ered by self-seekers under the name
of patriotism when he none too pleasantly remarked: "Patriotism is the
last refuge of a scoundrel."

The Doctor's epigram hardly deserves its fame. It embodies a
very meagre fraction of the truth. While it ignores the beneficent
effects of the patriotic instinct, it does not exhaust its evil
propensities. It is not only the moral obliquity of place-hunters or
popularity-hunters that can fix on patriotism the stigma of offence.
Its healthy development depends on intellectual as well as on moral
guidance. When the patriotic instinct, however honestly it be
cherished, is freed of intellectual restraint, it works even more
mischief than when it is deliberately counterfeited. Among the
empty-headed it very easily degenerates into an over-assertive, a
swollen selfishness, which ignores or defies the just rights and
feelings of those who do not chance to be their fellow-countrymen. No
one needs to be reminded how much wrong-doing and cruelty have been
encouraged by perfectly honest patriots who lack "intellectual
armour." Dr Johnson knew that the blockhead seeks the shelter of
patriotism with almost worse result to the body politic than the
scoundrel.

On the other hand, morality and reason alike resent the defect of
patriotism as stoutly as its immoral or unintellectual extravagance. A
total lack of the instinct implies an abnormal development of moral
sentiment or intellect which must be left to the tender mercies of the
mental pathologist. The man who is the friend of every country but his
own can only be accounted for scientifically as the victim of an
aberration of mind or heart. Ostentatious disclaimers of the patriotic
sentiment deserve as little sympathy as the false pretenders to an
exaggerated share of it. A great statesman is responsible for an
apophthegm on that aspect of the topic which always deserves to be
quoted in the same breath as Dr Johnson's familiar half-truth. When
Sir Francis Burdett, the Radical leader in the early days of the last
century, avowed scorn for the normal instinct of patriotism, Lord John
Russell, the leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons,
sagely retorted: "The honourable member talks of the _cant_ of
patriotism; but there is something worse than the _cant_ of
patriotism, and that is the _recant_ of patriotism."[33] Mr Gladstone
declared Lord John's repartee to be the best that he ever heard.

[Footnote 33: The pun on "cant" and "recant