There is a good deal of chopping and changing about among the agricultural voters, in spite of a general determination to be true to the “yaller” colour or the “blue,” as the case may be.  As I passed down the village street on the day on which our last election took place, I enthusiastically exclaimed to a passer-by in whom I thought I recognised one of our erstwhile firmest supporters, “We shall have our man in for a certainty this time.”  “What—­in the brook!” replied the turncoat, with a glance at the stream, and not without humour, his face purple with emotion.  This was somewhat damping; but the hold of the paid social agitator is very great in these country places, and it is scarcely credible what extraordinary stories are circulated on the eve of an election to influence the voters.  At such times even loyalty is at a discount At a Tory meeting a lecturer was showing a picture of Gibraltar, and expatiating on the English victory in 1704, when Sir George Rooke won this important stronghold from the Spaniards.  “How would you like any one to come and take your land away?” exclaimed a Radical, with a great show of righteous indignation.  And his sentiments received the applause of all his friends.

In these matters, and in the spirit of independence generally, country folk have much altered.  No longer can it be said; as Addison quaintly puts it in the Spectator, that “they are so used to be dazzled with riches that they pay as much deference to the understanding of a man of estate as of a man of learning; and are very hardly brought to regard any truth, how important soever it may be, that is preached to them, when they know there are several men of five hundred a year who do not believe it.”

In such-like matters the labourers now show a vast deal of common sense, and the only wonder is that whilst paying but little deference either to men of estate or men of learning, they yet allow themselves to be “bamboozled” by the promises and claptrap of the paid agitator.

Narrow and ignorant as is the Toryism commonly displayed in country districts, it is yet preferable, from the point of view of those whose motto is aequam memento, etc., to the impossible Utopia which the advanced Radicals invariably promise us and never effect.

A word now about the farmers of Gloucestershire.

It is often asked, How do the Cotswold farmers live in these bad times?  I suppose the only reply one can give is the old saw turned upside down:  They live as the fishes do in the sea; the great ones eat up the little ones.  The tendency, doubtless, in all kinds of trade is for the small capitalists to go to the wall.