70 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



friend had been rudely treated because he hesitated to com 

 ply with this absurd demand ; and he concluded his account 

 of the affair by saying, that however distinguished for gal 

 lantry my countrymen might become by such tyranny, he 

 could only see in it, as he did in many other American trans 

 actions, a want of that stern regard for justice for which, he 

 trusted, Englishmen would ever be known. I could hardly 

 understand his deduction from the story ; for it seemed to me 

 quite right, if not what he called &quot; just,&quot; that if one of them 

 must have been exposed to the inclemency of the weather, it 

 should have been the man, as probably best able to bear it. 

 But, rather doubting if I had understood him, I replied, half 

 ironically, half sincerely, that I would confess that I questioned 

 if the mass of my countrymen were not deficient in this 

 respect to the educated middle class of England. 



He wondered that I should confine the inherent love of 

 justice and truth to any class of Englishmen, yet did not deny 

 that, among the nobility, it might seem to have degenerated 

 a great deal into a mere idolatry of the forms to which justice 

 was reduced by law and custom. But among the lowest 

 classes, he argued, we should find the real character of a peo 

 ple most naturally and unaffectedly manifested, and especially 

 in the common forms of speech and popular proverbs and out 

 cries. Spontaneous love of justice, and indignation at injustice 

 was every where displayed by the lowest class in England, 

 and nowhere else in the world would you hear the demand 

 for fair play so continually. He had often noticed that, in any 

 street tumult, the loudest shout was always &quot; HANDS OFF ! 

 FAIR PLAY !&quot; It always pleased him and made him proud of 

 his country when he heard it. 



&quot;Let me tell you under what circumstances I heard it, not 

 long since the only time I have as yet heard it in England,&quot; 

 I answered. &quot; It was in the Bull-ring at Ludlow, the other 



