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scale of moral and physical wellbeing, that any pauperism which 
they might still produce could easily be relieved by the voluntary 
bounty of Christian benevolence. For this purpose he made the 
rather startling demand, that at least twenty new parishes and 
churches should be established in Glasgow. He was gratified to the 
extent of having one new church erected and assigned to him for 
the trial of his great experiment ; and it is possible that by his own 
unwearied diligence and unrivalled influence, together with the 
auxiliary exertions of another most remarkable man, Edward Irving, 
who was given him as his assistant, the pauperism of his district may 
have been kept within manageable bounds, and sufficiently relieved by 
the spontaneous offerings of the wealthier parishioners. But it was 
obviously impossible that any such system could be established over 
the whole country ; and even if such machinery had been provided, 
nothing short of a miracle could have supplied men like Chalmers 
and Irving in every district to carry out the plan. At the com- 
mencement of the attempt, doubts were raised by judicious thinkers 
as to its probable success ; and subsequent reflection and experience 
soon converted those doubts into certainties, and produced a general 
conviction that _the scheme was Utopian. 
The views of Ur Alison on this important subject were essen- 
tially different. Indulging in no chimerical anticipations, better 
suited to a prophetical millennium than to the everyday state of 
actual things, he looked earnestly to the evils that were immedi- 
ately operating or impending, and sought anxiously to remedy or 
avert them. He maintained that a compulsory contribution for the 
poor was indispensable. It was the only way of interesting the 
selfish portion of the rich in the welfare of their poorer brethren, 
by inducing them to take measures for diminishing pauperism, so 
as to save themselves from taxation. He contended that the relief 
of destitution could not be safely left to the precarious care of vo- 
luntary charity, but should at all hazards be provided for so as to 
keep up the general tone of society, and save it from moral and 
physical evils of the first magnitude. Destitution, he conceived, 
when without regular relief, tended to lower the standard of sub- 
sistence among the poor to an alarming degree, and to make them 
forget that there was any better state of things which it was worth 
their while as Christians, or as human beings, to aspire to. Desti- 
tution, he further asserted, and his assertion seemed to be proved by 
yol. iy. 2 G 
