As in the whole train of my speculations I have endeavoured, as much as I am able, to extinguish that pernicious (15) spirit of passion and prejudice which rages with the same violence in all parties, I am still the more desirous of doing some good in this particular because I observe that the spirit of party reigns more in the country than in the town. It here contracts a kind of brutality and rustic (20) fierceness to which men of a politer conversation are wholly strangers. It extends itself even to the return of the bow and the hat; and at the same time that the heads of parties preserve toward one another an outward show of good breeding, and keep up a perpetual intercourse (25) of civilities, their tools that are dispersed in these outlying parts will not so much as mingle together at a cock-match. This humour fills the country with several periodical meetings of Whig jockeys and Tory fox hunters, not to mention the innumerable curses, frowns, and whispers it produces at a quarter sessions. I do not know whether I have observed, in any of my former papers, that my friends Sir Roger de Coverley and Sir Andrew Freeport are of different principles; the first (163: 5) of them inclined to the landed, and the other to the moneyed interest. This humour is so moderate in each of them that it proceeds no farther than to an agreeable raillery, which very often diverts the rest of the club. I find, however, that the knight is a much stronger Tory (10) in the country than in town, which, as he has told me in my ear, is absolutely necessary for the keeping up his interest. In all our journey from London to his house, we did not so much as bait at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place, one of (15) Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer; for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and (20) provided our landlord's principles were sound, did not take any notice of the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more inconvenient because the better the host was, the worse generally were his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his (25) friends would take up with coarse diet and an hard lodging. For these reasons, all the while I was upon the road I dreaded entering into an house of any one that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.