Chalmers's arguments are of interest mainly from their bearing upon his practical application of the Malthusian problem.His interest in the problem of pauperism had been stimulated by his residence in Glasgow,where from 1815to 1823he had been actively engaged in parochial duties.In 1819he had set up an organised system of charity in a poor district,which both reduced the expenditure and improved the condition of the poor.The experiment,though dropped some years later,became famous,and in later years Chalmers successfully started a similar plan in Edinburgh.It was this experience which gave shape to his Malthusian theories.He was,that is,a Malthusian in the sense of believing that the great problem was essentially the problem of raising the self-respect and spirit of independence of the poor.The great evil which confronted him in Glasgow was the mischief connected with the growth of the factory system.He saw,as he thought,the development of wealth leading to the degradation of the labourer.The great social phenomenon was the tendency to degeneration,the gradual dissolution of an organism,and corruption destroying the vital forces.On the one hand,this spectacle led him,as it led others,to look back fondly to the good old times of homely food and primitive habits,to the peasantry as represented in Burns's Cotter's Saturday Night or Scott's Heart of Midlothian ,when the poor man was part of a social,political,and ecclesiastical order,disciplined,trained,and self-respecting,not a loose waif and stray in a chaotic welter of separate atoms.These were the facts which really suggested his theory of the 'excrescent'population,produced by the overspeculation of capitalists,the paupers of Glasgow were 'excrescent,'and the 'gluts'were visible in the commercial crises which had thrown numbers of poor weavers out of employment and degraded them into permanent paupers.The facts were before his eyes,if the generalisation was hasty and crude,He held,on the other hand,that indiscriminate charity,and still more the establishment by poor-laws of a legal right to support,was stimulating the evil.The poor-law had worked incalculable mischiefs in England,31and he struggled vigorously,though unavailingly,to resist its introduction into Scotland.Chalmers,however,did not accept the theory ascribed to the Utilitarians,that the remedy for the evils was simply to leave things alone.He gives his theory in an article upon the connection between the extension of the church and the extinction of pauperism.He defends Malthus against the 'execrations'of sentimentalism.Malthus,he thinks,would not suppress but change the direction of beneficence.A vast expenditure has only stimulated pauperism.The true course is not to diminish the rates but to make them 'flow into the wholesome channel of maintaining an extended system of moral and religious instruction.'32In other words,suppress workhouses but build schools and churches;organise charity and substitute a systematic individual inspection for reckless and indiscriminate almsgiving.Then you will get to the root of the mischief.The church,supported from the land,is to become the great civilising agent.Chalmers,accordingly,was an ardent advocate of a church establishment.He became the leader of the Free Church movement not as objecting to an establishment on principle,but because he thought that the actual legal fetters of the Scottish establishment made it impossible to carry out an effective reorganisation and therefore unable to discharge its true functions.
Here Chalmers's economical theories are crossed by various political and ecclesiastical questions with which I am not concerned.His peculiarities as an economist bring out,I think,an important point.He shows how Malthus's views might be interpreted by a man who,instead of sharing,was entirely opposed to the ordinary capitalist prejudices.It would be idle to ask which was the more logical development of Malthus.When two systems are full of doubtful assumptions of fact and questionable logic and vague primary conceptions,that question becomes hardly intelligible.We can only note the various turns given to the argument by the preconceived prejudices of the disputants.By most of them the Malthusian view was interpreted as implying the capitalist as distinguished from the landowning point of view.