Sydney Smith

Sydney Smith (born June 3, 1771, Woodford, Essex, Eng.—died Feb. 22, 1845, London) was one of the foremost English preachers of his day, and a champion of parliamentary reform. Through his writings, he perhaps did more than anyone else to change public opinion regarding Roman Catholic emancipation. Smith was also famous for his wit and charm.

Smith’s father refused to let him study law, and after leaving Oxford he was ordained in the Church of England. He later attended lectures in moral philosophy, chemistry, and medicine at the University of Edinburgh. There he made many friends, among them Henry Brougham and Francis Jeffery, with whom, in 1802, he cofounded The Edinburgh Review. He continued to write for that periodical for 25 years, and his trenchant articles were a main element in its success. In 1803 he moved to London, and in 1804 he gave the first of a series of lectures in moral philosophy, which people flocked to hear for their blend of good sense and wit. When the predominantly Whig ministry took office in 1806, Smith received the living of Foston-le-Clay, Yorkshire. He left London for Yorkshire in 1809.

Meanwhile, in March 1807, the Whigs had been forced to resign on the question of Roman Catholic emancipation, which Smith supported. In 1807 he wrote the first of several famous Letters of Peter Plymley to My Brother Abraham Who Lives in the Country, attacking what he saw as Protestant ignorance, obscurantism, and bigotry. Its success was immediate, and it was followed by four more letters published in 1807 and five in 1808.

Smith won his Yorkshire parishioners’ affection through his energy and cheerfulness, and he continued to write effective polemics on the Roman Catholic question. In 1828 he gained preferment, being installed as prebend of Bristol Cathedral. The Whigs came to power, and it was expected that he would be a bishop; but opposition to him proved strong. Eventually he succeeded in becoming a canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, which necessitated his living in the capital three months a year.

Smith had married in 1800, and in 1829 his eldest son died. This caused him lasting grief, and yet his later essays (notably the “Singleton Letters” of 1837 and 1838–39 on church affairs and his petition and letters of 1843 to The Morning Chronicle on Pennsylvania’s suspension of interest on its bonds) are as vigorous and spirited as the best of his early pieces for The Edinburgh Review. On his brother Courtenay’s death in 1839, Smith inherited a fortune, bought a house in London, and lived there until his death.