mployment 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,[422] and 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.'[423] In 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