I

Current debates on poverty and welfare in the United Kingdom revolve around the notion of the ‘Big Society’, the project that Prime Minister David Cameron has stated that he wishes to become his legacy.Footnote ¹ From a historical perspective, however, it is not the thoughts of Cameron, or even those of Phillip Blond, the original inspiration behind the notion, that is of interest.Footnote ² Rather, the Big Society can be seen as merely the latest expression of a long-standing critique of welfare that has been gaining authority since the 1980s in both the United States and Britain through the writings of neo-conservative thinkers, and which has been highly influential on governments and parties of the mainstream right and left. It is a vision that celebrates the local over the national, argues the Malthusian line that welfare benefits given as entitlements only serve to make the poor poorer, and which maintains that voluntary societies are better equipped to offer services to the unemployed and other disadvantaged persons than the bureaucratic agencies of the welfare state. It is a vision that is steeped in the past or, rather, a particular interpretation and version of the past, and which closely echoes the values and prescriptions of the early nineteenth-century Scottish churchman, Thomas Chalmers. What will be argued here is that their uncritical approbation of such as Chalmers disguises major flaws in the remedies offered by the neo-conservatives today.

In the Victorian age, so the argument goes, Christian charities, determined not simply to dole out allowances on an ad hoc basis, worked at a close, personal level with the poor. Through home visitations, examination of family circumstances, and ‘friendly’ advice, the intention was to make the poor realize or recover their independence and self-reliance. The most concrete and sustained effort at realizing this belief was the Charity Organization Society (COS) which attempted to apply charity ‘scientifically’; that is, not to provide alms until all other possible sources of aid were exhausted or proven not to exist.Footnote ³ As has been pointed out, the paradox was that while the stated purpose was to encourage self-sufficiency, ‘their methods demanded abject deference from applicants’.Footnote ⁴

This emphasis on self-reliance, character, Christian morality, as well as claims that such provision of welfare was much cheaper and more effective has attracted many who express concern at the ‘breakdown’ of society. Blaming interference by the state in the lives of the poor, they have a tendency to look backwards for inspiring examples of philanthropy and voluntary solutions. From such a perspective, there are few more inspirational figures than the Reverend Professor Thomas Chalmers.

Chalmers was perhaps the most influential minister in Scotland since the Reformation. A firm believer in a national church that should be supported by the state as a force for bringing civilization and religion to the masses, it was ironic therefore, that Chalmers led the schism of 1843 which established the Free Church of Scotland as a bitter rival to the established Church of Scotland. Prior to the Disruption, Chalmers had been best known for his voluminous writings on poverty and pauperism. His Malthusian arguments that there should be no legal entitlement to relief for the able-bodied poor, and that such relief did not help combat poverty, but encouraged pauperism, made him popular with political economists and the propertied classes in the early nineteenth century. Crucially, Chalmers's pamphlets and sermons were supported by his practical experiments in dealing with the urban poor in Glasgow and Edinburgh. These were presented as great successes, proof there was no need for statutory relief, and that voluntary effort was the more effective way of combating both poverty and pauperism.

While Chalmers's influence continued to be felt beyond his death in 1847, largely through the COS which recognized him as its founding inspiration, from the 1930s most Scottish historians have disparaged Chalmers's practical solutions to poverty. More recently, however, Victorian ideas have re-emerged in debates on poverty and the role of the voluntary sector. This is due to the interventions made by neo-conservative and often evangelical Christian authorities in North America who find inspiration in nineteenth-century opponents of statutory entitlement for the poor. Through their work, which has impacted upon the policies of governments of both the right and left in the United States and Britain, the influence of nineteenth-century practical philanthropists has been given a new lease of life. The purpose of this article, however, is to show that in its appeal to the ‘lessons of history’, the neo- or compassionate conservative approbation of Victorian philanthropy is possible only by focusing on the dramatic and anecdotal rather than an objective evaluation of what charitable efforts actually achieved. Chalmers represents a revealing case-study of such an approach because of the longevity of his influence and, since any positive representation of the relevance of his prescriptions for combating poverty today can be made only by ignoring the actual record of his efforts and an extensive historiography detailing his failures.

II

Chalmers wished to reinvigorate the national Church of Scotland into the focal point for a new ‘godly commonwealth’ where social tensions between different classes would be resolved. The church, supported by the state, would provide the social glue, via religious worship, instruction, schools, and, crucially, visitation of the poor that would bind the whole community together.Footnote ⁵ In 1811, Chalmers converted to evangelicalism. The minister who so neglected his parish that he had been hauled up before his presbytery, now became utterly committed to inculcating the sense of a ‘godly community’ among his congregation.Footnote ⁶ Returning to his parish of Kilmany, Chalmers rediscovered the organic society of his childhood in Anstruther and he actively sought to develop and encourage this through religious instruction of children, regular visits to the homes of his parishioners, and an active role in aiding, or rather supervising, the poor. Chalmers's aim was to promote, not an egalitarian society, but a Christian community in which rich and poor would recognize their mutual responsibilities to each other. In 1814, he was invited to Glasgow to take over the ministry of the Tron Church. The intention of the town council was that Chalmers's popularity would attract new parishioners and hence the income generated from pew rents would increase. Chalmers certainly delivered; his sermons were enthusiastically received and he packed out the Tron with the city's elite.Footnote ⁷

In March 1817, Chalmers anonymously published an essay in The Edinburgh Review on ‘Causes and cure of pauperism’ from a clearly Malthusian perspective of over-population.Footnote ⁸ The question of the poor and how to deal with them had been a constant concern of Chalmers, but as an evangelical his ideas became more specific and definite. Chalmers had been aware of Malthus's writings for some time but it was only in Glasgow, with its teeming population, that the urgency of the Malthusian prescription really hit home.Footnote ⁹ Both Chalmers and Malthus regarded themselves as ‘best friends’ of the poor; by following the prescription of marrying later and having smaller families household income would go further and fewer workers would help push up wages by limiting competition for jobs. Chalmers defended Malthus's ‘speculations’ against the ‘sentimental abhorrence’ felt by many. ‘This is a gross misconception. A disciple of Mr Malthus need not be the enemy of Beneficence. All he proposes is to change the direction of it.’Footnote ¹⁰ If Chalmers owed his theoretical starting point to Malthus, the ‘success’ of the St John's experiment in creating a working-class community apparently independent of poor relief would provide Malthus with the solution to the problem of how one could practically abolish the poor law without causing starvation or provoking revolt. Malthus recognized this debt when he wrote, ‘I consider you as my ablest and best ally’, having previously confided to Chalmers how he had ‘almost despaired [that] … it might not be possible entirely to give up a compulsory provision’.Footnote ¹¹ Chalmers made a crucial distinction between poverty and pauperism; poverty was the state of being poor and in need, but pauperism was the state a person was in or kept in when given support as of a right. As he wrote in perhaps his most significant work:

Mandler has identified a surge of support in England for poor law reform in 1817 and the promise by Chalmers that poor relief could be abolished attracted attention.Footnote ¹³ His solution – reliance upon the mutual interests and support of the Christian community organized through the Church of Scotland – was distinctive, though capable of adaptation and export. Chalmers wished to go back to the original Presbyterian model of Kirk elders who would keep the parishioners in check by looking after their moral and religious well-being, and deacons who would have particular responsibility for the poor. The wealthy had a duty to the poor which was not best served by simply paying a poor tax, but by involving themselves in their lives. Any support so freely given would be gratefully received. The point, however, was to encourage independence so great efforts were to be made to examine the situation of those seeking aid and what alternative sources of support might be available.

In 1819, Glasgow agreed to allow Chalmers to put his ideas into practice when the town council appointed him to one of the two newly created parishes in the city – St John's – in which he would have complete control of the collection and disbursement of poor funds.Footnote ¹⁴ Chalmers claimed that he would eliminate the need for any poor relief since the number of paupers would gradually decline to zero. This would be achieved by re-creating in the city the rural parish of Kilmany, an agrarian community of fewer than 1,000 souls.Footnote ¹⁵ In contrast, the huge urban parish of St John's had a population of 10,000. To recreate the rural idyll this would be divided into ‘proportions’ of smaller neighbourhoods, and the families in these proportions would be visited ‘aggressively’ by the elders and deacons. In this way, the poor would be encouraged to develop their own moral fibre; alternative sources of support would be encouraged from family, neighbours, and friends. Chalmers believed both that the greatest source of support to the poor was from the poor themselves, and that any legal entitlement from an authority or unthinking support from a charity automatically led to voluntary support disappearing; statutory relief had the perverse consequence of reducing what would have been a much greater pool of succour otherwise.Footnote ¹⁶ While existing paupers would continue to be treated under the poor law, all subsequent applicants would have to come through the new system of deacons which was intended expressly to prevent the poor claiming from the sessional funds. Since in Scotland most paupers were elderly, it was calculated that it would take only five years before the ‘old’ paupers died out and with them the need for any poor relief.Footnote ¹⁷

For the St John's parish ‘experiment’, as it became known, Chalmers claimed an ‘unqualified success’ and many were happy to accept his assurances.Footnote ¹⁸ The merchant and manufacturing groups of Glasgow embraced the Chalmersonian ideal, which promised the possibility of no or lower taxes. After three and a half years in charge of St John's, Chalmers left Glasgow in 1823 to take up the chair of moral philosophy at St Andrews and in 1828 he was appointed professor of theology at Edinburgh. Publicly, Chalmers declared that the ‘experiment’ was on a sound footing and would continue long after his departure. When it collapsed in 1837, he denied it had been a failure and argued that all the reasons for its end were ‘external to the system’.Footnote ¹⁹

In 1843, Chalmers led the mass exodus out of the Church of Scotland. While the authorities had calculated that few ministers would leave their positions, in the event one third did so accompanied by half the congregations.Footnote ²⁰ Immediately, they set about building churches and schools free from secular control. The ambition to create the godly commonwealth could begin anew. Chalmers threw himself into this work and in 1844 started the West Port operation in Edinburgh. The primary intention, as had been the case at St John's, was to moralize the masses through bringing them religion and education. The West Port was one of the poorest areas of Edinburgh and Chalmers selected a community of about 2,000 persons. What was new was that he planned that there should be no distribution of charity by the members of his West Port society, and that the community itself should become self-supporting. While patrician and middle-class involvement might be necessary at first, they would soon retire and what would be the first of many working-class godly communities would become organized, moral, and independent. Like St John's, however, visitation to the poor was to be the key in moralizing them. The West Port was to be divided into twenty proportions of a hundred persons with each portion assigned to at least one ‘visitor’. Through friendly visitations, and not through giving goods or money, the visitors would get to know the poor and encourage them to become self-sufficient. Once again, Chalmers claimed success for his efforts and once again many commentators believed him.Footnote ²¹

The reasons for the public neglect of Chalmers in Scotland today are varied and partly lie in the leading role he played in the Disruption. While all Chalmers's early biographers regarded him as beyond criticism, modern historians of the Church of Scotland clearly blame Chalmers for what they regard as an unnecessary schism; the ‘evil genius’ responsible for the ensuing ‘half a century of sectarian bitterness’.Footnote ²² Within Scottish Presbyterianism more generally, the early years of the twentieth century had witnessed a decline in the orthodox Calvinism represented by Chalmers and ‘the rise of a more humane, less deterministic world-view’.Footnote ²³ Stewart Brown has argued that Chalmers, almost on his death bed and influenced by the Ten Hours campaign of Oastler and more significantly the Irish and Highland potato famines, shifted his stance towards an acceptance that the state after all, might be ‘the only institution capable of enforcing social justice’.Footnote ²⁴ Chalmers may well have been ‘appalled’ by the lack of activity of the Whig government and by the attitudes of those who used the Malthusian iron law of population to avoid offering any help, but if anyone was responsible for the popular dissemination of Malthusian doctrines in Scotland it was he. Furgol disagrees with Brown on precisely this point; Chalmers only accepted a role for the state in extremis and he continued to hold that in normal times, ‘spontaneous benevolence could take care of all indigent poor’.Footnote ²⁵ Moreover, in the early 1840s, just before the depression which devastated Paisley and most of urban Scotland, Chalmers said he could see no likely event that would justify granting relief to the able-bodied, and the ensuing mass unemployment did nothing to change that conviction. Chalmers made this point against William P. Alison, professor of medicine at Edinburgh University, in their famous debate over the necessity of a poor law. Like other medical men with close knowledge of urban poverty, Alison took a diametrically opposite view to that of Chalmers. Where the latter continued to argue against statutory relief and assessment and opposed the introduction of the new poor law in Scotland in 1845, the former argued that the poor got sick and died because they were underfed and that a revised poor law had to intervene to stop people falling to such a level. For Alison, the relationship between poverty and poor health was clear and the arguments ‘against a compulsory provision for the poor are … absolutely and fundamentally erroneous’.Footnote ²⁶

While our interest here is on Chalmers's social writings and theories, rather than his theology, for Chalmers himself, of course, there was no distinction to be made between the two. As Brown has commented on Chalmers in 1844, ‘With sincere concern for the suffering of the working class, he refused to relent in what he believed was their only hope for a better life – their moral and spiritual regeneration’.Footnote ²⁷ But the fame of Chalmers both in his own life and thereafter relied almost solely on his reputation as an authority on poverty and pauperism. Moreover, Chalmers's reputation was secured not simply through his writings but the practical application of his theories in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Chalmers's direct influence on charity was felt beyond Scotland as early as the 1820s, not only in England but also in America, where ‘He enjoyed enormous vogue’, and it is claimed Prussia in the 1850s via the Elberfeld system of poor relief.Footnote ²⁸ It was the apparent success of the experiments in reducing pauperism and strengthening self-reliance that most attracted Charles Loch, the founder and moving spirit of the COS. Loch regarded Chalmers as the organization's ‘patron saint’ and adopted and adapted his ideas, ‘including the principles of local territorial administration, household visitations, thorough investigation of all applicants for relief, and the use of educational methods to encourage independence and social responsibility among the poor’.Footnote ²⁹

It was Chalmers's strictures against unthinking charity that helped maintain the intransigence of the COS against new attitudes towards the poor and poverty from the 1880s.Footnote ³⁰ Even when it diverged from Chalmers with its support for ‘assessment-based poor relief as an absolute necessity in industrial society’, the COS still couched its arguments within a Chalmersonian framework.Footnote ³¹ In 1899, the inspector of poor for Govan argued (contra Chalmers) that a poor rate should be utilized for the undeserving poor only, and that charity, as organized through the COS, should be directed towards the ‘deserving and respectable poor’. In this way, ‘the grand aim of the good Dr Chalmers would be realized in this great overcrowded city and in these greatly altered times’.Footnote ³² This formulation provides the practical response to the argument by Hilton that the ‘very notion of charity organization entirely contradicted Chalmers's emphasis on individualism and spontaneity’.Footnote ³³ As late as 1910, Loch was still arguing for the unique contribution and significance of Chalmers, ‘But to the theory of charity it might almost be said that since Aristotle and St Paul nothing has been added until we come to the economic and moral issues which Dr Chalmers explained and illustrated.’ And he went on, ‘in regard to charity in Great Britain, the most important change has been the revival of the teaching of Dr Chalmers … His view, which he tested by experience’.Footnote ³⁴

Although it has been argued that Chalmers's theology during his lifetime and posthumously had only a limited impact in the USA, it is recognized nonetheless that ‘the last serious American interest in Chalmers’ came at the turn of the new century, ‘from social gospelers who cared little, if at all, for either his Calvinism or his apologetics’.Footnote ³⁵ For instance, a review of an abridged version of The Christian and civic economy of large towns published at the beginning of the twentieth century stated, ‘Chalmers was much more than a theorist, for he put his theories into practice and thereby changed the moral and intellectual condition of the districts where he wrought’.Footnote ³⁶ Charles Henderson, the editor of that edition, came close to deriding the view that Chalmers had anything of value to add to the study of theology, ‘Perhaps in his eloquent sermons and in his formal lectures on systematic theology he may have added something to the discussion.’ Rather, it was his ‘successful experiments’ in improving the ‘morality and general welfare’ of the working class where Chalmers's real contribution was located.Footnote ³⁷ It was these efforts that made him an object of study and indeed emulation, because in these accounts and others there was a simple message promulgated that the experiments had been successful: ‘He sought to make the church of a parish the responsible agency of poor relief, and under his management the plan succeeded.’Footnote ³⁸

It is no coincidence that these comments were made in the USA at the turn of the century as the assault on statutory rights for the poor was gaining momentum,Footnote ³⁹ but similar views and conclusions were shared on the British side of the Atlantic. The prolific Mrs Oliphant published a biography of Chalmers in 1893 in which she hailed the St John's experiment, ‘With this seeming sternness but constant watchfulness, the system was carried on with the most triumphant and extraordinary success.’Footnote ⁴⁰ A similarly effusive appraisal of St John's was presented by Blaikie in his appraisal of Chalmers, ‘This result was accompanied not by a diminution but an increase in comfort and morality.’Footnote ⁴¹

This was the established late Victorian approach to Chalmers and his practical experiments and it was held on both sides of the Atlantic, though it was sustained for longer in the US than in Britain. Writing in 1917, Mary Richmond, a founder of the diagnostic school in social work, identified Chalmers – ‘a man of genius and vision’ – as one of the pioneers of the use of ‘investigation into the charitable treatment of dependency’.Footnote ⁴² In Frank Watson's standard history of the COS in America published in 1922 the usual eulogistic account of St John's can be read yet again; the numbers of paupers fell dramatically as did the amount spent on their upkeep. Watson found it ‘incredible that Chalmers's plan of meeting the problem of poverty … was destined to be abandoned’. While recognizing that the ‘experiment’ was formally terminated in 1837, Watson suggests that both the Disruption (1843) and the new Scottish poor law (1845) were somehow responsible.Footnote ⁴³ The same uncritical approach can be found in Scotland as late as 1943 in a slim volume on Chalmers and the Disruption, ‘In point of fact the scheme proved a success even beyond anything that Chalmers had predicted or anticipated’.Footnote ⁴⁴ This, however, was the last unqualified Scottish appreciation of Chalmers. The essential point is that those who believed or wanted to believe in Chalmers and his approach to pauperism did so regardless of ‘fact’ or evidence.

III

As we progress further into the twentieth century, Scottish academics who were interested in Chalmers from both a social and religious perspective looked at his contribution to combating poverty, and found his efforts futile. For historians of the church, his political and economic teaching was susceptible to the charge that he ‘had so accepted the economics of Adam Smith that he gave something like divine sanction to the consequences of uninhibited free enterprise’.Footnote ⁴⁵ Mechie writing in 1960 paid the compulsory obeisance to Chalmers as ‘a great man’ but effectively rubbished his social theories. Chalmers was too reliant upon Malthus, and his thinking suffered from a ‘fatal distortion … that, in his zeal to abolish pauperism and prevent the demoralization of the masses, he ignored the social or non-individual factors in the poverty around him. We realize now that poverty in its broad range was rooted in defective social and economic organization’.Footnote ⁴⁶ Referring directly to the influence of Chalmers, the most recent contribution to the history of the Kirk in this period has commented that ‘It took the Church of Scotland a long time to shake off the view that if there were structural causes of poverty and deprivation they had God's sanction.’Footnote ⁴⁷

The economic historian Marwick writing in the 1930s was clearly of the view that Alison had got the better of the argument over the poor law. Chalmers had ‘sought in prolific and prolix expositions to harmonize his theocratic prepossessions with his acceptance of the classical economics while generalising from his own limited and ephemeral experiment in Glasgow’.Footnote ⁴⁸ In 1950, Saunders would write of Chalmers's efforts, ‘Yet his social gospel was as significant in its limitations as its emphases … Chalmers aroused a social enthusiasm among his disciples, but its action was limited by his respect for accepted leadership and social decorum, for public economy and private enterprise.’Footnote ⁴⁹ Ferguson in his Scotland: 1689 to the present, first published in 1968, remarked of St John's, ‘its results were, if not illusory, at least suspect’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Mitchison, writing at more or less the same time, commented dismissively, ‘one can see little validity in Chalmers's social thought’.Footnote ⁵¹ The first thoroughgoing examination of Chalmers's practical remedies for abolishing poverty and pauperism came with Cage and Checkland's 1976 article and their conclusion was damning, ‘The St. John's experiment was not successful. As a system, it was not financially viable within its own structure. It created forces which increased the expense of pauper relief within Glasgow.’ They add that Chalmers's ‘statements on St John's are misleading’, and even go so far as to suggest that his decision to leave Glasgow in 1823 for St Andrews might have been provoked by his knowledge even then of the ‘limitations of his experiment and its inevitable end in failure’.Footnote ⁵²

Two years later, Stewart Brown began publishing the results of his researches on Chalmers with an article on the West Port operation, and concluded that it ‘failed to make a substantial impact on the great mass of … inhabitants who apparently cared little for protestant religion, education, or the traditional communal values of a rural parish’.Footnote ⁵³ When in 1982 he published his biography of Chalmers, a similar judgement was passed on the earlier St John's experiment, ‘no working-class Christian community such as that envisaged by Chalmers was ever created … His real achievements in St John's were exaggerated, and his experiment became widely perceived as an immense success.’Footnote ⁵⁴ Mary Furgol's forensic dissection of the St John's experiment and the efforts at applying Chalmers's ideas elsewhere in Scotland and beyond was presented in 1987. As regards St John's, her conclusion is stark. While there was success in providing additional schools, ‘it is proven that the poor relief side of the St John's experiment was a failure’.Footnote ⁵⁵ In the same year, Donald Smith's study of the social thought of the Church of Scotland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was published, in which Chalmers's prescriptions for society are found to be badly wanting.Footnote ⁵⁶ The collection of essays on Chalmers published two years earlier in 1985 contains nothing that would contradict this view.Footnote ⁵⁷ This is so even in a later study written from an evangelical perspective, ‘Nevertheless in the long run the poor-relief scheme achieved neither what its author had hoped nor what he subsequently claimed.’Footnote ⁵⁸ The principal of the Free Church college in Edinburgh could mount only a very half-hearted defence of Chalmers's views on pauperism, pointing out their ‘almost total lack of biblical reference’, and how Chalmers ‘is vulnerable to the charge that he owed more to Malthus and Adam Smith than to the Gospel and the Epistles’.Footnote ⁵⁹

The only counter to this weight of opinion within modern Scottish historiography is a recent article which tries to rehabilitate the whole reputation of the St John's experiment by emphasizing the continuing work of David Stow in education into the middle of the nineteenth century. The problem with this effort at re-evaluating St John's ‘as a model of nineteenth century British social policy’ and the conclusion that ‘the experiment was not outdated in nature … [and] not really a failure’ is that it provides no evidence of any such thing.Footnote ⁶⁰ There is no new insight offered here as, apart from anything else, authors critical of Chalmers accept that the educational function can be regarded as successful, ‘The only successful undertaking by Chalmers at St. John's was in the area of education.’Footnote ⁶¹ Alongside the reduction of family size, Chalmers regarded education as a means of improving working-class living standards and in both St John's and the West Port he provided a variety of schools covering children, adolescents, and young adults with fees waived (albeit secretly) for the very poor.Footnote ⁶² Worthy as these efforts undoubtedly were, however, Betchaku offers no analysis as to how the experiment and the schools it created actually improved the ‘economical condition’ of the working class and therefore simply sidesteps the core purpose which was, after all, to abolish pauperism.

The main authority on Scottish philanthropy in the nineteenth century remains Olive Checkland, in whose work Chalmers is a powerful figure,

Here and in her other writings there is ambivalence about Chalmers. Checkland is clear that St John's was a failure, ‘On a financial basis the experiment could not hope to succeed.’Footnote ⁶⁴ Both in Glasgow and later in Edinburgh, the work could only continue through subsidy, from Chalmers himself, the deacons, and ‘wealthy admirers’, thus negating the whole point that self-supporting working-class communities would be created.Footnote ⁶⁵ Nonetheless, Checkland writes also, ‘There is something admirable about a man who … had the courage and energy to set up his own clinical experiment in social amelioration.’ And again the link with contemporary social work is made explicit, ‘His agency contained the germ of the idea of welfare workers who should inform themselves by direct experience of the problems with which they were trying to deal.’Footnote ⁶⁶

This more positive, but wholly secular, perspective is strongly evident also in the generally commendatory work of earlier historians of the COS and social work.Footnote ⁶⁷ Mowat, grandson of the COS leader Charles Loch, writes in positive tones of St John's that ‘Elders and deacons of the church were the visitors and investigators, carrying on the ideal of neighbourliness and aiding those in need with funds raised in church.’Footnote ⁶⁸ This approach is manifest also in others who are much more critical of the Chalmers experiments. While recognizing Chalmers's failure to co-operate with the working class, McCaffrey still regards him as ‘anything but insignificant. If he failed, the fact that the emerging themes of industrialization, urbanization, modernization are still with us in perplexing array should help rescue him from our condescension as we recognize the extent of his vision.’Footnote ⁶⁹ Brown concludes his biography with a similar endorsement, ‘He was, in many respects, an emphatically practical social reformer, with well-defined programmes for the reorganisation of the nation. He was also a visionary, who touched the conscience of his age.’Footnote ⁷⁰ But, if Chalmers's two great experiments did not succeed in the ways he claimed and the visitors were simply unable to sustain their efforts, perhaps this might suggest the exact opposite: they were not ‘practical programmes’, and that both the model he offered and his ‘vision’ were fatally flawed.

IV

If the recent historians who have looked most closely at Chalmers and his experiments find it difficult to condemn fully his efforts, while effectively demolishing his claims to success, other authors, mainly American, have been less reticent in making absolute claims about Chalmers and the universal lessons his work still have to teach. As Furgol presciently commented in the conclusion to her thesis, ‘since 1983 in America a debate has taken place on whether the welfare state is in fact harming the poor, and the language used is once again reminiscent of Chalmers's arguments’.Footnote ⁷¹ Since Furgol penned those words, the anti-welfare literature has become a torrent and has had significant impact on the development of welfare policy in the USA and in Britain. Moreover, it is not just Chalmersonian terminology that is evident, but also explicit references to his work. This is not to argue that Chalmers has become the new patron saint of the neo-conservatives, but to recognize Chalmers is a significant figure in their world view on two inter-related counts. First there is the posthumous influence Chalmers had on the reaction in the later nineteenth century against what was perceived to be overly lax welfare benefits in Britain and America. Secondly, Chalmers provided practical evidence of a programme that eschewed state involvement in favour of local, voluntary efforts. It was this that made him a figure to be emulated in the late nineteenth century and again in the late twentieth century.

For neo-conservatives, a significant figure is Gertrude Himmelfarb and a seminal text her monograph, The idea of poverty. In this, Chalmers makes a brief but significant appearance as one of the ‘mavericks’ who wished to reform the poor law. Himmelfarb writes:

There are two statements contained in this short passage which deserve closer attention. First, is the claim that Chalmers's parish – St John's – was the ‘largest and poorest … in Glasgow’. While it was so described by Chalmers himself, Cage and Checkland show clearly that it was not, and Brown has commented, ‘although Chalmers would later describe St John's as the poorest parish in Glasgow, it was in fact a parish of substantial labouring families’.Footnote ⁷³ The second is ‘a system that he claimed, and many believed, to be more effective than legal, compulsory, public relief’. While not stating explicitly this to have been the case, nonetheless Himmelfarb gives the impression that it was so successful. She quotes R. K. Webb from an article published in 1978 bemoaning the ‘“historiographical scandal” that there is no adequate study of Chalmers’.Footnote ⁷⁴ The problem with this statement is that while it held true in 1978 it certainly did not in 1984 when The idea of poverty made its appearance; Thomas Chalmers and the godly commonwealth had been published two years earlier in 1982. It may be that Himmelfarb was unaware of Brown's biography, but he had published his article on the West Port operation in 1978, Cage and Checkland's demolition of the St John's experiment had appeared in print two years before that, and Cage's monograph on the Scottish poor law had appeared in 1981. As indicated above, most Scottish historians had been dismissive about Chalmers's claims for quite some time and a brief reading of any of these texts would demand a serious revision of the phrase, ‘many believe’.

While Himmelfarb is secular minded to the extent of being criticized for effectively avoiding the role of religion in The idea of poverty,Footnote ⁷⁵ the same does not hold true of most neo-conservatives, many of whom are themselves evangelical Christians including Charles Murray and Marvin Olasky.Footnote ⁷⁶ Murray is the much better known name, particularly outwith the USA. His work with its emphasis on the importance of community, critique of government intervention, and defence of the distinction between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor closely parallels the social prescriptions offered by Thomas Chalmers. Murray's use of the term ‘welfare dependency’ means more or less exactly the same as Chalmers's formulation, ‘pauperism’, and his proposal ‘to end welfare altogether’ echoes the hopes of Chalmers that the poor law could be abolished.Footnote ⁷⁷ More than Murray, Olasky refers directly to the history of private philanthropy and specifically to the work of Chalmers. Both writers are, however, closely allied with Murray providing the preface to Olasky's major work, The tragedy of American compassion.Footnote ⁷⁸ Olasky's significance is not as a historian but as a polemicist for the neo-conservative cause, in particular the attack on statutory and national benefits, and was consulted by Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush in the 1990s. Indeed Gingrich, alongside a raft of other neo-conservatives, gave the paperback edition of The tragedy of American compassion his personal endorsement.Footnote ⁷⁹ What is of particular interest here is the Chalmersonian ring to many of Olasky's concerns: statutory entitlement breeds dependency; local voluntary solutions are best; indiscriminate welfare relief leads to ‘compassion fatigue’ among the better off, etc. Alongside this is Olasky's constant reference to History and how that History, in particular nineteenth-century charity, proves his contemporary arguments, ‘The key to the future, as always, is understanding the past.’Footnote ⁸⁰

Few historians would wish to disagree with such a statement but we do need to challenge this understanding of Thomas Chalmers. At times, Olasky appears quite reticent about claiming too much. He writes, ‘Success rates for programs varied, and statistics were not always reliable.’Footnote ⁸¹ And again, in answer to the question, ‘What exactly did the charity of that era accomplish?’, he states ‘Often we have to fall back on eyewitness reports and journalistic assessments.’Footnote ⁸² This does not, however, stop Olasky from making absolute claims about the effectiveness of the charitable effort, especially when it comes to assessing the St John's experiment, ‘The result was extraordinary … Lives changed.’Footnote ⁸³

In making this claim, Olasky references Chalmers on himself and D. O. Kellogg of the COS of New York writing in 1883 whose sole source is Chalmers.Footnote ⁸⁴ Neither Kellogg nor Olasky mention that Chalmers always tended to rely on anecdote rather than any definite statistical evidence.Footnote ⁸⁵ If Himmelfarb can possibly be forgiven (just) for not being aware of the Scottish literature on Chalmers when she published in 1984, surely it is not acceptable for Olasky to be given the same lassitude in 1992. As well as Brown's biography having been in print for a decade by then, Furgol's study had been available since 1987 as had the monograph by Smith. Indeed, in Olasky's discussion of Chalmers there is no reference to any other historian. In his journalistic writings, Olasky abandons even the slightest reticence in making universal claims about the success of nineteenth-century philanthropic initiatives and, as with Chalmers, scorns the statistical for the anecdotal.Footnote ⁸⁶ The neo-conservative argument therefore is self-contained and self-referencing.Footnote ⁸⁷ Since the existing historiography gives no succour to any claim that the Chalmers experiments worked, and it is imperative that the neo-conservatives can claim that such practical solutions did work and can work again, the historical literature is simply ignored

V

Much of the shift in recent thinking on welfare and the formulation of practical reforms can be likened to Chalmersonian concerns about dependency and pauperism. The critical piece of legislation in the USA has been the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. In a move reminiscent of Chalmers's fulminations against compulsory assessment for the poor, the act removed the ‘legal recognition of public assistance as an entitlement’Footnote ⁸⁸ and allowed individual states to abolish relief payments raised from taxes if they so wished.Footnote ⁸⁹ It also introduced compulsion to those claiming unemployment benefits, including single mothers.Footnote ⁹⁰ In many ways, the PRWORA was the culmination of the successful waging of a battle of ideas by the neo-conservatives in America against welfare provision generally. Even the Democrats had succumbed to this message; Clinton campaigned for the presidency on a promise that he would sort out welfare. The basis of this shift to the right was acceptance of the argument that unemployment was due to a ‘culture of poverty’, and that ‘workfare’ was the answer. As the legislation was passed, Clinton declared that ‘today we are ending welfare as we know it’.Footnote ⁹¹

The neo-conservative message about welfare dependency in the USA has not gone unchallenged. Pimpare, among others, reveals the similarities in the arguments used by the neo-conservatives of the late twentieth century and their predecessors in the war against welfare a century before. In essence, his argument is that the contemporary New Victorians, while constantly praising and declaring successful the work of those who campaigned for the abolition of outdoor relief in the nineteenth century, refuse to acknowledge that this campaign ended in failure and had to be reversed at the turn of the twentieth century.Footnote ⁹² What might be termed the liberal critique of the compassionate conservative message takes a similarly long-term view of the problem of poverty; in this case, linking the current anti-welfare prescriptions with Malthus's original ‘perversity thesis’. This is the argument that by offering welfare as an entitlement the ‘perverse’ effect is the opposite of that intended and the poor become dependent upon benefits and remain poor, or in a state of pauperism as Chalmers would have put it. Twenty years ago, Albert Hirschman pointed out the similarities in arguments and even wording between contemporary opponents of the welfare state such as Charles Murray and early critics of the unreformed English poor law such as Edmund Burke. For over two centuries, reactionary opinion has been exercised by the notion of this ‘perversity’ and when the political moment is propitious it returns to prominence, even though its effect is nothing like as significant as claimed.Footnote ⁹³

Stephen Ziliak links the current protagonists for welfare reform not just with the Victorian COS but with Malthus's proposition that ‘abolishing “welfare” would uplift the character of the poor’. Yet, in spite of being around for two centuries, this hypothesis or Malthusian vice ‘has not been tested’ by economists. Ziliak attempts to put to empirical test whether the withdrawal of statutory aid and reliance upon private charity did lead to ‘character building’ and hence greater self-reliance among the poor. His case-study is the Indianapolis COS in the later nineteenth century, a society that appears to have been influenced by a Chalmersonian perspective of home visits and case work. As with Chalmers's experiments earlier in the century, Indianapolis experienced difficulty in sustaining its voluntary efforts, particularly those of the ‘friendly visitors’; relations between applicants and the society were found not to be very ‘friendly’ or ‘uplifting’. But more significant is the finding that contact with the COS did not increase the likelihood of attaining ‘self-reliance’. The evidence from the records is that the likelihood of quitting the rolls lessened over time, whereas had the ‘friendly visits’ and case work achieved their stated aims, then claimants would have been leaving early having been successfully prepared for ‘self-reliance’.Footnote ⁹⁴

Margaret Somers and Fred Block compare the triumph of market-driven ideas over existing welfare regimes in the new poor law in England in 1834 and the 1996 PRWORA in the USA. Directly influenced by Hirschman, the authors also make the connection between Malthus and the present-day neo-conservatives, in particular ‘just how closely [Charles Murray's] arguments parallel those of Malthus’.Footnote ⁹⁵ In both instances, that of the poor law reformers of early nineteenth-century England, and the neo-conservatives or ‘market fundamentalists’ of late twentieth century America, their grand narratives proved impervious to empirical refutations; ‘Malthus could present no evidence that this harmonious past ever existed. His was a theory driven logic, based on imputed theoretical entities … Nonetheless, it worked brilliantly.’Footnote ⁹⁶ Neither could Chalmers prove that his idealized rural parish or godly commonwealth could be transplanted successfully to the rapidly expanding cities of industrial Britain. Yet, though his two experiments did not actually work, they were still widely believed in. Partly, this narrative was helped by the insistence that the Scottish poor law had always been a more draconian system and that the Scottish poor had always been that much more ‘moral’ than the spoiled and pampered English poor.Footnote ⁹⁷

While Chalmers is recognized in these American critiques of the neo-conservative and Malthusian perspective there is no great understanding of what he was or what he represented. Pimpare simply refers to him anonymously as a ‘Scottish Reformer’ when discussing the COS and the feared loss of ‘natural’ charity.Footnote ⁹⁸ Ziliak describes Chalmers as a ‘political economist’, though one who was exceptional in believing, like the COS, that the ‘middling classes had a persuasive and emulative role in every day character building among the “worthy” poor’.Footnote ⁹⁹ Somers and Block identify Chalmers as ‘a political economist who exerted great influence over public opinion’, and as a ‘Malthusian convert’, in whose writings ‘It would be hard to find a more exacting representation of the poverty to perversity conversion narrative’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ This is correct insofar as it goes but there is no mention of the fact that he was a Church of Scotland minister, moderator of the assembly, leader of the Free Church, etc.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The influence of Chalmers relied not just on his Malthusian ideas and his political economy, but the fact that these ideas were being articulated by such a clearly devout and moral figure. Without such recognition, there is something lacking in their analysis, and Himmelfarb surely gets closer to the mark when she writes, ‘his evangelicalism made all the difference’.Footnote ¹⁰²

This religious moral authority was crucial in Scotland and England during his lifetime and beyond. It is why Chalmers appealed so much to the COS in the later nineteenth century and helps explain his appeal to neo-conservatives such as Olasky and Gingrich in the late twentieth century. Unlike their American counterparts, however, British politicians today are famously reticent in employing religion directly with their policies or rhetoric; Mrs Thatcher attempted this in Scotland in 1988 with her infamous ‘Sermon on the Mound’ with disastrous consequences.Footnote ¹⁰³ We would, therefore, not expect any political figure in Britain to refer to or even necessarily be aware of Thomas Chalmers. One likely exception is Gordon Brown whose own Ph.D. in History was submitted at Edinburgh in 1982 and who would have known of Stewart Brown's biography of Chalmers, particularly as the late Donald Dewar gave it a highly favourable review.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Despite being himself a ‘son of the manse’ from Fife, Brown never made any direct reference to Chalmers, presumably because the future prime minister shared the predominant view in Scotland that Chalmers's prescriptions offered little or nothing to the cause of social reform. There is some irony, therefore, that Brown, in embracing the American prescription for welfare reform in the 1990s, was effectively accepting at least part of the Chalmersonian world view.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Regardless of this significant cultural difference between the two countries, the American influence on New Labour and by extension British welfare policy has been well documented. The long period of tory rule from 1979, and perhaps particularly the disappointment of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in the general election of 1992 made New Labour highly susceptible to learning lessons from the success of the new Democrats. Blair, Brown, and advisers such as Phillip Gould and Ed Balls spent a great deal of time in America and enthusiastically embraced Clinton's administration and political strategy; a strategy (including the tough stand on welfare) it was believed that had to be followed if New Labour was to win the next election.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Once in office, Labour was to show that this was not just a superficial nod to the opinion polls but a more deep-seated conversion to a new Anglo-Saxon politics. Based on the acceptance of flexible labour markets, i.e. low wages and insecure employment, Labour embraced ‘workfare’, most notably in its ‘New Deal’ programme for getting the long-term unemployed back to work.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ While it would be wrong to exaggerate the degree of coercion involved, it is significant in marking the end of a Keynesian demand-led understanding of unemployment, and a shift towards embracing the American supply side model where the problem of unemployment is mostly explained by the shortcomings of the unemployed themselves, most notably their dependence upon welfare. This shift was manifested even before Labour's triumph at the general election in 1997.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ What is perhaps of most significance is how far supply side ideas have influenced thinking across the political spectrum. In his 2009 speech where he introduced his Big Society idea, David Cameron faithfully followed the Malthusian line when he argued that the state ‘has reached a point where it is now inhibiting, not advancing the progressive aims of reducing poverty, fighting inequality, and increasing general well-being’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Five years previously, Gordon Brown used the same venue to lay out his version or vision of Britishness. This speech gained some notoriety among commentators and historians alike because of Brown's embracing of Himmelfarb's argument that it was Britain, not France, that ‘led the way into the modern world by focussing on benevolence, improvement [sic] the civic society and moral sense as necessary for social progress’.Footnote ¹¹⁰

Where Brown differs most sharply from the neo-conservatives and Cameron is in clearly acknowledging the necessity of the state. While the market, charity, and individuals can all promote ‘fairness’, it can only be guaranteed by ‘enabling government’. In his lecture, however, Brown called for ‘a new debate on the vital future role of the voluntary charitable and community sector in our country and how we can do more to encourage the giving of both time and money and to make the necessary decisions to support both’.Footnote ¹¹¹ It is here where the dividing lines between New Labour and Cameron's caring conservatism become blurred. For Cameron, the proper role of government ought to be ‘Galvanising, catalysing, prompting, encouraging and agitating for community engagement and social renewal. It must help families, individuals, charities and communities come together and solve problems.’Footnote ¹¹² It is not too fanciful to see Cameron's ‘Community Activists’ as modern-day versions of Chalmers's deacons. Had Cameron not coined the phrase ‘Big Society’ it is not implausible that Brown would have been happy to use it. And, apart from the state, Brown's comments have a distinctly Chalmersonian ring to them, ‘the obligations accepted by the unemployed to seek work, the challenge to poor neighbourhoods to break from a dependency culture’.Footnote ¹¹³

VI

In 1997, Brown declared (while holidaying in the US) ‘there's going to be the biggest change in welfare in fifty years’, and it is clear that Clinton's welfare-to-work policy was the model he intended to emulate.Footnote ¹¹⁴ As the Democrats and New Labour embraced a neo-conservative inspired agenda on welfare – means testing, binding agreements with the poor, etc. – as a means to combat generational poverty, or pauperism, so once again Chalmersonian ideals began to influence policy on both sides of the Atlantic even if without due acknowledgement of their provenance. It is important to recognize both what a significant figure Chalmers was in the pantheon of Victorian voluntarism, and the influence his ideas exercised over such a long period, particularly, though not exclusively, through the COS. Yet, though Chalmers may be used by neo-conservatives today, he is not elevated by them to the extent that he was by Loch and others in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in both the UK and USA. The point, however, is to recognize the unreliable foundations of the neo-conservative appreciation of Chalmers and the implications this has for their prescriptions for tackling welfare dependency or ‘pauperism’.

In concluding this exploration of the transatlantic influence of Chalmers, it is illustrative to refer to one final case-study which effectively takes us back almost to the beginning. In 1820 in Baltimore, a society for the prevention of pauperism was established. Those members of the local middle class behind the society had become alarmed at the inexorable growth of pauperism. Agreeing with Malthus that ‘Benevolence encouraged idleness’, they were in part inspired by the Hamburg system and the writings of Chalmers in Scotland, particularly his exposition of ‘the principle of investigation’ into those applying for relief. The Baltimore society introduced a similar system, with the city divided into districts and ‘fit persons’, akin to Chalmers's deacons, appointed to investigate the situation of those applying for relief. Yet, in spite of the ‘impressive membership’, few were found willing to do the hard work of visiting and investigating. Quickly, it became apparent that the society was more interested in distinguishing between the deserving and undeserving poor, a moral crusade, rather than alleviating poverty, and opposition to it emerged. By late 1822, the society was effectively moribund. Poverty was reduced, not by charitable efforts, but by the return of trade after a period of depression; an economic state that the society had ‘ignored as a cause of destitution’.

So, almost as soon as Chalmers began his practical work in St John's, like-minded people in the USA, who were at least partly inspired by him, attempted a similar experiment which collapsed ignominiously after only two years. What is particularly interesting is that the article on the Baltimore society was published in The American Historical Review in 1955. It is not referenced by Olasky or Himmelfarb (though it is by Furgol), but its author presciently concluded that ‘Failure that it was by every practical test, the Baltimore Society for the Prevention of Pauperism expressed an attitude toward the poor that was to persist and to gain adherents when the times became more propitious.’Footnote ¹¹⁵