In the summer of 1870 Smith wrote to Oxford friends Max Mueller and George Waring about the advance of Germany in Europe, the Fenian raid he had witnessed in Canada, and about life in a small American college. Letters to George Howell, secretary of the Reform League in Britain, were largely devoted to politics, as were those written to James Bryce and Gladstone. To George W. Curtis, Daniel Willard Fiske, and Edwin Lawrence Godkin he wrote about American politics and Cornell. The introduction of coeducation by Cornell's administrators without due consultation with the faculty was one consideration that led Smith to loosen his ties to the University and make a home for himself with relatives in Toronto. He solicited stories and articles in the fall of 1871 for the new Canadian Monthly, which he helped manage. In the spring of 1873 he contributed articles and financial support to the weekly Nation and in 1876 he invested in a new independent newspaper, the Evening Telegram.Smith's candid comments on men and events led to a long controversy with Globe editor George Brown and another with the chief superintendent of public instruction for Ontario. Smith planned to return as a paid professor to deliver a six-month course of lectures at Cornell in 1875, but instead, in September, he married, and thereafter made his wife's home, the "Grange", his headquarters. In October of 1876 the Smiths left Canada for a prolonged visit to England and the Continent. Some correspondents addressed on the reel are Edward Blake, Charles Lindsey, John A. Macdonald, and John X. Merriman.