THOMAS CHALMERS AND THE ‘GODLY COMMONWEALTH’

‘See Dr Chalmers' excellent Work on Endowments’, noted Whately in the preface to his Introductory Lectures (1831, X). His advice contains, in the smallest possible compass, the essence of Chalmers's contribution to Christian Political Economy.

This is not to say that the particular book referred to – On the Use and Abuse of Literary and Ecclesiastical Endowments (1827), a copy of which Chalmers had presented to Whately when they met at Oxford in 1830 (Hanna 1849–52, III, 278–9, 288–9) – contains the clearest or the fullest statement of Chalmers's position. It is rather that his chief contribution to the ideological alliance between political economy and Christian theology consists of an altogether novel defence of the established churches in the British Isles. For during the final decades of the ancien régime there was mounting attack upon the establishment in church and state, particularly upon the Churches of England and Ireland. And Chalmers – not to put too fine a point upon it – attempted to prove by means of economic theory that church establishment was the only way to raise the condition of the poor and so to make the world safe for property.

With the solitary exception of his ill-starred National Resources (1808), Chalmers's intellectual achievements were distinctly inferior in quality to those of his predecessors considered in this book. Yet far more has been written about him, especially in the way of biography, than any, with the possible exception of Malthus.