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Thomas Chalmers, 1780-1847.
Evangelical Scottish divine, economist and social reformer.
Born into a well-to-do Scottish merchant family of Austruther, Fife, the sixth of fourteen children. Thomas Chalmers was educated at a parochial school until the age of twelve, when he enrolled at the University of St. Andrews. He obtained his divinity degree in 1798 and his license as a preacher in the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland in 1799. In 1801, he was posted as an assistant in a small parish in Cavers (near Hawick, on the Scottish borders). In 1803, Chalmers was ordained and became minister to the parish of Kilmany (not far from St. Andrews). He would remain here for the next twelve years.
Chalmers commitment to the ministry was originally lukewarm, seeing it as merely a stepping stone to an academic career. Chalmers passion was mathematics and sciences, and his 1799-1801 interlude were partly spent at the University of Edinburgh, attending Dugald Stewart's lectures on philosophy and political economy and Playfair's lectures on mathematics and science. During his early years as minister in Kilmany, Chalmers was usually down the road at St. Andrews during the week, giving lectures in mathematics and chemistry (at first inside the university, and later outside of it, on his own). However, Chalmers attempts to teach were frowned upon by both university and church. After repeated failures to secure a chair at a Scottish university, Chalmers entertained launching a political career. To that end, Chalmers delved into economics literature (esp. Adam Smith), and in 1808, authored his first economics-related tract, on the impact of the Continental blockade. It is considered by some to be his best - or certainly his most original - economics work.
Chalmers's life took a dramatic spiritual turn around 1810 when he was asked to write an article on "Christianity" for Brewsters's Edinburgh Encyclopedia (the article was later re-printed as "Evidences on Christianity"). In the course of his research for the topic, Chalmers experienced a life-changing conversion to evangelical Christianity. Chalmers' "Evidences" article provoked a little theological storm in Scotland. Chalmers denounced rationalist 'natural theology' of Paley & co., rejecting it as unscientific speculation (relying partly on Hume's critique) and practically useless in evangelicizing, and recommended instead a 'historical' approach to evidence of revelation. Attacks on Chalmers's thesis, even charges of heresy, were mounted by opponents (e.g. Duncan Mearns of Aberdeen), but it only helped spread his ideas further. Chalmers mounted a defense of evangelical movement (hitherto regarded as irrational "enthusiasm"), as properly rational religion, and its reliance on 'revealed theology' as more scientifically sound than the 'natural theology' preferred by the formal establishment.
Gripped by his new evangelical fervor, Chalmers set aside his other ambitions and threw himself earnestly into his ministry. In 1815, Chalmers moved to Glasgow, taking up position initially at the Tron Church. Chalmers quickly made a name for himself as a vigorous preacher, organizer of bible societies and charities and tireless chapel-builder. His scientific tastes were not altogether dulled, and he shot to international fame with his discourses on astronomy (delivered 1815-16, published 1817), defending the compatibility of science and religion. The University of Glasgow conferred on Chalmers his D.D. in 1816.
It was while he was minister in Glasgow that Chalmers came face to face with the mass poverty of urban industrial slums. Not missing a beat, he resolved on a campaign of poor relief, a mix ofpaternalistic Christian charity and laissez faire economics. Unlike in England, Scottish Poor Laws were local and usually voluntary. Poor rates were traditionally collected and disbursed by the established Presbyterian Church, usually in the form of outdoor relief. In 1733, the city of Glasgow erected a "Hospital" (workhouse/poorhouse), financed by local rates Although collaborating at first, the Church and the Glasgow Hospital directors eventually entered into conflict with each other over the partition of administration and financing. This reached an apex in 1817, when the surge of unemployed led the directors to launch plans for a additional Hospital. A champion of private charity, Chalmers entered the fray, opposing the city's proposal to make rates legally compulsory. Chalmers believed the rates should remain voluntary, and that a portion of funds raised for poor relief would be more adequately spent on funding the erection of churches, to "encourage" religious spirit among the public, which would simultaneously decrease poverty and increase voluntary donations. Chalmers articulated his "cure" for poverty in sermons, pamphlets and articles in the Edinburgh Review. The city of Glasgow decided to give Chalmers's ideas an experimental run, and and in 1819 transferred him to the Church of St. John, where he was given charge of the parish funds for poor relief, to apply them according to his schemes. In 1822, he undertook a visit to England, to research its poor laws, and met (among others) Rev. Thomas Malthus.
In 1823, Chalmers gave up the pulpit to become a professor of moral philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, and took the opportunity to give a series of lectures on political economy. Thomas Chalmers's Christian and Civic Economy (1821-26) and more expansively in his Political Economy (1832), were attempts to reconcile rising field of economics with Christian principles and ethics, thus overcoming resistance of clergymen and universities to studying it. Chalmers articulated a roughly classical point of view, albeit more faithfully in the line of Thomas Malthus than Ricardo. Indeed, in several ways, Chalmers may be regarded as Malthus's one true disciple. Jumping into the economic controversies of the 1820s, Chalmers gave a strong defense of the Malthusian positions on both the population question (seeing it as an argument for expanding Christian education among the poor) and general gluts. He went further than Malthus in emphasizing the role of demand (e.g. p.98). He also went further in his general suspicion of foreign trade (or rather, finding free trade excessively fetishized by economists).
Although Chalmers cherished his 1832 Political Economy as the culmination of his economics, it was poorly received. It earned a rebuke by McCulloch in the Edinburgh Review, whom Chalmers deigned to respond with a follow-up tract. Nonetheless, Chalmers reputation survived it, even if a bit damaged. Chalmers provided evidence to several parliamentary committees, most famously the Doyle Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland in 1830 (Chalmers backed Catholic emancipation back in 1829, albeit opposed Parliamentary Reform in 1832). Chalmers was also a member of the BAAS, rising to vice-president of Section F (Economics & Statistics) in 1840.
By this time, Chalmers had already left St. Andrews, taking up the prestigious chair of theology at the University of Edinburgh in 1828. Despite the new field, Chalmers still managed to teach political economy (e.g. in 1830-31) and finish his 1832 Political Economy treatise, before focusing more full-heartedly on theology again. Chalmers put out a 1833 essay as part of the Bridgewater Treatises, in which he mitigated some of his earlier stridency against natural religion. But Chalmers remained a committed evangelical and an active supporter of voluntary associations and congregational rights inside the established Presbyterian Church of Scotland. This soon came into collision with the State-supported "right of patronage" (i.e. the right of the person who finances the erection of a church to appoints its minister). The issue of the right of parishioners to elect their ministers (and, more pointedly, rejecting a minister appointed by "patronage") had been long-gestating issue inside the church. The question had theoretical implications as to whether the established Church was a 'creation' of the State, created by parliamentary act and thus subordinate to it and its laws on property, or an autonomous institution, belonging collectively to the Scottish people, which the law only happened to recognize. Chambers was a champion of the "non-intrusion" faction inside the church, resisting the State-supported right of patronage, and writing several tracts for the "democratic" position. Things reached a climax in the "Disruption" of 1843, when a substantial portion of ministers seceded en masse from the General Assembly of the Church in Edinburgh and went on to form a "Free Church of Scotland" Chalmers was elected moderator of the first "Disruption Assembly" at Tanfield Hall, in May 1843.
As a result of leaving the established church, Chalmers forfeited his Edinburgh chair. Chalmers promptly set about raising funds to erect New College, a Free Church-associated theological college in Edinburgh, launched in 1846 (now part of the University of Edinburgh). He taught divinity at New College and remained an activist for the Free Church until his death in 1847.
Ostracized from the establishment after 1843, Chalmers could do little to stop the introduction of compulsory poor rates in Scotland. These were finally institutionalized in 1845, much to his bitterness.
Chalmers was one of the early contributors of the North British Review, a Christian non-sectarian review established in Edinburgh in 1844, publishing several articles on economic subjects. In one of his last publications, Chalmers authored a famous 1847 article on the Irish Famine, rejecting it as a self-inflicted problem or Divine Judgment on Irish Catholics, like some evangelicals were prone to do. Rather, Chalmers asserted Providence lay on Great Britain, and its reaction, and called on the British government, landowners and private Britons to assume responsibility for the relief of Ireland.
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