WHAT IS A JINGO?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 370, 21 May 1880, Page 9

WHAT IS A JINGO?

Chance has given currency to a word which possibly may one day become as widely known and as a respectable as the name of whig or tory— the word " Jingo." An English traveller abroad is said to have been not long ago asked the question by a continental politician, " Mais qv?est cc que d'est done, monsieur, qvc cc Jingo?" His own ideas on the matter not being very clearly defined, he made answer, with delusive playfulness, that it was Mr. Qladestone's familiar spirit. The epithet is now used by liberal speakers, even by the most moderate and eminent of them, as a convenient missile to fling at their opponents, and by radicals it is applied freely, and one may say indiscriminately, to all who desire to maintain the honour and integrity of the British Empire. A word which the political excitement of the last three years has engraved so deeply in people's memories, and which the excitement of the next elections will perhaps fix there still more firmly, cannot be soon forgotten ; and even if it does not attain hereafter to the classic dignity of the two names cited above, its place in history is already won. But then what is Jingo exactly? Is it a man who believes in what Lord Derby calls " gunpowder and glory," whatever this may mean 7 Is it a man who wants to fight everybody all round, if . such a man there be ? If we turn to that celebrated refrain which has given currency to the world, and which will be remembered longer than many verses of greater lyrical value, we can find nothing more in it than the expression of a modest firmness and self-reliance. It breathes defence, not defiance. It affirms that we have no deaire for war, but that, should war arise, we have the means to face it. This temperate affirmation is clenched with an oath, reprehensible indeed, and by no means refined, but far less objectionable than many other such words that we unfortunately hear even from the liberal workingman as we walk along the streets. Since there is nothing in tho origin of the word, as a political term, which explains the use made of it, and since philology has no key by which to unlock its significance, where are we to turn for an explanation ? We shaft land a clew in the policy and temper of the men who use it as a term OX reproach. Bearing this in mind, we see that Jingoism comes to mucH the same thing as another word used by the same sort of people as ft term of reproach— namely, " Imperialism." — London Satnmay Review,