Sir Charles Dilke, in his speech at Chelsea on Tuesday,
went over very much the same lines as Mr. Gladstone, only insisting more on the mischievous policy pursued in Egypt. He declared, however, that the Government now needed no denouncing ; it had come to be laughed at. The trades which had pro- spered under it,—those of the map-makers, powder-makers, gun-makers, mischief-makers,—are beginning to decline; and the comic journals are coming in for the benefit of the high flights of the Government. Jingoism, however, he said, was but patriotism gone astray. The Government would never have been popular at all, had it not contrived to persuade the nation that it was mindful of the proper weight and dignity of England. Jingoism should not be suppressed, but purified, and turned into the right channel. That is a very just remark of Sir Charles Dilke's, if it means only that a good deal of our Jingoism would have been satisfied by a wise and disinterested spirit of national self- assertion and self-respect. But there was much, too, that was mere selfish and vulgar ballyragging and bullying, and waving of the flag, as if no State in the world were of any worth but England, —in fact, national egotism and self-love without the restraints which keep individual egotism and self-love within decent pro- portions.
