Mr. Fox's diagnosis is, we believe, correct. The English people
are a very good-tempered and not at all an envious people, and also are always inclined to admire and pay a certain tribute of deference to position or success. It is, however, the most foolish of errors to suppose from this that they have anything slavish in their composition. People often talk about the abject villager and of his adulation of the squire of his parish, but if the squire attempts to encroach in the least upon what the labourer believes to be his rights, he is brought up very sharply indeed. The " hat-touching " which for some reason or other fills the town-bred Radical with such a frenzy of annoyance is merely a piece of conventional politeness which the labourer not only does not dislike but rather likes. The English countryman is exceedingly critical about small points of ceremony, and very proud of his own code of good manners. Whether it is the best possible code or not is another matter, but he obeys it, not out of any fear of consequences, but exactly as other people obey a code of social conventions.
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