Lewis Goldsmith (c. 1763 – 6 January 1846) was an Anglo-Frenchpublicist.
In 1801, Goldsmith publishedThe Crimes of Cabinets, or a Review of the Plans and Aggressions for Annihilating the Liberties of France and the Dismemberment of her Territories, an attack on the military policy ofPitt. Soon afterward, in 1802, he moved from London toParis. ThereTalleyrand introduced him toNapoleon. With Napoleon's assistance, Goldsmith established theArgus, a biweekly publication in English reviewing English affairs from a French point of view.
In 1803, according to Goldsmith's own account, he was entrusted with a mission to obtain from theComte de Provence, the head of the French royal family and subsequent KingLouis XVIII, a renunciation of his claim to the throne of France in return for the throne ofPoland. The offer was declined. Goldsmith says he then received instructions to kidnap Louis, or to kill him if he resisted. Instead, Goldsmith revealed the plot. Until 1807, however, when hisRepublican sympathies began to wane, Goldsmith continued to undertake secret service missions on behalf of Napoleon.
Goldsmith's hand has been seen in theRevolutionary Plutarch of 1804–05, anémigré work edited in London, and with a title harking back to theBritish Plutarch ofThomas Mortimer. That would imply that Goldsmith was by then already playing a double game.[1]
Goldsmith returned to England in 1809. At first he was arrested and imprisoned, but soon was released and established himself as anotary in London. By 1811 he had become strongly anti-republican, founding theAnti-Gallican Monitor andAnti-Corsican Chronicle (subsequently known as theBritish Monitor) through which he now denounced the French Revolution. He proposed that a price be put on Napoleon's head by public subscription, but found himself condemned by the British government. In 1810 he publishedSecret History of the Cabinet of Bonaparte andRecueil des manifestes, proclamations, discours, etc. de Napoleon Buonaparte (Collection of the Decrees of Napoleon Bonaparte); and in 1812 he published aSecret History of Bonaparte's Diplomacy. He claimed Napoleon then offered him 200,000 [francs?] to discontinue his attacks. In 1815, he publishedAn Appeal to the Governments of Europe on the Necessity of Bringing Napoleon Bonaparte to a Public Trial.
In 1825, he moved back to Paris, publishing hisStatistics of France a few years later. His only child, Georgiana, become the second wife ofJohn Copley, 1st Baron Lyndhurst in 1837. He died 'of paralysis' after an illness lasting several months, in his home on the Rue de la Paix, Paris, on 6 January 1846.[2]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Goldsmith, Lewis".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 214.
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