The Express.
London, England, 1864-11-28 00:00:00

PROFESSOR GOLDWIN SMITH IN AMERICA.

On the 12th inst. Professor Goldwin Smith was
eisibrained at the rooms of the Union League Club by •
large number of the mon prominent citizen of New York.
An elegant breakfast was served In his honour. Among the
persons present were Bishop Potter, Profaner J. W.
Dwight, Dr. Willard Parker, John Jay, Professor Deeper,
George Bsactroft, Rev. Drs. Cone and Osgood, William
0. Bryant, George Griswold, Dr. Horace Webster, Dr,
Bellows, H. J. Raymond, G. W. Curtis, Parke Godwin,
Wm. IL Evart; Peter Cooper, and other', about seventy in
all, representing nearly every profession sod the beat classes
Of society in America.
At the conclusion of an address read by Mr. Jay, Pro-
fence Smith responded. Before he began the company
roes to their feet and gave him an impressive welcome. He
spoke as follows :
" Gentlemen—l received your invitation to this enter.
Shipment, as I have received all the kindness which has
welcomed me here, with feelinp at once of pleasure and
embarrassment of pleasure at finding that an Englishman
who, like you, loves liberty and social justice, has in
America • second home ; of embarrassment, and almost of
shame, when I think how little I can possibly have done to
merit such attentions. If a mere writer could ever have been
led by this kind welcome to overestimate he own sera
vices, such feelings would have been banished from my
mind when I was present at • soldier's funeral and saw
borne past me the body of one who has given to this cause
not mere words of sympathy but • young, promising, and
happy life. I was not even among the first to perceive the
claims of your cause upon our sympathies, though from the
time when it came clear out of the mete which at first
surrounded it, as the cause not only of your territorial
greatness but of humanity and civilisatioe, and brought
out the nobler part of the national character, which to the
eye of distant spectators had been at first obscured, it has
received the deep and unwavering allegiance of my
heart. On all grounds, then, I accept this honour not
for myself, but for the great party in England of which I
em
an adherent, end which has followed you with its good
wishes through this great struggle. Would that Cobden or
Bright were here in my place to represent your English
friends more worthily, and to acknowledge this tribute in
better words than my unpractised tongue can command. In
truth, little gratitude is due from you to any English liberal
who has raised his voice in support of this cause. It is our
came as well as yours. Our hopes of political progress have
sunk with your calamities. They will revive with your
victories ; they will revive with your victories over your
enemies in the field ; they will revive dill more with your
moral victories at home. The tidings are now on their way to
England for which English liberal' have been waiting with
intense anxiety, and which will fill their heart" with gra-
titude, joy, and renewed hope. This great triumph—this
great ratification of the principles for which you have done
and steered so much, and on which your commonwealth is
founded—will cause almost as much exultatiou in England
as it ia causing here. I came here partly in pursuance
of my vocation as • student of history, to verify the theory
which I had formed. I came to see whether the progress
of humanity, which I had learned to trace through all the
ages, and believed to be perpetual, had been arrested hers.
I shall return convinced that it has not been arrested. I
was told that my visit to America would modify my liberal
opinions. In a certain sense I own they have been modified.
Till I came here I was—not a revolutionist, for no man
can more heartily abhor violent revolutions—but
somewhat impatient of political evils, and anxious
for vehement effort and for immediate change. I shall
return with my impatience allayed by a calm assurance of
the future. Yon will succeed in your great experiment,
and we shall in the end feel, in the solution of our political
problems, the beneficent efforts of your success. I came
also to see a great political crisis. Would that all those
who love and all those who mistrust free institutions, could
have seen it also ! Would that they could have witnessed
as I have the majestic calmness with which, under aireum-
steno's the most perilous and exciting, the national decision
has been pronounced. Here is no anarchy, no military
dictatorship. In the midst of civil war a civilian is re-
elected u President by a constitutional process as tranquil
as an English Sabbath day. And no king is more secure
in the allegiance of his subjects than in the Presi-
dent in the allegiance of all—even those who voted
against him—beneath hie elective rule. 1 would, too, that
the English people could witness as I witness the spirit of
humanity which retains its power over all the passions of
civil war potwithstanding the greatest provocations ; and
the nonce, which has most forcibly struck me during my
residence here, of any bloodthirsty sentiment or any feeling
of malignant hatred towards those who are now your an-
tagonists in • civil war, but whom, when they shall have
submitted to the law, you will again eagerly welcome as
fellow-citizens, and receive back into the fall communion of
the free. Many • prejudice, many an error would be dis-
pelled, many a harsh judgment would be cancelled, many •
bitter word recalled, if only my countrymen could behold
with their own eyes what I have beheld and now
behold. I will on this amain dwell on the pre-
sent state of feeling in England towards this coun-
try. You know by this time that we are not, as • section
of our press would represent us to be, united in sympathy
with your enemies, but that in this as on other political
questions we are divided among ourselves, and that the
DAY of our people are on your side. Mr. Ward Beecher,
who is hare preseet, must have sufficiently soured you of
this fact. Bat I cannot omit on any occasion, least of all
on this occasion and in this city, to protest that all Eng-
lishmen who have any regard for the honour of Engles],
or even for her real interest as a commercial nation, repro.
bate and abhor the conduct of those shipbuilders and mar-
chants of Liverpool whose ignoble cupidity, regardless alike
of public morality and of the welfare of their country, has
brought the two nations to the verge of • desolating
war. No part of the address which Mr. Jay has read
finds a more cordial response in my heart, or will find a
more cordial reponse in the hearts of my friends, than that
which promises future goodwill and peace between England
and America. One great cause of our trinket earsege-
mint has been removed, as Mr. Jay has most truly re-
marked, since the skveowner has ceased to fill your coun-
cils with his tyrannical spirit, and to inhume the animosity
of your people against • nation which, with all her
shortcomings and with all her faults, has been
the sincere, constant, and active enemy of slavery.
In the councils of England too—at least in the general
sentiments of our nation--• change favourable to the
continuance of ,friendly relations with your country
will not fail to ensue when, the alien form of slavery
having disappeared, your institutions shall stand forth
In their true lineament' and native character,
as the first attempt in the history of the world to found •
great community on the principles, on which alone a com-
munity worthy of the name can be founded, of common
Interest and equal right. Your cause, as I said before, is
ours • it is the mum of the whole human moo. That all
the sacrifices you have made for it may be abundantly
repaid, that speedy victory may attend your arms, that
victory may be followed by perfect reconciliation and the
healing of all the wounds which civil war has made, and
that you may be guided by the spirit of wisdom and of
patriotism through the work of reeooatructioo, sod all the
difficulties and problem' which remain, is the earnest
prayer of thousands and tens of thousands of English hearts,
and of none more than mine."

Professor Smith's remarks elicited frequent and euthu.
elastic applause, and were heard throughout with the
deepest attention.

Letters from President Lincoln and Secretary Fessendeu
were thee read, and William M. Everts was called upon
by the chair, and made a speech. He was followed by
General Butler, Rey. Dr. Core, George Bancroft, George
William Curtis, Attired* Langel, Professor Boit., Lr.
Thompson, A. A. Lowe, Parke Godwin, Rev. Dr. Bellows,
Charlie King, S. B. Ruggles Peter Cooper, Rev. Mr.
Putnam, William R. Dodge, Rev. Dr. Osgood, and Jonathan
Sturges.

During the proceedings letters from Calera Halleek,
Attorney-Geeeral Bates, Gewevel Dix, Edward Everett. W.
M. Meredith, Protean Taylor Leiria, and others, who
could not be present, were read.

On Friday evening Lord Grosvenor left Vale
Royal, near Chilton Park, for Halveley Hall. Shortly after
startle, the driver was thrown of the box, and a wheel
pained over his arm. The footman jumped down to pick
up the driver, and immediately the hones dashed off at a
torrid' paca lib lordship jumped out, and had a narrow
escape. The bosses cautioned to gallop on, and were not
I stooped until they had gone a distance of ten miles.
The case of poisoning at a village near Wrexham,
reported a few days since, has bees much more fatal than
wee at Ana antpated. Four children, with their father
and mother, took ill slaw breakfast about a week ago, and
all of them showed symptoms of having been poisoned. The
mother and the whole of the children are now deed ; brit
the father, It is hoped, will recover. A loaf of braid is
supposed to have been the medium by which the poison
was conveyed to them, bat this is by no mesas clear, as the
kind baa not yet been analysed,