he courts required, the church
appealed to the government for relief. In January 1843 the government
put a final and peremptory negative on the church's claims for spiritual
independence. On the 18th of May 1843 470 clergymen withdrew from the
general assembly and constituted themselves the Free Church of Scotland,
with Dr Chalmers as moderator. He had prepared a sustentation fund
scheme for the support of the seceding ministers, and this was at once
put into successful operation. On the 30th of May 1847, immediately
after his return from the House of Commons, where he had given evidence
as to the refusal of sites for Free Churches by Scottish landowners, he
was found dead in bed.

Dr Chalmers' action throughout the Free Church controversy was so
consistent in its application of Christian principle and so free from
personal or party animus, that his writings are a valuable source for
argument and illustration on the question of Establishment. "I have no
veneration," he said to the royal commissioners in St Andrews, before
either the voluntary or the non-intrusive controversies had arisen, "for
the Church of Scotland _qua_ an establishment, but I have the utmost
veneration for it _qua_ an instrument of Christian good." He was
transparent in character, chivalrous, kindly, firm, eloquent and
sagacious; his purity of motive and unselfishness commanded absolute
confidence; he had originality and initiative in dealing with new and
difficult circumstances, and great aptitude for business details.

During a life of incessant activity Chalmers scarcely ever allowed a day
to pass without its modicum of composition; at the most unseasonable
times, and in the most unlikely places, he would occupy himself with
literary work. His writings occupy more than 30 volumes. He would have
stood higher as an author had he written less, or had he indulged less
in that practice of reiteration into which he was constantly betrayed by
his anxiety to impress his ideas upon others. As a political economist
he was the first to unfold the connexion that subsists between the
degree of the fertility of the soil and the social condition of a
community, the rapid manner in which capital is reproduced (see Mill's
_Political Economy_, i. 94), and the general doctrine of a limit to all
the modes by which national wealth may accumulate. He was the first also
to advance that argument in favour of religious establishments which
meets upon its own ground the d