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collections. If every individual would contribute a penny weekly in place of a half-penny, the amount would be doubled. But the far greater part of my numerous congregation is comparatively in moderate circumstances, the heritors and most of the wealthiest of the people being Episcopalians. The third is, let the church be enlarged, or a chapel of ease be erected. I have had the church examined by an architect of eminence, but his opinion is, that the roof is of a construction so peculiar that it can not be interfered with. A chapel of ease would be an effectual remedy; but though I have urged the erection of one, I have as yet failed in persuading the people to undertake it. I am afraid, therefore, that unless you can suggest a way of escape, we must at last yield to necessity, and submit to assessments; the many evils of which have often been shown, but by none so well as yourself. I ever am, reverend sir, your most obedient servant, THOMAS EASTON.

on.

No. CCXCI.-DR. CHALMERS TO DR. EASTON.

ST. ANDREWS, 6th February, 1827. MY DEAR SIR-I should have replied to your interesting letter sooner. I fear you will think my advice somewhat too general, though I deem it founded on an experience that is quite universal, and which I feel confident that you also will verify should you attempt to enlarge your fund by assessment. The experience is this, that you really do not, by an assessment, make your escape from the difficulties which bring it You do not even lighten these difficulties. You may for a time; but you will most assuredly aggravate them in the long run, and will be sure to find that, after all, you have less of comfort, and more of clamor and complaint among your population, than at the outset of your compulsory system. Admitting, therefore, fully the existence of the difficulties which you allege, I hold it, on the above consideration alone, to be your true wisdom, rather to acquiesce in them, and manage with your humbler means as you can, than by

a forced augmentation of these means, strengthen those evils, which in their present less degree you will find to be far more tolerable.

You state the small accommodation that you have in church for your populous parish, and how from this cause, what would have gone to swell your collection, now goes to the collections of your meeting-houses. On ecclesiastical or Christian grounds, I hold it very desirable that your accommodation should be widened; but I confess that I should not be very anxious about it for the economic object of a more liberal public provision for the poor. My own confidence all along in Glasgow was not upon means, but upon management; and not so much on the positive activity and strenuousness of that management, as on the co-operation of men who thought with myself, that the best way of disposing of every application was by strict investigation into all the resources of the applicant, to devolve him as much as possible on his own industry, or on the duty of his relatives, or on the sympathy of his neighbors, or, lastly (though we very rarely, indeed, had recourse to such an expedient), on the private liberalities of the more affluent. But we were quite sure, that just in proportion to the regularity, and certainty, and largeness of our sessional ministrations, would all these better securities for the relief of distress be slackened in the parish; and so, proclaiming the insignificance of all that we could do, we devolved the burden on those upon whom Nature and Christianity had devolved it before us, and felt that the indefinitely nearer we came to a cheap and moderate, and withal gratuitous economy on the part of the public body, the more plentifully did relief flow from all those private sources of industry and sympathy which I have now enumerated. It was not my presence which achieved this. The thing goes on more prosperously since I left it; and our chapel district, with a population of 5000, is upheld by a collection of less than £100 in the year.

Try gradually, and get hold of men who think right upon

this object; and though you can not fill the parish all at once with them, give each a district as he casts up, and let him fully understand that that man does his duty best to the Session who gives the Session least to do. You will find that each new elder might nearly relieve you of his own district altogether.

I have just room to assure you that, with some few modifications, I thought exceedingly well of your book, and hailed it as an accession to a good cause. I should express my obligations for your very handsome treatment of myself in that volume. I am, my dear sir, yours most truly,

THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCXCII.-DR. EASTON TO DR. CHALMERS.

KIRRIEMUIR, 16th February, 1827. REV. SIR-Your letter of the 6th current I received in course, and I beg leave to return you my warmest thanks for the trouble you have been at in answering my letter of 26th January last. You have indeed bestowed a great deal of attention on the subject to which it refers. What you say is exceedingly satisfactory, and you may be assured that I am grateful for the recommendations you suggest. The only addition, practically speaking, which I would venture to make -improvement I can not take it upon me to call it is to classify the cases of poor, and if we are driven to the expedient, to allow the heritors to provide for the insane, the fatuous, the blind, and to relieve the others from the church collection.

It is

There is an analogical objection that may be urged against the voluntary relief of the poor, which has often occurred to me, and to which I am desirous to draw your attentionone which I have never seen alluded to by any one. an argument founded on what you yourself have said respecting religious education. You object to the leaving of religious education to the principle of supply and demand, because, you say, that, owing to the corruption of human na

ture, men are naturally averse to spiritual truth, and it is necessary, therefore, that, by means of endowment, it should be brought to every man's door. But may it not be said that, owing to the same cause, men do not naturally love their neighbors as they ought, and therefore it is necessary that human laws should compel them to relieve the wants of the needy.

As I am aware how very valuable your time is, I do not expect an answer to this letter. I am, dear sir, most respectfully yours, THOMAS EASTON

No. CCXCIII.-DR. CHALMERS TO DR. EASTON.

ST. ANDREWS, 22d February, 1827. MY DEAR SIR-Your letter is too interesting not to be replied to.

You are quite right in your views of the distinction which obtains between the cases of general indigence and the cases of special and involuntary distress, such as lunacy, dumbness, blindness, &c. There would not be the mischief in assessing for these that there is in assessing for poverty at large, because such an assessment would not multiply its objects, and would not go beyond a certain definite amount. Still, however, it is greatly better not to have even this more innocent assessment, for the one is extremely apt to run into the other, and I would far rather struggle to overtake the more special visitations by the collections and purely voluntary subscriptions, than attempt aught so dangerous as the admission of the compulsory into the business of charity in any of its parts.

Your analogical argument in favor of assessments is ingenious, and to myself new. Yet, on a narrower view of the actual similarities and dissimilarities between the course of instruction on the one hand, and the course of the ordinary relief of poverty on the other, I am persuaded it will not be found tenable. When the course of poverty is left to itself, then in proportion to the aggravation of its distress is the strength and efficiency of these counteractives by which it is

mitigated, if not done away. Men are more goaded to industry and thrift, their relatives more excited to duty, their neighbors more awakened to compassion, and the rich more alive to voluntary exertion. When the course of ignorance

is left to itself, then in proportion to the aggravation of that ignorance is the growing apathy to the evils of it, and an apathy which extends from the uneducated man to his neighbors, just because they too live in a land unblest by education. The institutions for knowledge, besides, can accomplish their object purely and without adulteration. The in

stitutions for general relief, in as far as they may be said to accomplish their object at all, do so at the fearful expense of every virtue concerned in the administration of charity, putting to flight the gratitude of the recipients, and the spontaneous generosity of the dispensers. I am, my dear sir, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

CORRESPONDENCE ON THE CHURCH QUESTION.

tions.

No. CCXCIV.-TO JOHN HAMILTON, ESQ.

EDINBURGH, 18th February, 1840. MY DEAR SIR-I beg that you will tolerate my dissertaWith me the uppermost object is to secure our independence. Should we be able to secure it with a less measure of Non-intrusion, and should we lose it because of our insisting on a higher measure, we shall never be able to hold up our faces either to the Church or to the country. We shall for the sake of the gnat have been giving up the camel. I am not insensible to the importance, in one way, of identifying the cause of the Church with the cause of the people. I feel quite assured that without them the Conservatives, as a body, would have been on the side of the authority of the Court of Session. This is an important element. But the other is a most important element too. There is throughout a general longing, all over Scotland, for a settlement. Even our lowest measure would satisfy a large majority, both

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