Freed of moral restraint it is prone to engender a
peculiarly noxious brand of spurious sentiment--the patriotism of
false pretence. Bombastic masquerade of the genuine impulse is not
uncommon among place-hunters in Parliament and popularity-hunters in
constituencies, and the honest instinct is thereby brought into
disrepute. Dr Johnson was thinking solely of the frauds and moral
degradation which have been sheltered 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.
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