DILKE, SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH, BART. (1810 1869), English politician, son of Charles Wentworth Dilke, pro prietor and editor of The Athenaeum, was born in London on Feb. 18, 181o, and was educated at Westminster school and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He studied law, and in 1834 took his degree of LL.B., but did not practise. He assisted his father in his literary work, and was for some years chairman of the council of the Society of Arts. He took a prominent part in the affairs of the Royal Horticultural Society and other bodies, including the execu tive committee of the Great exhibition. In 1853 Dilke was one of the English commissioners at the New York Industrial Exhi bition, and in 1862 one of the five royal commissioners for the second Great Exhibition. Soon after the death of the prince con sort he was created a baronet. In 1865 he entered parliament as member for Wallingford. In 1869 he was sent to Russia as repre sentative of England at the horticultural exhibition held at St. Petersburg (Leningrad) . His health, however, had been for some time failing, and he died suddenly in that city on May io, 1869. DILKE, SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH, BART. 1911), son of the preceding, was born in London in 1843, and educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he achieved the triple distinction of being senior legalist in the law tripos, president of the Union and stroke of the boat which was head of the river. In 1866 he made a voyage round the world, beginning with the United States, and visiting New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon, India and Egypt. The impressions gained on these travels left him, he said, "with a conception, however imperfect, of the grandeur of our race, already girdling the world, which it is destined, perhaps, to overspread." The book in which he described his travels, Greater Britain (1868), gave a great impulse to a sane and re formed imperialism. All his life Dilke was a true imperialist. For him there was no incompatibility between imperialism and ex treme radicalism. He became a prominent Liberal politician, as M.P. for Chelsea (1868-86), under-secretary for foreign affairs (188o-82), and president of the local government board (1882 85). In 1871-72 Dilke represented the extreme radical party in England. There was no great love for the Crown, for the Queen's retirement of ten years was a cause of discontent, and he attacked the expense of royalty, in particular the dowries voted for the Queen's children. He was a theoretical republican, and on various occasions in public speeches put the case for republicanism. His own attitude was the reverse of revolutionary. As he said himself, "To think and even to say that monarchy in western Europe is a somewhat cumbersome fiction is not to declare oneself ready to fight against it on a barricade." During these years he says himself he was nearly subjected to physical and really subjected to moral martyrdom, and it is a fact that on one occasion at least nothing but his own imperturbable courage saved his life. Nevertheless, within a few years Disraeli could express the opinion that Sir Charles Dilke was the most powerful and influential member among quite young men that he had ever known.
During his first years in the House of Commons he maintained an independent position. Between and 1880 he became a close ally of Joseph Chamberlain. Gradually, however, he became a force within the Liberal party, and during the Beaconsfield government with Lord Hartington as leader, the task of present ing the case for the opposition fell more and more into his hands. As a result of the Liberal victory of 188o he and Chamberlain be came members of the Gladstone ministry. In 1885 Dilke was chairman at a conference on industrial remuneration attended by all the prominent trade unionists of the day and women repre sentatives of the Protective and Provident League, afterwards to become the Women's Trade Union League. This was symptomatic of his whole attitude towards labour problems. Throughout his life he was an ardent supporter of better conditions for the workers. While he was at the Local Government Board he called attention to the problem of housing, with the result that a Royal Commission sat in 1884 to study the housing of the working classes. He was associated with the acts legalizing the position of the Trades Unions and limiting the hours of work. He was in favour of legislation to secure a minimum wage and he wished for the representation of labour in the House of Commons. When the Independent Labour Party emerged in 1894 he was asked to be its leader, but refused on the ground that he differed on certain radical points with its views. He therefore remained its candid friend and critic to the end of his life. He was largely instru mental in 1884 in bringing about the party truce enabling the Franchise Bill to become law. It was at first rejected by the Lords unless accompanied by a redistribution of seats, a principle for which Dilke had long contended. It was eventually passed at the end of 1884 and the Redistribution Bill early in 1885.
"I never knew a man of his age, hardly ever a man of any age, more powerful and admired than was Dilke during his manage ment of the Redistribution Bill in 1885." Such was Sir George Trevelyan's verdict of a man who combined radical principles with an extraordinary authority on foreign affairs and a capacity for working with men of the most varied views when great questions were at stake. Nevertheless, when Dilke left the Local Government Board on June 24, 1885, on the defeat of the Glad stone ministry, he left official life for ever. At this point he was cited as co-respondent in a divorce suit brought by Donald Craw ford, Liberal M.P. for Lanark. Mrs. Crawford was the sister-in law of Dilke's brother Ashton and the proceedings caused great scandal. The case against Dilke was dismissed, but he determined to retire from public life. In 1884 he had become privately en gaged to Emilia Frances Pattison (nee Strong), the widow of Mark Pattison, herself an accomplished art critic and collector. She was in India when the blow fell. Her reply to the accusation was the publication of her engagement to Sir Charles Dilke in the Tines, and she married him on October 3, 1885 ; she died in 1904. Later, Chamberlain overruled his determination to retire from politics, and he was returned for the Forest of Dean in 1892 and for Chelsea once more in 19o5. Although his knowledge of foreign affairs and his powers as a critic and writer on military and naval questions were admittedly of the highest order, his official position in public life could not again be recovered. He was marked out in 1885 as the future leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, and there is little doubt that he might have become one of the great foreign ministers of Europe. He possessed a knowledge of the needs and aspirations of foreign countries rare among his contemporaries, and a definite policy to be pursued irrespective of party politics and the rise and fall of ministries. His military writings are The British Army (1888) ; Army Reform (1898) and, with Spenser Wilkinson, Imperial Defence (r892). On colonial questions he wrote with equal authority. His Greater Britain (2 vols., 1866-67) reached a fourth edition in 1868, and was followed by The Present Position of European Politics (1887), Problems of Greater Britain (2 vols., 189o) and The British Empire Emilia Frances, Lady Dilke, his second wife, was the author of a number of books, the most important being the studies on French Painters of the Eighteenth Century (1899) and three sub sequent volumes on the architects and sculptors, furniture and decoration, engravers and draughtsmen of the same period, the last of which appeared in 1902. A posthumous volume, The Book of the Spiritual Life (19o5 ), contains a memoir of her by Sir Charles Dilke. (E. F. M. S.) S. Gwynn and G. M. Tuckwell, Life of Sir Charles Dilke (2 vols., 1917) . Also published in abridged form by G. M. Tuckwell (1925) .