ealised this ideal, and would hardly have perceived that to place all
the taxes upon their shoulders would be to give them a blessing in
disguise. According to Chalmers, however, an established church
represents an essential part of the upper classes, and is required to
promote a high standard of life among the poor.[421] In connection
with this, he writes a really forcible chapter criticising the
economical distinction of productive and unproductive labour, and
shows at least that the direct creation of material wealth is not a
sufficient criterion of the utility of a class.

Chalmers's arguments are of interest mainly from their bearing upon
his practical application of the Malthusian problem. His interest in
the problem of pauperism had been stimulated by his residence in
Glasgow, where from 1815 to 1823 he had been actively engaged in
parochial duties. In 1819 he had set up an organised system of
charity in a poor district, which both reduced the expenditure and
improved the condition of the poor. The experiment, though dropped
some years later, became famous, and in later years Chalmers
successfully started a similar plan in Edinburgh. It was this
experience which gave shape to his Malthusian theories. He was, that
is, a Malthusian in the sense of believing that the great problem was
essentially the problem of raising the self-respect and spirit of
independence of the poor. The great evil which confronted him in
Glasgow was the mischief connected with the growth of the factory
system. He saw, as he thought, the development of wealth leading to
the degradation of the labourer. The great social phenomenon was the
tendency to degeneration, the gradual dissolution of an organism, and
corruption destroying the vital forces. On the one hand, this
spectacle led him, as it led others, to look back fondly to the good
old times of homely food and primitive habits, to the peasantry as
represented in Burns's _Cotter's Saturday Night_ or Scott's _Heart of
Midlothian_, when the poor man was part of a social, political, and
ecclesiastical order, disciplined, trained, and self-respecting, not a
loose waif and stray in a chaotic welter of separate atoms. These were
the facts which really suggested his theory of the 'excrescent'
population, produced by the over-speculation of capitalists. The
paupers of Glasgow were 'excrescent,' and the 'gluts' were visible in
the commercial crises which had thrown numbers of poor weavers out of
e