er. There
remain the throne and the squirearchy, and of these the throne is
much the stouter. For the throne is remote enough to be an object of
veneration, separable from its occupant; but when the great house and
the old acres are held, and not filled, by a new man, the villager,
who sees more than he is supposed to see, is by no means concerned to
uphold them. Most of the villages have been Radical; now they are all
going "Labour." The elections, if there are to be some soon, will
be very interesting, and I think surprising to Mr. George and his
assortment of friends.

However--another strike or two like that recent abortion on the
railways will dish the Labour Party and Trade Unionism as well--at
least in the country. Down here we are new to the movement, but have
gone into it keenly, without losing our heads. Indeed, I think we are
finding more in our heads than we suspected. We keep to our code; and
when we find that other men don't, we begin to doubt of Unionism. One
of the very best of our men said in my hearing at the time that if the
railway strike were the kind of thing we were to expect, he, for one,
would have no more to do with the Labourers' Union. As I have said
once before, I think, responsibility (which the Union is giving us)
deepens our men and quickens them too. The time is at hand when they
will begin to feel their power. I have no fears. I have long known
them to be the salt of the earth. If the quotation would not be from
one of my own works, I would quote now.

It is an old discussion, but all my travels have convinced me that a
bad peasantry is the exception. Such exceptions there are, though I
don't mean to give them. If Zola had not made himself ridiculous in
the act, so ridiculous as to show himself negligible, he would stand
as the greatest traducer of his adopted country that France has
ever harboured. But he was a specialist in his particular line of
disgustfulness, and saw in rural France what he took there with him.
They say that the Bulgarian peasant is a savage brute, "they" being
the Greeks, of course. I would not mind betting a crown that he is
nothing of the sort.

In manners, to be sure, peasantries differ remarkably. Here in the
West, from Wilts to Cornwall, our rustics are sweet-mannered. They
are instinctively gentlemen, if gentlehood consist, as I believe, in
having regard for other people's feelings. But in the Danish parts
of England, to be plain, manners are to seek. Th