CHAPTER XV. 

 THE FOREIGNER. 



BEING, as I have remarked, very English in its collective 

 outlook, the Club naturally displayed the characteristic 

 English attitude of self-depreciation in utterance combined 

 with self-complacency in thought. Our curious habit of 

 reviling ourselves and minimising our achievements is rooted 

 in arrogance. We are too proud to boast. Nevertheless 

 we are steadfastly of opinion that on the whole no other 

 nation is in any respect superior to our own, or does anything 

 much better. However deprecating we may appear, we have 

 very little real sympathy with the person 



"Who praises, with enthusiastic tone, 

 All centuries but this, and every country but his own." 



The occasions on which the attention of the Club was 

 specially drawn to " foreign parts " were few. In one of the 

 later papers Mr. A. G. L. Rogers dealt with the position of 

 the agricultural labourer at home and abroad. He pointed 

 out that modern Agriculture is a world industry, affected by 

 international influences and that it must therefore be of 

 importance to a farmer to know what expenses are incurred 

 in other countries for labour, as well as in other costs of 

 production. Yet very seldom is any attempt made to 

 supply him with such information, one reason being the 

 difficulty of making any just comparison of the labour 

 conditions in different countries. He added that there 

 seemed to be only one way to make any satisfactory estimate 

 of the relative progress made by the workers in each country 

 and that was the historical method. 



Mr. Rogers proceeded : 



All students of law will remember the famous chapter in 

 Maine's Ancient Law, in which, after tracing the development 



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