Clemency is the genius of the British nation

Does "the public thought that clemency is the genius of the British nation" imply "the public believed that generosity was in the blood of the Brits (in their own blood)"?

Context:
While the events in The Charity of General Amherst, for example, never happened, and the landscape, tent, and column of the Canadian War Museum study belong to classical Rome, the use of a vernacular vocabulary for the figures presents a reality that washes over the rest of the work. This approach allowed the artist to suspend the disbelief of his audience, which wanted to believe what it saw as truth. As an account of viewers’ responses records, the public thought ‘that clemency is the genius of the British nation’.