Of his own speeches he has preserved some detail, showing how early his opinions displayed the character which was to be constant in them:
'In 1864-65 I spoke twice at the Union [Footnote: After Dilke's death, when a resolution of regret was carried at the Union, the Vice- President, Mr. J. H. Allen of Jesus, said in moving it: "Sir Charles was in a double sense the architect of the fortunes of the Society, because he was responsible for the superintendence of the change from the old inadequate home in Queens' Street into the more glorious building which they now enjoyed. It was for that reason that on two occasions the Society elected him to the highest position which they could confer.">[ in favour of the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston, opposing several of my friends who were condemning it. Cobden at the time was attacking supposed extravagance, based, as he thought, on panic, and I sided with Palmerston in thinking that the enormous increase of the French Navy could only be intended for an anti-English policy, while in the event of even the temporary loss of the command of the Channel, invasion by an immense French army would become possible. To Poland I was friendly, but unwilling to contemplate, as Lord Palmerston was unwilling to contemplate, interference by England in alliance with the Emperor Napoleon. I was so far from strongly taking the Danish side in the war that I chose the opportunity to put up in my rooms at Cambridge a photograph of Bismarck, for whom I had a considerable admiration. I had made Lord Palmerston's acquaintance during the Exhibition in '62 (to the ceremonies of which I also owed that of Auber, Meyerbeer, and many other distinguished people), but I do not think that the chat of the jaunty old gentleman in his last days had had any effect upon my views, and I was certainly more pro- German than was Palmerston, who was not pro-anything except pro- English.'[Footnote: For Sir Charles's opinion of Lord Palmerston, see vol. ii., p. 493. ]
The best speech, in Dilke's own opinion, that he made during 1866 was in opposition to the proposal to congratulate Governor Eyre upon his suppression of 'the supposed insurrection in Jamaica.' This was the first of the many occasions on which Sir Charles Dilke criticized the severity of white men towards natives in the name of civilized government.
Fuller anticipation of the views he supported in Parliament is to be found in his speeches on home politics. In the spring of 1866 the country was violently agitated over the Reform Bill introduced by Lord Russell, who had become Prime Minister on the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865. Of course there was a debate at the Union, and it was prolonged to a second night. Dilke writes:
'I took up for the first time broad democratic ground. Attacking the famous speech of Mr. Lowe, [Footnote: Mr. Lowe had asked in the debate on the "Representation of the People Bill," as reported in Hansard, on March 13th, 1866: "If you want venality, ignorance, drunkenness; if you want impulsive, unreflecting, violent people, where do you look for them? Do you go to the top, or to the bottom?">[ I declared that so far was I from agreement with these calumnies, that I was of opinion that those homely and truly English qualities which had to some slight extent grown slack among the upper classes were to be met with in all their strength as much in the more intelligent portion of the now unrepresented classes, as among those familiarly styled "their betters." With regard to the question of the fitness of the artisans for the franchise, I argued that they had not to decide for themselves between Austria and Prussia in the Holstein question, but had to decide between candidates who would settle the more abstruse questions for them. The middle classes, I contended, could as a body do no more, and the artisan was just as competent to judge of honesty and ability as the £10 householder; and less likely to be influenced by bribery and intimidation, as being more independent and more fearless of consequences. Moreover, any attempt to keep the great mass of the people from all share of political power seemed to me idle: whether we liked their advent to government or whether we feared it, it was inevitable, and the longer we delayed to prepare for it the worse it would be for so-called Conservative interests when it came. I contended that the working man had proportionately a greater stake in the country than the rich; that the taxes which he paid were a vastly more serious matter to him than those which the rich paid were to them, and that a hundred of the laws passed by Parliament vitally affected the interests of the working people to one which injured those of the upper class.'
For a young man whose political views were so maturely thought out, debate was no mere exercitation; his education was fast passing into apprenticeship for public life; and in February, 1865, his father, Sir Wentworth Dilke, coming forward at a by-election in the Liberal interest for Wallingford, gave the Union debater his first chance on a public platform.
Long afterwards, when Sir Charles Dilke was travelling down to the Forest of Dean with a party of guests and friends, one of them, looking out as the train swept along the Thames Valley, caught sight of a little white church nestling under a hill and asked, "Is that Cholsey?" Sir Charles turned round in his eager way: "What, do you know this district? Yes, that is Cholsey;" and went on to tell how intimate he had become with all the villages round Wallingford when speaking and canvassing for his father, and how the experience gained among the Berkshire peasants had supplied valuable lessons for his own contests in later years.
Sir Wentworth was elected, and Lord Granville, who had a real friendship for him, wrote, in a spirit very typical of the traditional view: "I know no one to whom Parliamentary life will afford more interest and amusement." Charles Dilke's conception of Parliamentary life was very different from that of his father, and from that which Lord Granville indicated. On the other hand, the son seemed to the father deficient in appreciation of the pleasures acceptable to himself:
'One of the difficulties between my father and myself about this period arose from his vexation at my refusing to take part in the shooting-parties at Alice Holt. He was passionately fond of shooting; … I had now but little sympathy with the amusement, and had shown my dislike for it in many ways.'
Yet despite differences, the father was immensely proud of his son, and consulted him in regard to the younger brother's education. In his reply Charles Dilke discussed the view of certain Dons who held that the cultivated English gentleman ought not to go in for honours at all, and admitted that "reading for a high place here involves loss of many pleasures, of almost all society; it makes a man fretful, and often leaves him behind the world; as an education for the mind it is not so good as the self-education of a non-honours man ought to be, but never is." He thought, nevertheless, that classics—of which he avowed himself "more ignorant than an English gentleman ought to be"—offered the field in which success was best worth having. He himself "would gladly be put back to fourteen or fifteen, and 'grind my life out' till two-and-twenty, in order to get a high place in the first-class classics." But it must be all or nothing. A second-class he dismissed as not worth winning. Moreover, "if the boy has not a high standard set up for him, he will do nothing whatever, which is far worse than doing too much."