The constituency to which he addressed his candidature in the autumn of 1867 was the borough of Chelsea, a new Parliamentary division created by the Reform Act of that year. It was of vast extent, embracing Chelsea, Fulham, Hammersmith, Kensal Town, and Kensington. In Chelsea Charles Dilke had his home, and, as representing the Parliamentary borough, he would speak "backed by the vote and voice of 30,000 electors." "I would willingly wait any time," he said in his opening address on November 25th, in the Vestry Hall at Chelsea, "rather than enter the House of Commons a member for some small trumpery constituency." The electors should hear his opinions, "not upon any one subject or upon any two subjects or any three, but as nearly as might be upon all."
His speech began with the electoral machinery of democracy—questions of franchise and redistribution.
Purity of election he laid down as a necessary condition of reform, and to that end two points must be assured: the removal of election petitions from the House of Commons to a legal tribunal, [Footnote: A Bill with that object was at the time passing through Parliament.] and, secondly, the security of the ballot. Upon the first matter he came perhaps to doubt the new system after he had seen it tried; upon the second he was able to tell his audience from first-hand knowledge that in Australia opposition to the ballot was unknown, and that in Virginia a conquered minority looked to it as their best defence against oppression.
From the machinery of Government he passed to its application. Ireland was then the burning question, and Dilke's attitude upon Ireland may be indicated in a sentence. After the Church should have been disestablished, the land system reformed, [Footnote: His views on the Irish Land Question had been stated in Greater Britain (popular edition), p. 209: "Customs and principles of law, the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish soil, can be recognized and made the basis of legislation without bringing about the disruption of the Empire. The first Irish question that we shall have to set ourselves to face is that of land. Permanent tenure is as natural to the Irish as free-holding to the English people. All that is needed of our statesmen is that they recognize in legislation that which they cannot but admit in private talk—namely, that there may be essential differences between race and race.">[ and a wide measure of Parliamentary reform given to Ireland; after they should have passed Fawcett's Bill "for throwing open Trinity College, Dublin, and destroying the last trace of that sectarian spirit which has hitherto been allowed to rule in Ireland" —they might hope "not perhaps for instant quiet in the country, but at least for the gradual growth of a feeling that we have done our duty, and that we may well call upon the Irish to do theirs."
There went with that a moderate censure upon the lawlessness of Fenianism. But the Irish question did not occupy so much space in his discourse as in those of most speakers at that moment, and this for a reason which he gave later in his life: 'About Ireland I was never given to saying much, because, except for a short time in 1885, when moderate Home Rule could have been carried, I never thoroughly saw my own way.' But as early as 1869 he deplored the lack of local deliberative bodies which elsewhere did much of the State's work, and in 1871 he advocated their creation as a means of relieving Parliament. This, rather than any special sympathy with Nationalism as such, was always the governing consideration with him on the Irish question. 'I showed in this way,' he notes, 'a working of the opinion which in 1874 caused me to vote, alone of English members unpledged by their constituents, in support of Mr. Butt when he brought forward his Home Rule Bill.' [Footnote: Eight in all voted; all except Dilke represented Northern constituencies, with a large Irish vote among miners or operatives.]
He foreshadowed also his attitude towards Labour questions. He proposed, as early as 1867, that the Factory Acts should be extended to all employment; the best way of compelling children to attend school was, he thought, to prohibit their employment as premature wage-earners. Another declaration set forth that Trade Unions must be recognized, and their funds protected just as much as those "of any association formed for purposes not illegal." By no means were all Liberals in 1867 ready to distinguish between Trade Unions and criminal conspiracies.
Taxation came next. His desire to "sweep away many millions of Customs and Excise," and to establish a system so far as possible of direct taxation, is notable because it was put forward at the very moment when he was explaining in Greater Britain to the precisians of Free Trade that young countries, like America and the Colonies, had reasonable grounds for maintaining a rigid Protective system.
Questions put at this first meeting with the electors elicited a declaration for triennial Parliaments; if these failed, then for annual; for payment of members, with preference for the plan of payment by the constituency, advocated by "Mr. Mill, the great leader of political thinkers." As to manhood suffrage, the candidate held "that the burden of proof lies on those who would exclude any man from the suffrage; but I also hold that there is sufficient proof for the temporary exclusion of certain classes at the present time."
This, with some other points in the exposition of his political creed, needs to be read in the light of a passage in the Memoir:
'I tried to be moderate in order to please my father, and not to lose the general Liberal vote; my speeches are more timid than were my opinions.'