:
but two of a trade cannot agree: therefore your hero makes laws to get
rid of your thief, and gives him an ill name that he may hang him:
for might is right, and the strong make laws for the weak, and they
that make laws to serve their own turn do also make morals to give
colour to their laws."
"Your comparison, friar," said the stranger, "fails in this:
that your thief fights for profit, and your hero for honour.
I have fought under the banners of Richard, and if, as you phrase it,
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