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Professor James Thomson Sr. and Lord Kelvin: Religion, Science, and Liberal Unionism in Ulster and Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Andrew R. Holmes
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 100 - 124
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2011

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References

1 The standard modern biography is Smith, Crosbie and Wise, N. M., Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar. Please note that William Thomson is referred to throughout this article as Kelvin, to distinguish him from his father, who is referred to as Thomson.

2 Morus, Iwan Rhys, When Physics Became King (Chicago, 2005), 84–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 In addition to Smith and Wise, Kelvin's Irish connections have been charted in other publications. See esp. “Kelvin and Ireland: 7 December 2007,” Journal of Physics conf. ser. 158 (2009), http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/1742-6596/158/1. See also Flood, Raymond, McCartney, Mark, and Whitaker, Andrew, eds., Kelvin: Life, Labours and Legacy (Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCartney, Mark, “William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), 1824–1907,” in Physicists of Ireland: Passion and Precision, ed. McCartney, Mark and Whitaker, Andrew (Bristol, 2003), 116–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Denis Weare, “William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), 1824–1907,” in Creators of Mathematics: The Irish Connection, ed. Ken Houston (Dublin, 2000), 55–62.

4 A sophisticated and satisfactory account may be found in David Hempton and Myrtle Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, 1740–1890 (London, 1992), 161–87. For another reading, see Miller, Kerby A., “Ulster Presbyterians and the ‘Two Traditions' in Ireland and America,” in These Fissured Isles: Varieties of British and Irish Identities, ed. Brotherstone, Terry, Clark, Anna, and Whelan, Kevin (Edinburgh, 2005), 260–77, and “‘Heirs of Freedom' or ‘Slaves to England'? Protestant Society and Unionist Hegemony in Nineteenth-Century Ulster,” Radical History Review 104 (Spring 2009): 17–40.Google Scholar

5 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 3–19.

6 Ibid., xxi.

7 Ibid., 12.

8 Ibid., 801.

9 Ibid., 810.

10 Noll, M. A., The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitfield and the Wesleys (Leicester, 2004)Google Scholar; Wolffe, John, The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, More, Chalmers and Finney (Leicester, 2006)Google Scholar; Bebbington, D. W., The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody (Leicester, 2005).Google Scholar

11 Hilton, Boyd, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; Larsen, Timothy, Friends of Religious Equality: Nonconformist Politics in Mid-Victorian England (Woodbridge, 1999)Google Scholar; McColl, A. W., Land, Faith, and the Crofting Community: Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland, 1843–1893 (Edinburgh, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 14.

13 For the development of evangelicalism within Presbyterianism, see A. R. Holmes, The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief and Practice, 1770–1840 (Oxford, 2006), 30–51.

14 These themes are discussed at more length in Holmes, R. F. G., Henry Cooke (Belfast, 1981)Google Scholar, chaps. 6–9, and Holmes, A. R., “Covenanter Politics: Evangelicalism, Political Liberalism, and Ulster Presbyterians, 1798 to 1914,” English Historical Review 125, no. 513 (April 2010): 340–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For developments in 1886, see Walker, B. M., Ulster Politics, the Formative Years, 1868–1886 (Belfast, 1989), 234–54Google Scholar. See also The Ulster Liberal Unionist Association: A Sketch of Its History, 1885–1914; How It Has Opposed Home Rule, and What It Has Done for Remedial Legislation for Ireland (Belfast, 1914).

16 Walker, Graham, Intimate Strangers: Political and Cultural Interaction between Scotland and Ulster in Modern Times (Edinburgh, 1995), 17–60Google Scholar.

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19 King, Elizabeth, Lord Kelvin's Early Home (London, 1910), 5–6Google Scholar.

20 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 8.

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22 King, Lord Kelvin's Early Home, 1–2; Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 8. For Edgar, see Bailie, W. D. and Kirkpatrick, L. S., Fasti of Seceder Ministers Ordained or Installed in Ireland, 1746–1948 (Belfast, 2005), 51Google Scholar.

23 Edgar, Samuel, “Recollections of 1798,” Belfast Monthly Magazine 1, no. 6 (July 1825): 541–48Google Scholar, quotes at 545.

24 Holmes, A. R., “Nineteenth-Century Ulster Presbyterian Perspectives on the 1798 Rebellion,” in Irish History: A Research Yearbook, vol. 2, ed. Augusteijn, Joost, Ann Lyons, Mary, and McMahon, Deirdre (Dublin, 2003), 43–52Google Scholar; McBride, I. R., “Memory and Forgetting: Ulster Presbyterians and 1798,” in 1798: A Bicentenary Perspective, ed. Bartlett, Thomas, Dickson, David, Keogh, Dale, and Whelan, Kevin (Dublin, 2003), 478–96Google Scholar.

25 McComb's Guide to Belfast, the Giant's Causeway, and the Adjoining Districts of the Counties of Antrim and Down (Belfast, 1861), 125–27, 132–34.

26 Thomas Hamilton, s.v. “McComb, William (1793–1873),” rev. Katherine Mullin, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17393. All subsequent references to this resource are likewise to the online edition.

27 Vance, Norman, Irish Literature: A Social History (Oxford, 1990), 134.Google Scholar

28 McComb's Guide to Belfast, 142.

29 Ibid., 142–43.

30 Ibid., 143.

31 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, 47–61; Holmes, A. R., “The Shaping of Irish Presbyterian Attitudes to Mission, 1790–1840,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57, no. 4 (October 2006): 711–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Holmes, Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief and Practice, 30–51.

33 Edgar, Samuel, A Sermon: Preached Before the Down Missionary Society, at Rathfriland (Belfast, 1815)Google Scholar.

34 Edgar, Samuel, The Times: A Sermon; Preached at the Ordination of the Rev. Thomas Heron, Fourtowns, Donoughmore (Belfast, 1814)Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., 27.

36 Brown, Stewart J., Providence and Empire: Religion, Politics, and Society in the United Kingdom, 1815–1914 (Harlow, 2008)Google Scholar, chaps. 1 and 2; Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society, chaps. 3–5.

37 Edgar, The Times, 58. For Thomson, see Fourth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, HC (House of Commons; 1826–27), xiii.157, 38.

38 McBride, “Ulster Presbyterians and the Passing of the Act of Union.”

39 “Some Remarks Occasioned by Reading a Late Sermon Entitled ‘The Times,’” Belfast Monthly Magazine 12, no. 69 (April 1814): 365–71.

40 [Edgar, Samuel], “The Remonstrance,” Belfast Monthly Magazine 2, no. 10 (May 1809): 327–30, 328Google Scholar.

41 William Dobbin, “The Rev. David McKee, of Anaghlone,” and R. G. Milling, “The Rev. David Edgar, Ballynahinch,” Presbyterian Churchman, n.s., 7 (1890): 7–10; 73–77, 94–96.

42 Edgar, Samuel, Improvement of Irish Catholics: A Sermon (Belfast, 1822), 29–49Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., 30.

44 For Presbyterian attitudes to Catholic emancipation, see Peter Brooke, “Controversies in Ulster Presbyterianism, 1790–1836” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1980), 162–70; Holmes, Henry Cooke, 63–66; Kingon, Suzanne, “Ulster Opposition to Catholic Emancipation, 1828–9,” Irish Historical Studies 34, no. 134 (November 2004): 137–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Wakefield, Edward, An Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political, 2 vols. (London, 1812), 2:483, 493Google Scholar; John Gamble, A View of Society and Manners, in the North of Ireland, in the Summer and Autumn of 1812 (London, 1813), 69; Angque Day and Patrick Williams, eds., Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, vol. 29, Parishes of County Antrim, 1832–33, 1835–39 (Belfast, 1995), 144–45.

46 Allen, Robert, The Presbyterian College Belfast, 1853–1953 (Belfast, 1954), 1–36Google Scholar; I. M. Bishop, “The Education of Ulster Students at Glasgow University in the Eighteenth Century” (MA diss., Queen's University Belfast, 1987).

47 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 8.

48 Withers, C. W. J. and Wood, Paul, eds., Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment (East Linton, 2002)Google Scholar.

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51 Fourth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 38.

52 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 11–12. J. M. Barkley, “The Arian Schism in Ireland,” in Schism, Heresy, and Religious Protest, Studies in Church History no. 9, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge, 1972), 323–39; Jamieson, John, The History of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, 1810–1960 (Belfast, 1959)Google Scholar.

53 Brooke, “Controversies,” chap. 4.

54 For Henry, see Reid, James Seaton, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, ed. Killen, W. D., 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Belfast, 1867), 3:424Google Scholar; Witherow, Thomas, Historical and literary memorials of Presbyterianism in Ireland, 2 vols. (Belfast, 1879–80), 2:287–92Google Scholar.

55 Allen, Presbyterian College Belfast, 37–54; Brooke, Peter, Ulster Presbyterianism: The Historical Perspective, 1610–1970, 2nd ed. (Belfast, 1994), 115–21Google Scholar.

56 Cited in Holmes, R. F. G., Our Irish Presbyterian Heritage (Belfast, 1985), 98–99Google Scholar.

57 Fourth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 71, 89, 99.

58 Ibid., 61.

59 Ibid., 49, 61–62, 93, 131, 136–37.

60 Ibid., 151–53.

61 The best overview of this dispute is Holmes, Henry Cooke, 31–80.

62 Fourth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 59–73.

63 See Holmes, Henry Cooke, 68–73, 124–28.

64 Stewart, Seceders, 198–99, 209–16.

65 Fourth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 108–9.

66 Ibid., 109. For Thomson's involvement in university politics at Glasgow, see Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 41–49.

67 Fourth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 112–13, 140–45.

68 Ibid., 115.

69 Ibid., 119–26.

70 Ibid., 42.

71 Banner of Ulster, 16 January 1849.

72 This letter was reprinted as an appendix in James Morgan, A Good Man: A Discourse on the Death of Charles Thomson, Esq. With an Appendix Containing the Official Documents Connected with the Origin and Establishment of the Congregation of Fisherwick Place (Belfast, 1855), 14–16.

73 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 13.

74 Thomas Hamilton, s.v. “Morgan, James (1799–1873),” rev. David Huddleston, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19226. James Thomson to Thomas Chalmers, 29 October 1828, 22 December 1828, 10 April 1829; CHA.4.100.19, CHA.4.100.21, CHA.4.129.13, Chalmers Papers, New College Library, University of Edinburgh.

75 Holmes, Henry Cooke, 58.

76 Banner of Ulster, 16 January 1849. See also Northern Whig, 16 January 1849.

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78 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 14–17. Thomson, James, A Treatise on Arithmetic in Theory and Practice (Belfast, 1819)Google Scholar, Trigonometry, Plane and Spherical (Belfast, 1820), Introduction to Modern Geography (Belfast, 1827), and The Differential and Integral Calculus (Belfast, 1831).

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81 [Thomson, James], “State of Science in Scotland,” Belfast Monthly Magazine 1, no. 2 (March 1825): 269–79, and “State of Science in Ireland” (May 1825), 459–69Google Scholar.

82 Belfast News-Letter, 6 November 1829.

83 Belfast News-Letter, 3 August 1832.

84 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 84–89.

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86 H. C. G. Chesney, s.v. “Drummond, James Lawson (1783–1853),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8075.

87 Belfast News-Letter, 2 May 1826.

88 Holmes, A. R., “Presbyterians and Science in the North of Ireland before 1874,” British Journal of the History of Science 41, no. 4 (December 2008): 541–65CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

89 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, xxi.

90 Thompson, S. P., The Life of William Thompson Baron Kelvin of Largs, 2 vols. (London, 1910), 2:1145–46, 1122–25; Morus, When Physics Became King, 79Google Scholar.

91 Wilson, David B., “Kelvin's Scientific Realism: The Theological Context,” Philosophical Journal 11 (1974): 41–60, quote at 52Google Scholar.

92 Ibid., 46.

93 Thomson, William, “Presidential Address,” in Report of the Forty-First Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: Held at Edinburgh in August 1871 (London, 1872), cvGoogle Scholar.

94 Thompson, Kelvin, 2:1096.

95 For a reliable and informative survey, see Brooke, John Hedley, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991), chaps. 7–9Google Scholar.

96 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 636–45.

97 Livingstone, David N., “Darwin in Belfast: The Evolution Debate,” in Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History, ed. Foster, John Wilson (Dublin, 1997), 387–408Google Scholar; Thompson, Kelvin, 2:649.

98 Livingstone, David N., “Science, Region, and Religion: The Reception of Darwinism in Princeton, Belfast, and Edinburgh,” in Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender, ed. Numbers, Ronald L. and Stenhouse, John (Cambridge, 1999), 7–38Google Scholar; Holmes, “Presbyterians and Science in the North of Ireland,” 562–64.

99 Moody, T. W. and Beckett, J. C., Queen's, Belfast, 1845–1949: The History of a University, 2 vols. (London, 1959), 1:37–38Google Scholar.

100 Bowler, Peter J., “James Thomson and the Culture of a Victorian Engineer,” in Queen's Thinkers: Essays on the Intellectual Heritage of a University, ed. Livingstone, David N. and Jackson, Alvin (Belfast, 2008), 57–68Google Scholar. For Kelvin's concern, see Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 138.

101 Crosbie Smith, “P. G. Tait, Queen's College and Ulster-Scots Natural Philosophy,” in Livingstone and Jackson, Queen's Thinkers, 7–17. For Kelvin and Andrews, see Thompson, Kelvin, 1:426–27, 434–35; 2:611–15, 635–36, 654, 665–68, 712–13.

102 Smith, Crosbie, The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain (London, 1998).Google Scholar

103 The parallels and some of the interactions may be traced in W. H. Fraser and Irene Maver, eds., Glasgow, Volume 2: 1830 to 1912 (Manchester, 1996), and Maguire, W. A., Belfast: A History (Lancaster, 2009)Google Scholar.

104 John F. McCaffrey, “Political Issues and Developments,” in Fraser and Maver, Glasgow, Volume 2, 199.

105 D. C. Smith, s.v. “King, David (1806–1883),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15556. Crosbie Smith discusses King in Science of Energy, 114–20.

106 Tom Gallagher, “A Tale of Two Cities: Communal Strife in Glasgow and Liverpool before 1914,” in The Irish in the Victorian City, ed. Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (London, 1985), 106–29, and Glasgow, the Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester, 1987).

107 Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 806; Thompson, Kelvin, 2:1087n.

108 Thompson, Kelvin, 2:1128; Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 804.

109 For different readings of Whig/Liberal politics in Belfast, see John Bew, The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Dublin, 2009); and J. J. Wright, “‘The Natural Leaders': The Tennent Family and the Political and Intellectual Life of Presbyterian Belfast, c.1801–1832” (PhD diss., Queen's University Belfast, 2010).

110 Bew, Paul and Wright, Frank, “The Agrarian Opposition in Ulster Politics, 1848–87,” in Irish Peasant: Violence and Political Unrest, 1780–1914, ed. Clark, Samuel and Donnelly, J. S. Jr. (Manchester, 1983), 192–229Google Scholar; Holmes, “Covenanter Politics,” 353–66.

111 Walker, Ulster Politics, 58–62.

112 For the Liberal advance in Ulster, see Ibid., 91–175. Walker, Graham, “Thomas Sinclair: Presbyterian Liberal Unionist,” in Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture, ed. English, Richard and Walker, Graham (Basingstoke, 1996), 19–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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114 McCaffrey, John F., “The Origins of Liberal Unionism in the West of Scotland,” Scottish Historical Review 50, no. 149 (1971): 47–71.Google Scholar

115 The discussion of opposition to Home Rule and unionist identity politics is based on Alvin Jackson, Ireland, 1798–1998: Politics and War (Oxford, 1999), 215–44, and Walker, Graham, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism (Manchester, 2004), 1–21Google Scholar.

116 Walker, Intimate Strangers, 17–60.

117 Brown, Providence and Empire, 262–67, 314–16.

118 Holmes, “Nineteenth-Century Ulster Presbyterian Perspectives”; McBride, “Memory and Forgetting.”

119 Shaw, J. J., Mr Gladstone's two Irish Policies: 1869 and 1886 (London, 1888),9–11Google Scholar.

120 Jones, Greta, “Scientists against Home Rule,” in Defenders of the Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism Since 1801, ed. Boyce, D. George and O'Day, Alan (London, 2001), 188–208Google Scholar.

121 Thompson, Kelvin, 2:856; Iain Hutchison, “Lord Kelvin and Liberal Unionism,” Journal of Physics, conf. ser. 158 (2009), http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/158/1/012004/pdf/jpconf9_158_012004.pdf.

122 Thompson, Kelvin, 2:1095.

123 Ibid., 2:1096.

124 Glasgow Herald, 19 October 1898.

125 Hutchison, “Kelvin and Liberal Unionism,” 8–9.

126 Glasgow Herald, 1 July 1886.

127 McKnight, Thomas, Ulster As It Is; or, Twenty-Eight Years' Experience as an Irish Editor, 2 vols. (London, 1896), 2:203Google Scholar.

128 Belfast News-Letter, 27 May 1886.

129 For Kelvin's peerage, see Smith and Wise, Energy and Empire, 799–814.

130 Glasgow Herald, 17 April, and 29 November, 1894.

131 Glasgow Herald, 9 March 1895.

132 Thompson, Kelvin, 2:1193, 1194, 1198, 1202.

133 Belfast News-Letter, 18 December 1907. See also Northern Whig, 18 December 1907.

134 Northern Whig, 22 January 1908.

135 “Lord Kelvin Memorial—Minute Book, 1908–13,” D/1332/3, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The three sites considered were the city hall, Queen's University, and Botanic Gardens.

136 Irish News, 20 June 1913. The editorial praised the scientific achievements of Kelvin while questioning his political importance.

137 Quotations from Larmour's speech are taken from Belfast News-Letter, 20 June 1913.

138 Morus, When Physics Became King, 1.