The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-06 00:00:00

Professor Goldwin Smith in America.

(From the Quebec Chronicle, 23d Dec., 1864.)
Mr. Goldwin Smith has gathered no laurels in
America. He has simply made a fool of himself,
and brought discredit upon the University in which
so much ignorance and pretension is permitted to
fill a Professor's chair. He might, as the World
puts it, have remained in England, picking up.scraps
of more or less accurate information about American
affairs from. his correspondents on this side of the
Atlantic, and transmuting them into essays, ar-
ticles, and pamphlets, without particularly imperil-
ing his reputation either for candonr or for capa-
city. But this would not suit the radical Professor ;
he has an idea that he is a heaven-born reformer,
and with the true instinct of his tribe obtrudes his
spoke into every one's wheel, under the full convic-
tion that his intuitive genius will be everywhere ap-
preciated according to his own measure. It is some-
what strange that your old-world republicans don't
find the American stripe exactly of the same tint
which they have been accustomed to regard as the
true pigment. Nor does our western democracy
take kindly to the. doctrines of European repub-
licanism. Our cousins of the United States are
the most self-reliant people in the world. They
believe themselves capable of understanding
their own affairs, and have as little re-
spect for Professors as for Princes. They will
play with and lionize either for the time, but
only on condition that their own matters
are not interfered with, and that their prejudices be
flattered. But the amusement and the novelty of a
celebrity, with a handle to his name, once over,
there ends the intimacy ; and if Jonathan's particu-
lar corn be subsequently trodden upon, woe to the
transgressor. Let all who visit Yankee land govern
themselves by the Thackeray rather than the Dickens
rule. Spout as much abuse of Britain as you will,
but not one word of criticism upon American pecu-
liarities, or down you go in the category of that
most contemptuous of all American superlatives,
"aristocrat." But let us do the Americans justice.
They have as little respect fore. birds that are prone
to defile their own nest as any people on earth.
They may have their national vanity tickled by hear-
ing Englishmen talk treason or vilify their native
land and its institutions, but we have never known
these vagabond dispensers of their own unworthiness
command any permanent respect among the Ame-
rican people. They may love to hear the country,
with which their greatest pride is to compete, run
down by one of her own treacherous children, but.
the native shrewdness of the American tells him
that the country which he would rival is neither
base, nor its institutions despicable—if he loves his
republic he does not necessarily hate all other coun-
tries. Yet such is the mistake these old-country
republicans invariably make and as invariably repeat
when they visit America. Such has been the case
with Mr. Smith. He, like less pretentious men, has
hoped ake the good-will of the people he was
visiting by storm. He was a species of pedagogue,
and assumed the air of a teacher. The consequence
has been a lamentable exposure of ignorance, and
elimination of general contempt. He has chosen to
take upon himself the character of a political parti-
san, and for his pains he is justly visited by the in-
dignation alike of the Republicans and the Demo-
crats. Mr. Goldwin Smith has scarcely deigned to
visit Canada ; but England in general, and the
University of Oxford in particular, will, no doubt,
be enlightened upon the great question which now
now agitates the British Provinces. Let us fore
warn our friends at home, that the Professor is now
as ignorant upon colonial matters, as far as experi-
ence leaves him, as he was when he formerly penned
his stupid and unpatriotic letters upon that subject.
We shall now leave Mr Smith in the hands of the
New York World:—
Mr. Goldwin Smith, boldly crossing and recrossing the
Atlantic, will find himself subjected, on his return to his
native land, to a similarly severe ordeal. He will no longer
be permitted to talk twaddle unchallenged. Coming here
as a confessed admirer of the Republican party, and openly
committed to the advocacy of the Republican policy,
scholars and gentlemen in England will expect him to
bring back to them some evidences that has mingled with
the opponents of the Republican party in America, and has
sought, at least, to ascertain the reasons of the political
faith by which more than two millions of American citizens
were led to record their votes, at the last presidential elec-
tion, against the party and the policy of President Lincoln.
A professor of history, like a married man, has "given
hostages to fortune." He is not at liberty to be a domestic
partisan ; still less at liberty to be the attorney of a foreign
party. It were better for such an one "that a millstone
were fastened about his neck, and that he were cast into
the sea," than that he should be forced, as Mr. Goldwin
Smith, if he'opens his lips on American affairs after his
return to England will be forced, to confess that he brought
to America a set of opinions in respect to American affairs
—that he associated in America exclusively with those
who held the like opinions, and that he returns to his own
country under a commercial contract to supply political
disquisitions to an accredited organ of those opinions in the
United States.
This might answer-well enough with political adven-
turers like Mr. George Thompson. But we mistake the
character of academical England if such an exhibition of
himself can be advantageously made by a person holding a
respectable position in a great English university.
The disgust which such a spectacle, it strikes us, must
excite in the breast of every educated Englishman will
not be lessened by the circumstance that Mr. Goldwin
Smith, almost ere the ink was dry with which he had re-
corded his impertinent exultations over the defeat of the
Democratic party in America, as the "escape of England
from a great danger of war with the United States," has
been compelled to take back with him to England the
stinging insults offered by Mr. Seward to Great Britain in
his letter on Lord Wharncliffe's correspondence with Mr.
Adams.
Mr. Goldwin Smith goes back to England branded by his
friends of the " Loyal League" with the pleasing informa-
tion that we in America possess the power, without taking
away a single soldier now facing the rebels, to brush away
Canada like gossamer; and without taking a single ship from
our blockade squadrons, to sink every ship in the British
navy as if they were cockle-shells ;" and that if we forbear
to exert this power under a Republican administration, it
is only because "we quietly reserve for a future settle-
ment" those English outrages which it suits us not just

JOURNALS ,

earth. His time has come, and his system shall
be in the ascendant." And Mr. Bright illustrates
his position by references to the great mercantile
cities of other days. We own to having been sur-
prised. Of which is it that Mr. Bright is
ignorant ?—of the history of those times, or of the
condition of his own country ? Those cities, almost
without exception, were cities of depot rather than.
centres of manufacture, and their riches were con-
stituted of the gains of merchants, not of the pro-
fits of manufacturers. Venice, and other Powers
like Venice, decayed till decay ended in extinction
partly from ill government, but mainly because:
commerce took to a highway that did not lead.
through her, just as a street, or one side of a.
street, in London falling into desuetude involves
the ruin of those who keep shops in it. Venice
died away because she had no territorial system
to fall back upon. Circumstances diverted the stream
of trade, and she died of inanition ; as we should
have died when the cotton famine came upon us had_
the spirit of Mr. Bright administered the affairs of
England from the time of Queen Elizabeth to the
days of Queen Victoria. How is it that we have
escaped such a fate? Why is it that, notwithstand-
ing the great disaster, notwithstanding the loss of
the raw material which sustained the staple indus-
try of Lancashire, we are wealthier and stronger,
and more completely armed for attack or defence,
than we have ever been since we took a place in the
system of nations? It is because we are not mere
merchants, because the great bulk of our manufac-
tures are intimately connected with, originate in,
and are supported by our territorial produce. It is
because our land at home and in our colonies pro-
duces not only corn and wool alone, but minerals
beneath the surface of the earth. We are a great
central depot for trade ; trade centres in us, and
radiates from us because we have, with the excep-