BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE LATE REV. DR CHALMERS. 507 



Ireland ; or how, in the public mind, it did not produce a stronger feeling against 

 compulsory charity in general, I am not competent to decide. The facts are indis- 

 putable, and were, during the whole of Dr Chalmees' lifetime, after he left Glas- 

 gow, referred to in corroboration of the con-ectness of his theory, and as a standing 

 proof that charity, if left to itself, ivoidd supply means for the maintenance of the 

 poor, and a maintenance of a more suitable and effective nature than could be 

 done by a compulsory assessment. In all his treatises on Management of the 

 Poor, he alludes with unshaken confidence to the great Glasgow experiment. 



The complete and detailed account of the experiment will be found in four 

 articles, forming the general Appendix on Pauperism, in the sixteenth volume of 

 his collected Works, including his own evidence before the Committee of the House 

 of Commons on the subject of a poor-law for Ireland. Great prejudice existed 

 (in England especially) against the whole system, as harsh, and severe, and 

 cruel, and numerous objections were urged against the possibility of success. 

 One objection brought by the writers of articles on Poor-laws in the Quarterly 

 Review, against the plan of withholding an assessment for supporting the poor, 

 and throwing them on the natural or voluntary principle of charity, was an un- 

 just one, and indicated a misapprehension of the whole system upon which that 

 method was grounded. It was said that the principles advocated by Dr Chal- 

 mers were an encouragement to vagrancy and mendicity. Therefore, according 

 to this view, it was merely a question whether we were to have parish paupei-a or 

 highway and street beggars. But the writers of those articles did not consider 

 that on no point was Dr Chalmers' views of pauperism more decided than on the 

 discouragement of relief to common vagrants and beggars. The principles on which 

 the Glasgow experiment was accomplished, when carried through, would have 

 entirely put down common beggars ; and Dr Chalmers drew an ingenious and 

 novel argument against promiscuous charity from the example of our Lord, as re- 

 corded in the four Gospels. He healed all diseases and sickness in those who 

 came to him ; but only on two occasions did he supply by miracle the multitudes 

 With. food.. These were occasions of urgency ; and when he found that they came 

 to him idly and on account of food, he firmly withheld it. 



But, Su", I would now turn to another subject connected with the great ques- 

 tion of a nation's civic economy — and that is the Endowment of its Church and 

 Universities. On these points Dr Chalmers has written with remarkable force 

 and much enthusiasm. And he has propounded the compulsory endowment 

 theory for ecclesiastical and educational objects as vigorously as he has disclaimed 

 it for sustaining the poor. His essay " On Ecclesiastical and Academical Endow- 

 ments" has been described in the Quarterly Review (yo\. xliv., p. 527) " as one 

 of the most vigorous and eloquent defences of such endowments that ever pro- 

 ceeded from the press— a treatise which would alone have been sufficient to im- 

 mortalize its author." This is high praise from such a quarter : But I think it is 



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