Goldwin Smith
Goldwin Smith was a British-born academic and historian who was active in both Great Britain and North America. From 1856 to 1866, he was a professor of modern history at the University of Oxford. Smith taught at Cornell University from 1868 to 1872, and was instrumental in establishing the university's international reputation, but left when it began admitting female students. He is the namesake of Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University, and was outspoken regarding his often controversial political views. Smith was a supporter of the Union during the American Civil War and a critic of imperialism. He was also opposed to the Irish Home Rule movement and women's suffrage, along with holding Anglo-Saxonist and antisemitic views.
Early life and education
Smith was born at Reading, Berkshire. He was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford, and after a brilliant undergraduate career he was elected to a fellowship at University College, Oxford. He threw his energy into the cause of university reform with another fellow of University College, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley. On the Royal Commission of 1850 to inquire into the reform of the university, of which Stanley was secretary, Smith served as assistant-secretary; and he was then secretary to the commissioners appointed by the act of 1854. His position as an authority on educational reform was further recognised by a seat on the Popular Education Commission of 1858. In 1868, when the question of reform at Oxford was again growing acute, he published a pamphlet, entitled The Reorganization of the University of Oxford.In 1865, he led the University of Oxford opposition to a proposal to develop Cripley Meadow north of Oxford railway station for use as a major site of Great Western Railway workshops. His father had been a director of GWR. Instead the workshops were located in Swindon. He was public with his pro-Northern sympathies during the American Civil War, notably in a speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in April 1863 and his Letter to a Whig Member of the Southern Independence Association the following year.
Besides the Universities Tests Act 1871, which abolished religious tests, many of the reforms suggested, such as the revival of the faculties, the reorganisation of the professoriate, the abolition of celibacy as a condition of the tenure of fellowships, and the combination of the colleges for lecturing purposes, were incorporated in the act of 1877, or subsequently adopted by the university. Smith gave the counsel of perfection that "pass" examinations ought to cease; but he recognised that this change "must wait on the reorganization of the educational institutions immediately below the university, at which a passman ought to finish his career." His aspiration that colonists and Americans should be attracted to Oxford was later realised by the will of Cecil Rhodes. On what is perhaps the vital problem of modern education, the question of ancient versus modern languages, he pronounced that the latter "are indispensable accomplishments, but they do not form a high mental training" – an opinion entitled to peculiar respect as coming from a president of the Modern Language Association.
Oxford years
He held the Regius professorship of Modern History at Oxford from 1858 to 1866, that "ancient history, besides the still unequalled excellence of the writers, is the 'best instrument for cultivating the historical sense." As a historian, indeed, he left no abiding work; the multiplicity of his interests prevented him from concentrating on any one subject. His chief historical writings – The United Kingdom: a Political History, and The United States: an Outline of Political History — though based on thorough familiarity with their subject, make no claim to original research, but are remarkable examples of terse and brilliant narrative. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1865.The outbreak of the American Civil War proved a turning point in his life. He quickly began championing the Union cause, and his pamphlets, especially one entitled Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery?, played a prominent part in hardening British public opinion against the Confederate States of America. Visiting America on a lecture tour in 1864, he received an enthusiastic welcome, and was entertained at a public banquet in New York. Andrew Dickson White, president of Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, invited him to take up a teaching post at the newly founded institution. But it was not until a dramatic change in Smith's personal circumstances that led to his departure from England in 1868, that he took up the post. He had resigned his chair at Oxford in 1866 in order to attend to his father, who had suffered permanent injury in a railway accident. In the autumn of 1867, when Smith was briefly absent, his father took his own life. Possibly blaming himself for the tragedy, and now without an Oxford appointment, he decided to move to North America.
Cornell years
Smith's time at Cornell was brief, but his impact there was significant. He held the professorship of English and Constitutional History in the Department of History at Cornell University from 1868 to 1872. The addition of Smith to Cornell's faculty gave the newly opened university "instant credibility." Smith was something of an academic celebrity, and his lectures were sometimes printed in New York newspapers. During Smith's time at Cornell he accepted no salary and provided much financial support to the institution.In 1869, he had his personal library shipped from England and donated to the university. He lived at Cascadilla Hall among the students, and was much beloved by them. In 1871 Smith moved to Toronto to live with relatives, but retained an honorary professorship at Cornell and returned to campus frequently to lecture. When he did, he insisted on staying with the students at Cascadilla Hall rather than in a hotel. Smith bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the University in his will.
Smith's abrupt departure from Cornell was credited to several factors, including the Ithaca weather, Cornell's geographic isolation, Smith's health, and political tensions between Britain and America. But the decisive factor in Smith's departure was the university's decision to admit women. Goldwin Smith told White that admitting women would cause Cornell to "sink at once from the rank of a University to that of an Oberlin or a high school" and that all "hopes of future greatness" would be lost by admitting women.
On June 19, 1906, Goldwin Smith Hall was dedicated, at the time Cornell's largest building and its first building dedicated to the humanities, as well as the first home to the College of Arts and Sciences. Smith personally laid the cornerstone for the building in October 1904 and attended the 1906 dedication. The Cornell Alumni News observed on the occasion, "To attempt to express even in a measure the reverence and affection which all Cornellians feel for Goldwin Smith would be attempting a hopeless task. His presence here is appreciated as the presence of no other person could be."
Life in Toronto
Smith settled permanently in Toronto in the 1870s after marrying Harriet Elizabeth, widow of William Henry Boulton, and lived at her family home, The Grange, for the rest of his life.While resident in the city he became a prominent man of letters and controversialist: he helped launch and write for the Canadian Monthly and National Review, issued a one-man monthly, The Bystander, and then became part-proprietor and a leading contributor to the weekly The Week.
Alongside his journalism, Smith took part in Toronto’s civic and academic life. He advocated university reform, regularly attended University of Toronto functions, and in 1905 accepted appointment to a royal commission on the university; a 1906 act created a new board of governors on which he served. He also examined classics at Upper Canada College, reflecting his continued engagement with local education.
In 1896 Smith acquired a controlling interest in the Canada Farmers’ Sun —often referred to simply as The Farmer’s Sun—using it to argue for free trade and other positions he championed in his later years.
He was elected a Foreign Member of the American Antiquarian Society in October 1893. He continued to publish pamphlets and letters and to circulate reminiscences such as My Memory of Gladstone.
Smith died at The Grange on 7 June 1910.
Political views
He continued to take an active interest in English politics. As a Liberal, he opposed Benjamin Disraeli, and was a strong supporter of Irish Disestablishment, but refused to follow Gladstone in accepting Home Rule. He expressly stated that "if he ever had a political leader, his leader was John Bright, not Mr Gladstone." Causes that he powerfully attacked were Prohibition, female suffrage and state socialism, as he discussed in his Essays on Questions of the Day. He also published sympathetic monographs on William Cowper and Jane Austen, and attempted verse in Bay Leaves and Specimens of Greek Tragedy. In his Guesses at the Riddle of Existence, he abandoned the faith in Christianity that he had expressed in his lecture of 1861, Historical Progress, in which he forecast the speedy reunion of Christendom on the "basis of free conviction," and wrote in a spirit "not of Agnosticism, if Agnosticism imports despair of spiritual truth, but of free and hopeful inquiry, the way for which it is necessary to clear by removing the wreck of that upon which we can found our faith no more."Anglo-Saxonism
Smith is considered by historian Edward P. Kohn to be a "devout Anglo-Saxonist", a racial belief system developed by British and American intellectuals, politicians and academics in the 19th century. In his view, Smith defined the "Anglo-Saxon race" as not necessarily being limited to English people, but extended to the Welsh and Lowland Scots, though not the Irish. Speaking in 1886, he proclaimed that he was standing "by the side of John Bright against the dismemberment of the great Anglo-Saxon community of the West, as I now stand against the dismemberment of the great Anglo-Saxon community of the East." These words formed the key to his views of the future of the British Empire and he was a leading member of the anti-imperialist "Little Englander" movement.Smith thought that Canada was destined by geography to become part of the United States. In his view, separated by artificial north–south barriers, into zones communicating naturally with adjoining portions of the United States, Canada was an artificially constructed and badly-governed nation. In his view, it would eventually break away from the British Empire, and the "Anglo-Saxons" of the North American continent would become one nation. These views are most fully developed in his work Canada and the Canadian Question. Smith's views on the future of Canada–United States relations were criticised by Canadian priest George Monro Grant in the Canadian Magazine.