Sydney Smith | Page 5

it credible to me." When stirred to the
liveliest indignation by the iniquities which a Tory Government is
practising in Ireland, he exclaims--"A Senior Proctor of the University
of Oxford, the Head of a House, or the examining chaplain to a Bishop,
may believe these things can last; but every man of the world, whose
understanding has been exercised in the business of life, must see (and
see with a breaking heart) that they will soon come to a fearful
termination." He praised a comparison of the Universities to "enormous
hulks confined with mooring-chains, everything flowing and
progressing around them," while they themselves stood still.
When pleading for a wider and more reasonable course of studies at
Oxford, he says:--
"A genuine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young men
disputing upon moral and political truth, forming and putting down
theories, and indulging in all the boldness of youthful discussion. He
would augur nothing from it but impiety to God and treason to Kings."
Protesting against the undue predominance of classical studies in the
Universities, as at the Public Schools, he says:--
"Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. Many minds so
employed have produced many works, and much fame in that
department: but if all liberal arts and sciences useful to human life had
been taught there; if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some
to mathematics, some to experimental philosophy; and if every
attainment had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and
utility; the system of such an University would have been much more
valuable, but the splendour of its name something less."

The hopelessness of any attempt to reform the curriculum of Oxford by
opening the door to Political Economy is stated with characteristic
vigour.--
"When an University has been doing useless things for a long time, it
appears at first degrading to them to be useful A set of lectures upon
Political Economy would be discouraged in Oxford, possibly despised,
probably not permitted. To discuss the Enclosure of Commons, and to
dwell upon imports and exports--to come so near to common life,
would seem to be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner,
the Parr or the Bentley of his day would be scandalised to be put on a
level with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet what other measure is
there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness and difficulty?
And what ought the term University to mean, but a place where every
science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to
mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature
within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to these tests in
our appreciation of all human knowledge. The puffed-up pedant would
collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses and the
rememberer of words would soon assume that station which is the lot
of those who go up unbidden to the upper places of the feast."
In 1810 he wrote, with reference to the newly-invented Examination for
Honours at Oxford:--
"If Oxford is become at last sensible of the miserable state to which it
was reduced, as everybody else was out of Oxford, and if it is making
serious efforts to recover from the degradation into which it was
plunged a few years past, the good wishes of every respectable man
must go with it."
And again:--
"On the new plan of Oxford education we shall offer no remarks. It has
many defects; but it is very honourable to the University to have made
such an experiment. The improvement upon the old plan is certainly
very great; and we most sincerely and honestly wish to it every species
of success."

His opinions on the subject of the Universities did not mellow with age.
As late as 1831 he wrote of a friend who had just sent his son to
Cambridge:--
"He has put him there to spend his money, to lose what good qualities
he has, and to gain nothing useful in return. If men had made no more
progress in the common arts of life than they have in education, we
should at this moment be dividing our food with our fingers, and
drinking out of the palms of our hands."
It was just as bad when a lady sent her son to his own University.--
"I feel for her about her son at Oxford, knowing, as I do, that the only
consequences of a University education are the growth of vice and the
waste of money."
In 1792 Sydney Smith took his degree,[5] and now the question of a
profession had to be faced and decided. It was necessary that he should
begin to make money at once, for the pecuniary resources of the family,
narrow at the