Sense of fairplay and rule of law. Which came first?

According to this article in the telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/03/06/scifair106.xml there are vast differences among people of various countries when it comes to freeloaders or people breaking the law to seek revenge once caught.
This got me thinking about how different people react when they commit a mistake. Owning a mistake and moving on leads eventually to a better society. Not accepting faults and inventing excuses leads to loss of trust and hence overall lawlessness.
Now extrapolating this to a community or a city or a country leads to dramatic differences in the quality of life of it peoples. May be this is one difference between the societies which enjoy a greater quality of life versus those that do not.
Off course Britain or any other country does not have a monopoly of people with with a sense of fair play. But what it may have is a critical mass of favourable natured people to make the society. This did not happen overnight and certainly was not always present( Dark ages), but something triggered this overtime and in the great cycle of time they are presently able to reap the benefits of such good natured people.
Interestingly if time is the only answer as to how its people developed a sense of fair play, then wait is all the rest of world can do. This time will tell.
Given that tiny island nation of Britain ruled half the world at one time. may be they did have a superior sense of "common sense" than all of the rest. At least Jeremy Clarkson would have you believe that. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article3734663.ece.Pretty one sided article but he does make a point in the number inventions made by this tiny dreary sunless country.