So my plea is to stop the journalistic jingo and to start to think and report.
As a politician " Labby " was the chartered jester of the House of Commons, but his pungent and somewhat cynical speeches were the expression of highly independent democratic convictions, deeply opposed to all forms of social privilege or Jingo imperialism.
Even in what Mr Chamberlain called his "Radical days" he had never supported the "Manchester" view of the value of a colonial empire; and during the Gladstone ministry of1882-1885Mr Bright had remarked that the junior member for Birmingham was the only Jingo in the cabinet - meaning, no doubt, that he objected to the policy of laissez-faire and the timidity of what was afterwards known as "Little Englandism."