William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs, is widely regarded as one of the preeminent physicists of the nineteenth century.Footnote ¹ His name is synonymous with the science of energy, and especially the conservation of energy, which, by the end of the century, “was a central and indispensable plank not only of physics but across a whole range of sciences.”Footnote ² Kelvin's elevation to the peerage, announced in January 1892, was an unprecedented honor for a scientist. This honor may be attributed both to his scientific and practical achievements at the University of Glasgow, where he spent his entire professional career, and to his Liberal Unionist opposition to W. E. Gladstone's policy of legislative independence, or Home Rule, for Ireland. In addition to the prominent roles he played in science and politics, Kelvin, like many other scientists of the period, combined his scientific research with a commitment to orthodox protestant Christianity. This article argues that Kelvin's Irish background was very important in shaping his attitude toward the interconnected areas of science, politics, and religion.Footnote ³ Especially important was the influence of his father, James Thomson, professor of mathematics at the Belfast Academical Institution from 1815 and at the University of Glasgow from 1832. A reexamination of Thomson's public life in Belfast provides an opportunity to show how he and his son shared in a religious, scientific, and political culture that united like-minded individuals and communities in the northeast of Ireland and the west of Scotland. In order to do so, it reassesses the relationship between religion and politics among Presbyterians in Ulster, many of whom were at the forefront of rebellion and republicanism in the 1790s but were ardent supporters of Act of Union (1800) by the first Home Rule crisis in 1886. It especially reconsiders the growth of evangelical religion and its role in the political development of Ulster Presbyterianism in the nineteenth century.

It has often been argued by Irish historians that the growth of evangelicalism in Ulster led to the marginalization of political liberalism among Presbyterians as they made common cause with the Church of Ireland, their erstwhile enemies in the rebellion of 1798, against the threat of Irish Catholic nationalism.Footnote ⁴ A specific example of this interpretation may be found in the standard biography of Kelvin by Crosbie Smith and Norton Wise, who have established the decisive influence of James Thomson on the worldview of his son.Footnote ⁵ Though Kelvin's name is synonymous with the University of Glasgow, he was born in the north of Ireland, in Belfast, on 26 June 1824. His father, James Thomson, was born into a Presbyterian family on 13 November 1786 in Ballynahinch, County Down. This area was a heartland of Presbyterian political radicalism and the United Irishmen, an organization that is often seen as the beginning of modern Irish republicanism. Smith and Wise claim that Thomson's support for the principles of the original United Irishmen—liberty, brotherhood, and equality—fed into Kelvin's own Whig/liberal political views, his “non-hypothetical, anti-metaphysical, and practical” approach to science, and his latitudinarian attitude toward religious denominations.Footnote ⁶ The radicalism with which Thomson had sympathy found expression after the failed rebellion of 1798 in the college department of the Belfast Academical Institution, founded in 1814, in which he was appointed a professor. He also became an acquaintance of one of the key ideologues of the United Irishmen, the theologically liberal Presbyterian William Drennan. Smith and Wise claim that in the nineteenth century, the political liberalism and radicalism of Presbyterians were eclipsed by the belligerence of the Reverend Henry Cooke, the most prominent Irish Presbyterian of the period. Cooke combined conservative evangelical religion and political conservatism in an effort to create unity between the two main groups of protestants in Ireland, the Presbyterians and the established Church of Ireland, against theological liberals, Whig reformers, and Irish Catholic nationalists. Owing to the influence of Cooke, among other factors, they claim that “sectarianism was regaining ground in the North of Ireland through the first half of the century. This clear drift away from the old liberalism contrasted with Scotland, where the passage of the century tended to lessen, rather than exacerbate, sectarian differences, and made Scotland a more attractive home for the latitudinarian Professor William Thomson.”Footnote ⁷ In particular, the “liberal, commercial, and protestant values” Kelvin received from his father found a more congenial home in Glasgow and set him against Home Rule in 1885–86, propelling him to the forefront of Liberal Unionism in the west of Scotland.Footnote ⁸ Such is the importance of Kelvin's Irish context, especially the liberal tradition in which his father developed, that “No other single theme in the scientist's life linked him so inseparably with the major British political developments of the day. No other single factor contributed so much to his elevation to a peerage.”Footnote ⁹

It is certainly the case that evangelical religion provided much of the basis for a unionist alliance in Ulster against Home Rule after 1886. However, that did not entail a disappearance of Presbyterian political liberalism because the coalition against Home Rule comprised a variety of groups who had different views on the relationship between religion and politics. A crucial strand of this coalition in Ulster was Liberal Unionism, in which Presbyterian evangelicals played a leading role. In that context, a reexamination of Thomson's political and religious context in the north of Ireland provides an opportunity to challenge the view that Kelvin would not have felt at home in Victorian Ulster because Presbyterians, the largest protestant denomination in the region, had succumbed to Henry Cooke's particular brand of conservative religion and politics. This article demonstrates the continued importance of political liberalism among nineteenth-century Presbyterian evangelicals and the similarities between Kelvin's Liberal Unionism in the west of Scotland and that of many of his Ulster contemporaries.

Evangelicalism was a movement within transatlantic protestantism that came to prominence in the eighteenth century in the guise of Methodism and religious revivals among Calvinists in the west of Scotland and the American colonies.Footnote ¹⁰ It was united by certain theological commitments and the necessity for individuals to enter into a personal relationship with Christ through the experience of conversion. This imperative led to activism that sought to spread the Gospel to all humankind. Despite these family resemblances, evangelicals were divided among themselves over issues of theology, church organization, and subscription to doctrinal statements of faith, not to mention social divisions and the vexed relationship between faith and politics. As demonstrated by Boyd Hilton, evangelicals could be part of the establishment in Britain and shape profoundly social and economic thought; at the same time, evangelical religion could be associated with political reform, even radicalism, among protestant nonconformists.Footnote ¹¹ Smith and Wise themselves recognize differences of emphasis and presentation within evangelicalism, comparing Cooke's narrow vision with the broad vision of Thomas Chalmers, the great leader of the evangelical party within the Church of Scotland in the first half of the nineteenth century.Footnote ¹²

Though Thomson and Kelvin were not outspoken evangelicals, they were orthodox protestants, and their joint commitment to liberal principles, to the importance of science, and to Liberal Unionism was shared by theologically conservative Presbyterians in the north of Ireland who opposed Cooke's brand of religion and politics. Kelvin's Liberal Unionism was indeed shaped by his father's experiences, but Henry Cooke and the forces he represented did not succeed in overwhelming the liberal context in which Thomson operated. The complexity of evangelicalism noted above was also evident among Cooke's coreligionists in Ulster who, under the influence of a particular type of evangelicalism, sought to return their community to the principles and practices of seventeenth-century Presbyterianism.Footnote ¹³ This process of reform intensified Presbyterian identity and the majority of Presbyterian ministers, and a substantial proportion of the laity, from the 1830s onward opposed Cooke's conflation of evangelicalism and conservative politics.Footnote ¹⁴ They supported the Liberal Party and used their Presbyterian principles as a means of opposing both Anglican privilege and Catholic ascendancy. They protested at the infringement of their religious rights by government and the continued monopoly of public appointments by Anglicans, and were steadfast supporters of land reform in opposition to Anglican landlords who owned the lion's share of Irish land. They continued to distrust the Church of Ireland for theological and historical reasons, but they also remained deeply suspicious of Catholicism and feared its ascendancy in any Irish parliament. As a consequence, Presbyterian Liberals rejected Gladstone's policy of Home Rule and formed, with other disaffected Liberals, an Ulster Liberal Unionist Association in June 1886. At the subsequent election in July, the superior electioneering machine of the Conservatives led to the return for Ulster constituencies of fifteen Conservative Unionists and two Liberal Unionists.Footnote ¹⁵ Despite the electoral dominance of the Conservatives, Graham Walker has demonstrated that Liberal Unionism remained a key component of the unionist coalition in Ireland because of their ancestral, religious, commercial, and political links with Scotland, especially Kelvin's world in Glasgow and the west coast.Footnote ¹⁶

Rather than seeing Thomson as a product of a theologically liberal and politically radical context exemplified by William Drennan, the first two sections of this article argue that it is more appropriate to view him as a product of an evangelical and Enlightenment background that stressed education, progress, political and social reform, and theological orthodoxy. The first section revisits James Thomson's early life in County Down and the influence of the Reverend Samuel Edgar, his teacher and patron. Edgar is referred to briefly by Kelvin's biographers, but none of them have attempted to understand the influence he may have had on James. Like Thomson, Edgar shared the liberal values of the original United Irishmen but was also an evangelical in religion. The next section examines the involvement of Thomson and Edgar in the Belfast Academical Institution and Thomson's public career in the town. Thomson and the Institution had a significant impact in shaping attitudes toward science and religion among northern protestants, attitudes that would be shared later by his son and by moderate voices in the north of Ireland. The final section examines Kelvin's Liberal Unionism and outlines the links between Liberal Unionists in Glasgow and Ulster. It ends with a discussion of the erection of a memorial statue to Kelvin in the Botanic Gardens, Belfast, and of how he was portrayed as a scientist, Christian philosopher, and Liberal Unionist, roles that were shaped by his father's public life in the north of Ireland.

One of the great ironies of modern Irish history is that a principal source of modern Irish republicanism can be traced back to Presbyterians in the north of Ireland who were overwhelmingly unionist by 1886.Footnote ¹⁷ When the Belfast Society of United Irishmen was formed in October 1791, all but one of the Society were Presbyterians, including two sons of the manse. Scholars have attempted to discover the potential origins of Presbyterian political radicalism in a variety of areas, including the religious and political cantankerousness of theologically conservative Presbyterians, Enlightenment thought, and the subordinate position of Presbyterians in the Anglican confessional state in Ireland. It is important to note that Presbyterians in the 1790s were reacting against a reactionary and unresponsive Irish parliament, which had been given its legislative independence in 1782 and was dominated by an exclusive ruling elite comprising members of the established episcopal Church of Ireland. Moreover, as Ian McBride has pointed out, the political vision of the United Irishmen ought to be described as the “Enlightenment republicanism” of the eighteenth century rather than the “Romantic separatism” of later nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish republicanism. It “was not an assertion of self-determination grounded upon ethnic or cultural difference, but an assault on ancien régime pillars of monarchy, aristocracy and church in the name of a non-sectarian republic.”Footnote ¹⁸ Presbyterians had received their political education in the 1770s and early 1780s during the revolutionary wars and the Volunteer movement. Owing to this mobilization and various geopolitical events in the late eighteenth century, space developed for a political alliance to develop between Catholics and Presbyterians, especially as the overthrow in France of the Bourbon monarchy and Catholic Church seemed to be a sign of the times that the papacy itself was crumbling and about to fall, events many Presbyterians believed were predicted in the prophetic books of the Bible. Consequently, the Society of United Irishmen was formed in Belfast to unite Catholic, protestant, and dissenter in order to achieve parliamentary reform and the relief of outstanding Catholic grievances, and to renegotiate the relationship between Britain and Ireland. The movement for political change in the north soon encountered problems, however, and it split over whether to press for the immediate or gradual granting of further rights to Catholics. Owing to the failure of the government to introduce reform and the outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793, the Society was transformed over the following years from a political pressure group to a revolutionary conspiracy that sought separation from Britain. The 1798 rebellion was an uncoordinated disaster. In the north, it was predominately Presbyterian, and an estimated sixty-three Presbyterian ministers were implicated, some of whom were interned, forced to emigrate, or executed. That said, radicalism was not the default position of most Presbyterians. A significant number of them fought against the rebels, and the involvement of others often depended on the local dynamic between protestants and Catholics.

The political upheaval experienced by Ireland in the 1790s is important for students of Kelvin because his father had direct personal experience of the 1798 rebellion in County Down. According to Kelvin's sister, 1798 “left a deep impression on my father's mind.” James later in life spoke often to his family “of the dreadful oppression under which the Roman Catholics groaned at this time” and traced the rebellion back to the oppressive-ruling Anglican elite who had a stranglehold on political and economic life.Footnote ¹⁹ Thomson published an eyewitness account of the battle of Ballynahinch, one of the main military engagements of the rebellion, in the February issue of the Belfast Magazine in 1825. As noted by Smith and Wise, his description “emphasized the futility of the rebellion, while at the same time expressing an implicit sympathy with the ideals of the rebels—the ideals of liberty, equality, and freedom from sectarian dogma”—and criticized the excesses of the government forces.Footnote ²⁰ Thomson was a child at the time, but he vividly remembered that his family was busy “in preparing oaten cakes, and boiling large portions of salted beef and bacon” for the rebel camp outside Ballynahinch. He accompanied the delivery of these on 12 June to “a mixed and motley multitude” of rebels. He looked suspiciously at the atrocities perpetrated by government forces but was relieved that the defeat of the rebels “fortunately terminated the ill-conceived and short-lived rebellion in the North.” Had the rebels been successful at Ballynahinch, he argued, “much more bloodshed, and much more extensive distress and desolation” would have occurred before they were finally defeated.Footnote ²¹

Another account of the rebellion in mid–County Down appeared in the July issue of the Belfast Magazine. The author was the Reverend Samuel Edgar, Thomson's teacher in Ballynahinch who would later employ him as an assistant master in his school and become a colleague of his in the Belfast Academical Institution.Footnote ²² Edgar's account was a simple record of his personal experiences rather than a condemnation of those involved, though he does censure the actions of the government forces who “committed various outrages” and indulged in “the wanton exercise of unlimited power.”Footnote ²³ Both accounts reflected pride among sections of nineteenth-century Presbyterians in the heroism of their United Irish contemporaries and forefathers who, they argued, differed from them only in their commitment to the union with Great Britain enacted in 1800.Footnote ²⁴ Extracts from both accounts were also included in William McComb's Guide to Belfast, published in 1861.Footnote ²⁵ McComb has been described as the “poet laureate of Presbyterianism” and through his publishing business gave significant support to the evangelical party led by Henry Cooke within the Synod of Ulster.Footnote ²⁶ He was a keen evangelical and unionist, though his literary output points toward a more complex identity.Footnote ²⁷ In his Guide, McComb included a poem about Bessie (or Betsy) Gray, who was identified with the United Irish rebels and was killed by government troops in the aftermath of the battle of Ballynahinch. The poem reflects many of the same views as Thomson and Edgar, describing the rebellion as “a melancholy exhibition of folly and recklessness” in which true religion played little or no part compared with the principles of infidelity and Thomas Paine.Footnote ²⁸ At the same time, McComb notes that the defeat of the rebellion was a providential “turning point in the history of Ireland,” as it brought about institutions for the spread of the Bible, Sabbath and daily schools, and home and foreign missions, in addition to new modes of farming, roads, and communications.Footnote ²⁹ This growth of evangelical religion was linked by McComb, and evangelicals more generally, with political unionism.

Intelligent Irishmen now wonder how their fathers could have been so befooled as to think of separation from England; and every year, in the growing prosperity of the Emerald Isle, they are presented with fresh proofs of the benefits of the Union. Under the sway of the great and good Victoria they enjoy all the political blessings to which freemen can legitimately aspire, and some of them have already been advanced to stations of the highest influence and honor in the British Empire. English and Scottish capital has vastly contributed to Ireland's amelioration, and every sane person may now see that a separation from the sister country would be the harbinger of our national degradation. Grandmothers may entertain children in the nursery with stories of ’98, but we trust that there will never be a repetition of the scenes of that awful year.Footnote ³⁰

Presbyterians were involved with evangelicals from other denominations in movements for moral and religious reform throughout the nineteenth century. In the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion, various societies were formed to promote popular education, temperance, and missionary activism at home and overseas that often employed narratives of improvement indebted to the Enlightenment and millennialism.Footnote ³¹ A prime example of such evangelical reformers was Samuel Edgar. He was a minister of the Burger Seceder congregation in Ballynahinch. The Seceders, an offshoot of the established Presbyterian Church of Scotland, had come to Ireland in the 1740s. Owing to their latent evangelicalism, they began to challenge the dominance of the Synod of Ulster, the largest Presbyterian grouping in Ulster since its formation in 1690, to become the growth sector of Irish Presbyterianism in the second half of the eighteenth century.Footnote ³² Edgar was the denomination's professor of theology, a prominent supporter of missionary and philanthropic organizations, and committed to the ideals of the Enlightenment and the value of education. This mixture of elements was reflected in a sermon preached in 1815 before the Down Missionary Society, of which he was a founding member. The sermon advanced the claims of evangelical foreign missions in the language of the Enlightenment, employing a vocabulary consisting of “rational,” “enlighten,” “education,” “improvement,” “knowledge,” and “civilisation.”Footnote ³³ Edgar also subscribed to the Enlightenment ideal of progress, which he dressed up in a millennial language. In a sermon delivered in 1814, Edgar aimed to demonstrate, in contradistinction to what he believed was the common view, “that the moral world is improving, instead of growing worse.”Footnote ³⁴ He claimed that a principal reason why this was the common view was a mistaken understanding of religion that resulted in misplaced zeal and a lack of charity. Edgar chose examples from his own denomination to illustrate, including the dispute over the Scottish Burgess Oath that had split the original secession in 1747 and the scholastic interest in doctrinal minutiae. Although Edgar was clearly committed to the doctrinal standard of Presbyterianism, the Westminster Confession of Faith, he claimed that scholastic preaching had taught people to be backbiters and controversialists, not “as binding them to be loving husbands, and frugal wives, to be honest men and good neighbors, and in all relations of life, to do to others whatsoever they would that others should do unto them.”Footnote ³⁵ In light of Thomson's “latitudinarianism,” it is significant that the evangelical Edgar emphasized practical Christianity and suggested that a commitment to common evangelical principles was more important than dogmatic or scholastic Christianity. This evangelical ecumenism was very common in this period; the more belligerent version of evangelicalism advocated by Cooke was a product of the polarization of religious and political life across Britain and Ireland from the late 1820s.Footnote ³⁶

There was a political dimension to this 1814 sermon. Both Edgar and Thomson supported the union with Great Britain.Footnote ³⁷ Few northern Presbyterians involved in radicalism or reformist politics lamented the end of the Irish Parliament, as it represented to them all that was corrupt in the Irish political system, and they acquiesced in the passing of the Act of Union.Footnote ³⁸ Some contemporary commentators equated the rise of conservative evangelical religion with the disappearance of the liberal instincts of Presbyterians. For instance, Edgar's sermon was taken to task by the Belfast Monthly Magazine, founded and edited by William Drennan, as it flattered the government, implied a lack of support for the political claims of Catholics, and supported Bible and missionary societies.Footnote ³⁹ The review was, however, misleading and colored by an antipathy to evangelical religion. In other writings, Edgar extended his vision from identifiably evangelical concerns toward important political issues, particularly land reform and the Catholic question. Five years previous, and in the Belfast Monthly Magazine itself, he wrote, “Whatever tends to damp the spirit of the farmer, to keep him in a state of venal dependence and crouching vassalage, materially injures the commonwealth.” In particular, he commented that high rents on short leases had led to a lack of improvement and that gradual reform was needed to conciliate the lower orders.Footnote ⁴⁰ During the nineteenth century, Ballynahinch had a number of Presbyterian ministers who were prominent critics of landlords and supporters of the rights of tenant farmers, including David McKee of Anaghlone and Edgar's own son and successor, David.Footnote ⁴¹

Edgar returned to the land question in 1822 when he argued that Catholics could be won by appropriate religious and political reforms from their religious and literary ignorance, excessive clerical influence, superstitious religion, and deficient moral conduct. The means of improvement he enumerated included Catholic emancipation, the elimination of the Orange Order, education, and a rational presentation of the Gospel.Footnote ⁴² Echoing Edmund Burke, Edgar claimed that he would not have discussed the political question of emancipation “were I not decidedly of the opinion, that non-emancipation has operated, and continues to operate, as a strong barrier in the way of improving the Catholic, either in religious principles, or in morals.”Footnote ⁴³ The removal of oppression, he claimed, was a necessary preliminary to the moral improvement of Roman Catholics. This entailed landlords acting in a liberal and encouraging manner, an end to excessive tithing, and the introduction of martial law only in desperate circumstances. By advocating Catholic emancipation, Edgar was reflecting the general attitude of Presbyterians in the north, including Henry Cooke, who supported emancipation but with certain provisos.Footnote ⁴⁴ Edgar's comments also gave expression to a latent sense of cantankerousness that continued to find expression among Presbyterians in rural areas even after the bloodbath of 1798.Footnote ⁴⁵

In addition to these religious and political matters, both Edgar and Thomson were graduates of Glasgow University, and both were committed to the value of the liberal and practical education associated with Scottish universities. During the eighteenth century, Presbyterian students from the north of Ireland, including the majority of Presbyterian ministers of whatever theological persuasion, received their liberal arts education at the University of Glasgow because they were excluded on account of their religion from Trinity College, Dublin.Footnote ⁴⁶ Indeed, Thomson himself attended Glasgow, with the intention of becoming a Presbyterian minister.Footnote ⁴⁷ These students were made aware of the importance of experimental science and its practical application to the world of industry, themes that would dominate the work of Thomson and his sons.Footnote ⁴⁸ In addition, the most popular course for these students was moral philosophy. Under the tutelage of Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid, they imbibed what has come to be known as Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Contrary to the skepticism of David Hume, these philosophers argued for a realist position and applied the inductive scientific method of Francis Bacon to create a science of the mind.Footnote ⁴⁹ Although both Hutcheson and Reid were theological moderates who demurred at certain tenets of orthodox Calvinism, their epistemological insights would find favor with evangelicals.Footnote ⁵⁰

These themes were reflected in the formation in 1814 of the college department of the Belfast Academical Institution, known locally as “Inst.” Thomson was appointed teacher of mathematics in the school department in 1814 and a year later was made professor in the college. The formation of the college reunited Thomson and Samuel Edgar, who became the professor of divinity for the Seceders in 1817 and acted as a referee for his former pupil.Footnote ⁵¹ It is claimed by historians that the political radicalism of Presbyterians found expression after the rebellion in this college, owing to the involvement of former United Irishmen such as William Drennan, one of the key ideologues of the United Irishmen and Thomson's acquaintance. Moreover, it is claimed that in the 1820s, the liberalism and nonsectarianism of Inst came into conflict with “the powerful evangelical wing of the Irish Presbyterian Church, dominated … by the fiery Rev Henry Cooke.” This account of the dispute offered by Smith and Wise is one of sectarian versus nonsectarian education and relies on outdated accounts that imply that Cooke was solely motivated by political considerations in his campaign against Inst.Footnote ⁵² A reexamination of the early development of Inst provides a more complex picture.

The establishment of a liberal arts college in Belfast was first proposed in 1807 and had the support of the political establishment. The “main impetus,” however, came from those associated with political radicalism—William Tennent, Robert Simms, William Sims, Robert Caldwell, William Drennan, Henry Henry, and John Barnett.Footnote ⁵³ They included representatives of the original Enlightenment radicalism of the United Irishmen as well as theological conservatives such as Henry and Barnett.Footnote ⁵⁴ Inst was established on a nonsectarian basis, and professors took a pledge not to interfere with the religious sentiments of their students. However, the board of management suggested that accommodation would be provided in the college should the various Presbyterian bodies appoint their own theological professors, who would also sit on the faculty. Presbyterians hoped that this college would meet their long-standing desire for a home education for their ministers, and the college was on a sound financial footing after the government voted an annual grant of £1,500 in 1815.Footnote ⁵⁵ However, the scheme soon ran into problems. The board of management included former United Irishmen and their sympathizers, and at a St. Patrick's Day dinner in 1816, it was alleged that disloyal toasts had been raised. Unsurprisingly, the government and its Tory supporters within the Synod of Ulster, led by the prominent theological liberal, or New Light, minister Robert Black of Derry, opposed the training of future ministers in a place where “democratic” values were espoused. Although a threat was made to remove the government grant from Inst, the synod went ahead and appointed Samuel Hanna as their professor of divinity. During the debate in the synod in June 1817 over the issue, the government was taken to task by the young evangelical minister of Mary's Abbey congregation in Dublin, James Carlile, who protested “against government dictating an opinion as to the measures we should adopt for the interests of religion.”Footnote ⁵⁶ In this dispute, it is important to note that New Light former United Irishmen like Drennan, and Presbyterian evangelicals like Hanna, Henry, and Carlile, all asserted the independence of the college against government interference and Tory interests as represented in the synod by Robert Black. Notwithstanding this united front, the annual grant was removed in 1817 and was not resumed until 1829.

Despite the fears of political conservatives, the 1826–27 parliamentary inquiry into the college found that it had a positive impact in terms of inculcating loyalty to the United Kingdom and that the loyalty of the professors, including Thomson, was never in any doubt.Footnote ⁵⁷ The inquiry also demonstrated that the resurgence of Presbyterian evangelicalism was encouraged by the foundation of Inst, as both the divinity professors appointed by the Synod of Ulster and the Seceders were Calvinists who were actively involved in evangelical missionary societies. Samuel Hanna believed that “more Calvinists have gone into the ministry in the Synod of Ulster, since the commencement of my lectures” than from previous universities.Footnote ⁵⁸ Orthodox and liberal authorities were sure that the appointment of Hanna was a significant indication of the growth of evangelical sentiment more generally in Ulster and would encourage the revival of conservative theological views within the Synod of Ulster.Footnote ⁵⁹

Though there was general agreement that ministers were more inclined to evangelical Calvinism if educated at Belfast, Cooke preferred that students attend Glasgow rather than Inst “at present circumstanced.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Cooke's comments reflected the deterioration of relations between the Synod and Belfast Inst over the influence of professors who held non-Trinitarian beliefs.Footnote ⁶¹ One of the cardinal points of evangelical religion was the deity of Christ, as an individual's salvation depended solely upon his or her personal relationship with Christ. This doctrine was being challenged in the 1820s by a number of prominent theologically liberal Presbyterians who began to openly avow the anti-Trinitarian heresy of Arianism, including William Bruce (Jr.), appointed the professor of classics and Hebrew in Inst in 1821. A public campaign was launched by Cooke against the influence of Arian members of the teaching staff on Presbyterian ministerial students. He branded Inst a “seminary of Arianism” and aroused public opinion against Inst during his year as moderator of the synod in 1824–25. His belligerence was opposed initially by many of his fellow evangelicals within the synod, including Samuel Hanna, who shared the same theological views as Cooke but who was wholly committed to the independence of Inst and optimistic about the eventual decline of Arian sentiment within its walls.Footnote ⁶² Nevertheless, Cooke eventually prevailed upon the synod to demand a greater say over the appointment of teachers and professors. The board of managers would, however, only go so far. The dispute with Inst then became linked with the debate in the synod between Cooke and his Arian opponent Henry Montgomery, which led to the Arians leaving the synod for good in 1829. Almost immediately, the dispute entered a new phase and only finally ended in the early 1840s when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, formed in 1840 after the unification of the Seceders and the Synod of Ulster, decided to end the connection on the formation of Queen’s College, Belfast, in 1845.Footnote ⁶³

Inst had been warmly received by the other main Presbyterian group in Ulster, the Seceders. In 1815, both the Seceder synods recommended that their students attend Inst and appointed Samuel Edgar as their professor of divinity.Footnote ⁶⁴ They were in sympathy with Cooke's concerns and expressed regret that Arian professors had been appointed, yet they saw no reason for ending their connection with Inst, as the professors had agreed not to interfere with the religious views of the students. Edgar delivered a ringing endorsement of Inst and his own synod at the parliamentary inquiry in 1827. He noted that the Seceders had not withdrawn their students from Glasgow University in the previous century, when theological moderatism was at its height, and asserted that the exclusion of teachers on the basis of their personal religion had no biblical warrant. He was convinced that Arianism would not spread in Inst for a variety of reasons, including his conviction of the ultimate triumph of truth over Arian error.Footnote ⁶⁵ Reflecting Thomson's later opposition to religious tests in Glasgow University, Edgar declared that religious bodies could exclude any member on the basis of the terms of communion they agreed to but that Inst was not part of any such community. “General literary education is a civil privilege common to all men, without regard to sects in religion, and no one sect has more right than another, or rather none has any right, to prescribe articles of faith, or modes of worship, to the conductors of such general education.”Footnote ⁶⁶ He then turned his attention to Cooke and the double standard of the Synod of Ulster that “should desire to have influence in excluding Arians from the Belfast College, when they do not exclude them from ministerial or Christian communion in their own church.” Both he and the moderator of the Secession Synod, Thomas Heron, told the committee that Inst had the confidence of the Seceders and that the pledge of the faculty had not been violated in the appointment of William Bruce.Footnote ⁶⁷ Edgar also submitted a letter to the commission, dated 21 January 1826, in which he argued that those who elected professors should not be interfered with, as this was “the best way for the maintenance of truth and peace, for the prevention of party spirit and faction among ecclesiastics, and the way most consistent with those principles of union and affection among Christians of all denominations.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Edgar's views were echoed by his fellow Seceder John Barnett, a political radical and one of the founders of Inst, who blamed Cooke for stirring up unwarranted controversy at a time when Arianism was on the decline in Ulster.Footnote ⁶⁹

Throughout these disputes, Thomson was associated with Presbyterian evangelicals in Belfast and continued to teach mathematics in the college. Thomson attended Samuel Hanna's Third Congregation in Belfast, thus turning his back on the two theologically liberal congregations of William Bruce (Sr.) and W. D. H. McEwen.Footnote ⁷⁰ The obituary of Thomson in the Presbyterian newspaper, the Banner of Ulster, observed that he was “firm in his attachment to his principles, and Orthodox in his religious faith,” yet also “an ardent friend to freedom, a lover of good men, charitable in the true sense of the term, and sincerely desirous of following peace with all.”Footnote ⁷¹ While in Belfast, Thomson took a leading part in the formation of Fisherwick Place congregation. In a public document issued on 6 September 1823, Thomson and his fellow subscribers supported the erection of the new congregation because of the pressure on church accommodation and rising seat rents caused by the unprecedented population growth of Belfast. The authors were sure that the new congregation would not adversely affect Hanna's, whose support they had, and that those involved in this proposal “entertain precisely the same views in point of doctrine and of Church government and discipline, as those avowed by the members of that congregation.”Footnote ⁷² When the congregation was finally opened by Thomas Chalmers in 1827, the Thomson family hosted the great Scottish Presbyterian evangelical, who would remain a correspondent of James Thomson.Footnote ⁷³ The first minister of the congregation was James Morgan, a passionate evangelical whose pastoral work and support of missionary activity earned him the respect of those inside and outside his denomination, including Thomson, who expressed his genuine fondness for Morgan in his correspondence with Chalmers.Footnote ⁷⁴ Some within the new congregation wanted Cooke as their minister, but his belligerent attitude toward Inst, rather than his evangelical religion, had created a prejudice against him.Footnote ⁷⁵

During his time in Inst, Thomson was noted as an exceptional teacher of science. On the occasion of his death from cholera in January 1849, the Banner of Ulster declared that he was “one of the ablest men of the present day.” In particular, his contribution to science and education in Belfast was immense.

He found mathematical science at a very low ebb; but such were his admirable powers of communication, and such the zeal and ardor with which he inspired his pupils, that Belfast began to assume a new character; a new taste had been born, and a young generation of mathematicians were rising round their venerated father, communicating an electric influence everywhere, and then passing away to spheres of influence, to be the heralds of his fame. Few men have contributed more then Dr. James Thomson to elevate education in Ulster; and his native country owes him a debt of gratitude which she now can never repay.Footnote ⁷⁶

Thomson's advocacy of science was part of the more general development of the study of natural history in early nineteenth-century Belfast, which was made possible by institutions and societies for the study and discussion of science, and the further development of a powerful Presbyterian middle class.Footnote ⁷⁷ He provided a science curriculum that was intensely practical. His influential textbooks on arithmetic, trigonometry, geography, and calculus, some of which were used in the National Schools in Ireland, were useful books aimed at the mercantile classes.Footnote ⁷⁸ Writing in 1825, Thomson noted that his students learned how to apply their knowledge of mathematics to practical activities such as surveying and accounting and that he also adopted “the modern methods of investigation … as far as the attainments of the students permit.”Footnote ⁷⁹ By “modern methods,” Thomson meant those developed by continental scholars such as Lacroix, Lagrange, and Delambre. In 1822, he purchased books for a mathematical library that eventually contained over two hundred volumes and provided an indispensable resource for his senior students, who were given a course of study that, according to David Kennedy, “compared favorably with that of any university in the English-speaking world at the time.”Footnote ⁸⁰ His advocacy of modern approaches was reflected in his scathing assessment of the state of mathematics in Scotland, published in 1825, which he compared very unfavorably in another review with developments in Trinity College, Dublin.Footnote ⁸¹

For Thomson and the rest of the College faculty, the study of mathematical science was part of a broader liberal education. In his closing address as president of the faculty in November 1829, he extolled the advantages of the academic education offered by Inst.Footnote ⁸² For knowledge in a particular discipline to be useful, he declared, it must be related to other branches of knowledge and systemized accordingly. Like Edgar, Thomson was committed to the “necessity and advantages of free, independent inquiry,” which had its origins in how God had created humans. “The all-wise Author of our nature has given us minds as varied in their structure and powers as our bodies, and has implanted in them principles of inquiry, which it is doubtless his intention that we should exercise, just as he has endowed us with passions and propensities, the well regulated operation of which he never intended that we should suspend.” When disputes arose, Thomson believed it was incumbent on individuals to “call no man master. Believe nothing on the mere authority of a great name; but first examine the arguments on both sides of the question with candor and honesty, and then decide according to the best dictates of your judgment.” Disinterested inquiry was particularly important in their own college, as the student body came from all sections of Irish society. Yet agitators on religious and political questions had ignored the advantages possessed by Ireland by keeping “those around them in a constant state of animosity and discomfort, and have retarded the improvement and obstructed the prosperity of the country.” Thomson hoped that Inst would help remedy some of these evils, and that their students, “while they may retain their own opinions with unshaken firmness … may learn moderation, and respect for those of others, from their regard for individuals who hold them.” In a farewell speech delivered in August 1832, Thomson expressed his “deep and ardent interest in the prosperity of this Seminary,” which he “hailed … as a noble attempt to promote the improvement of my country.”Footnote ⁸³

As befitted a product of Glasgow University and a correspondent of Thomas Chalmers, Thomson was committed to divine providence, induction, Common Sense philosophy, and the argument from design. Thomson was reticent about intruding theological principles into his curriculum at Inst, as he believed that natural philosophy was about matter, motion, and the laws of nature, not about explaining how God created the world.Footnote ⁸⁴ Nevertheless, there are glimpses of his religious beliefs in public pronouncements that point toward a natural theology. In a series of articles on astronomy published in the Belfast News-Letter in November 1827, Thomson stated that “we should greatly and presumptuously err, if we should pretend to limit the power of the Supreme Being, by supposing him not to be able to create animated beings fitted to bear any degree of temperature to which they might be exposed in His all wise disposition of the affairs of the universe.” The variety of celestial phenomena, he concluded, “all give evidence of endless and astonishing variety in the works of the Creator—a variety which every where meets us on the surface of the earth itself, and which we thus see displayed in the heavenly bodies and their motions, in a scale proportioned to the grandeur of those great works that does so truly and so strikingly declare the glory of God.”Footnote ⁸⁵ The lack of overt references by Thomson to metaphysics and to a theology of nature in his classroom was compensated for by his colleagues. For example, James L. Drummond, the professor of anatomy and physiology, wrote in his Thoughts on the Study of Natural History (1820) that our “conceptions of the power of the Deity will be infinitely enlarged by a study of nature” and explicitly discussed the natural theology of William Paley in his classes.Footnote ⁸⁶ After an examination of Drummond's students in April 1826, Henry Cooke noted that his course opened “to us those views [on] wisdom, and power, and goodness, that lead us ‘through nature up to nature's God.’”Footnote ⁸⁷ More generally, Thomson's efforts and those of his colleagues allowed students at Inst to develop an attitude toward science that was at once practical and theologically conservative.Footnote ⁸⁸ These characteristics were reinforced by a philosophy curriculum imbued with Scottish Common Sense philosophy and the study of the science of the mind predicated on induction. The teaching of science and natural theology received by students came from professors who were sympathetic to the form of evangelical Calvinism that would characterize the Presbyterian Church in Ireland for the rest of the century.

The discussion of Thomson's attitude to science confirms the contention of Smith and Wise that Thomson bequeathed to his son a “non-hypothetical, anti-metaphysical, and practical” approach to science.Footnote ⁸⁹ It is clear from his own research that Kelvin's science was intensely practical and based on the inductive method and Common Sense philosophy. He had a strong aversion to metaphysics and had nothing but contempt for the idealism of Hegel.Footnote ⁹⁰ It is also the case that James Thomson shaped how Kelvin saw the relationship between science and religion. Although Kelvin's “theological views were not original … they, nevertheless, constituted a fundamental component of his concept of nature.”Footnote ⁹¹ In addition to his father's experiences in Ireland, Kelvin's views were informed by the intellectual environment at Glasgow and Cambridge in the 1830s and 1840s. At Glasgow, he imbibed Common Sense philosophy and the argument from design, and at Cambridge he witnessed the resurgence of interest in the teaching of mathematics and the “strong Cambridge tradition of general scientific commentary.”Footnote ⁹² In both cases, he came to the same position as his father: that the universe was a designed system that could be understood because God created the human mind in order, among other things, to understand the natural world. His scientific realism underpinned his belief in a meaningful connection between religion and science and the argument from design.

As with other orthodox Christians elsewhere in the United Kingdom, James Thomson and Kelvin upheld the argument from design as formulated by William Paley in his Natural Theology (1802), which purported to prove the existence of God through the evidence of order and creative intelligence in the natural world. In his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1871, Kelvin showed his commitment to Christian teleology when he responded to Huxley's defense of spontaneous generation at the previous meeting of the Association by directly quoting from Paley.Footnote ⁹³ Near the end of his life, he declined to give the Gifford Lectures on science and religion because he believed he could not add anything to Paley.Footnote ⁹⁴ Kelvin's faithfulness to Paley's natural theology became increasingly anachronistic as the harmony between religion and science came under strain during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, particularly in the areas of geology and biology.Footnote ⁹⁵ Whether this was because he was a physicist, rather than a biologist or geologist, or because Common Sense philosophy lingered longer in educated circles than is sometimes recognized, are important questions that cannot be addressed here. Yet what is clear is that Kelvin shared with his father the same way of thinking about the relationship between religion and science that was largely determined by the dominant modes of thought in the early nineteenth century.

On the basis of his own scientific research and a Christian understanding of causation and teleology, Kelvin opposed both Darwin's form of evolution by natural selection as too random and a literalist reading of the Genesis account.Footnote ⁹⁶ Presbyterians in Ireland had a similar response to evolution, especially after they were scandalized by the “gross materialism” of John Tyndall's presidential address to the British Association delivered in Belfast in 1874, an address that Kelvin found “especially inappropriate.”Footnote ⁹⁷ However, unlike the Presbyterian theologians in Belfast who could see evolution only in terms of Tyndall's materialism, Kelvin was more circumspect. This reflected the more positive response to the theories of evolution by Presbyterians in Scotland and by moderate voices in the north of Ireland, including John Robinson Leebody, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, and later president, at the Presbyterian Magee College in Derry from 1865 to 1927.Footnote ⁹⁸

Although Thomson and his son would spend the rest of their respective professional careers in Glasgow after 1832, their links with Ulster remained important. Thomson was considered an outstanding candidate for president of the newly opened Queen's College Belfast, in 1845, but the salary of the post was less than he earned at Glasgow, and the Reverend P. S. Henry, a Presbyterian minister in Armagh and a political liberal, was appointed instead.Footnote ⁹⁹ The Thomson family’s connection with the college was revived a decade later when James Thomson, Kelvin's older brother, became professor of engineering there, serving from 1857 to 1873. Despite Kelvin's concern about his brother's conversion to Unitarianism, they remained close and had a very productive working relationship.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Kelvin would have found a lively and congenial home at Queen's College, owing to its scientific culture and collection of like-minded individuals. Kelvin was close to two of his brother's colleagues, Peter Guthrie Tait, professor of mathematics from 1854 to 1860, and Thomas Andrews, vice president and professor of chemistry from 1845 to 1879.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Both James Thomson Jr. and Tait were part of what Crosbie Smith terms a “North British” school of energy physics that sought ascendancy over German varieties (and their British champion John Tyndall) and the application of theoretical insights to the practical world of industry and commerce.Footnote ¹⁰² This loose assemblage of scientists and engineers comprised Kelvin, James Thomson, and Tait, as well as James Clerk Maxwell, Macquorn Rankine, James Joule, Fleeming Jenkin, and Balfour Stewart. Significantly, Tait was Kelvin's cobelligerent in propagating the cause of energy physics in their Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867).

In broader economic and cultural terms, Kelvin would have recognized much of the public life of Belfast, as it and Glasgow were typical Victorian cities. The growth of the British Empire provided the context in which each developed as an integrated economic area that experienced the same unprecedented expansion in population and industrial production, especially in terms of shipbuilding and heavy industry.Footnote ¹⁰³ The economic expansion this entailed led to the rise of a strong and prosperous commercial, industrial, and professional elite in both cities, many of whom favored political opposition to vested interests in both urban and rural areas. As J. F. McCaffrey pointed out, Glasgow politics in the nineteenth century was dominated by the Liberal party and a commitment to a “reform” agenda, which exhibited “a strong belief in the values of Free Trade, of individual social reform through thrift, independence and ‘respectability.’” This was underpinned in many cases by “a strong evangelical and seceding religious background which combined ethical elements supportive of traditional values.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ A good example of this was Kelvin's brother-in-law, the Reverend Dr. David King (1806–83), United Secession Minister of Greyfriars church in Glasgow. King was one of the most celebrated preachers of his day, active in extending the missionary and philanthropic work of his congregation, an advocate of political reform, and founding member of the Evangelical Alliance.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ As was the case in Belfast, Glasgow experienced its own sectarian problems during this period, though different in degree, especially following the influx of poverty-stricken Irish Catholics after the famine of the 1840s.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ It is important to remember that anti-Catholicism was central for many Liberal Unionists who opposed clericalism and Ultramontanism. In that regard, Kelvin was no exception and had, according to his biographer S. P. Thompson, “only an unconcealed detestation” for the Romeward tendency of ritualism within the Anglican communion.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Following the Thomson family tradition, Kelvin was a Liberal in politics and was approached, though he declined, to stand as a candidate for the party in the general elections of 1869, 1880, and 1884.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Liberal politics in nineteenth-century Belfast did not enjoy the same dominance as in Glasgow, though there was the same commitment to free trade and voluntary philanthropy as well as a strong element of reform-minded conservatism until the 1860s.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Support for the Liberal party was more significant in rural areas where the tension between Anglican landlords and Presbyterian tenant farmers over land reform was an important dynamic in electoral politics in the 1850s and 1860s.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Owing to Gladstone's campaign to disestablish the Church of Ireland, Liberals began to assert themselves in Belfast politics and succeeded in returning the Presbyterian Thomas McClure as a member of Parliament for the borough in 1868.Footnote ¹¹¹ This heralded a Liberal resurgence more generally in Ulster that had significant Presbyterian support, including from figures such as Thomas Sinclair, a wealthy provisions merchant and a committed evangelical who was inspired by Thomas Chalmers.Footnote ¹¹² During the 1870s and 1880s, Presbyterian tenant farmers and the urban elites in Belfast and Derry provided much of the backbone of Liberalism in Ulster.Footnote ¹¹³ Owing to the inadequacy of the 1870 Land Act and the failure to settle the land question until the Wyndham Act of 1903, Presbyterians continued to agitate on this issue and were instrumental in the formation of tenant right associations in Ulster in the 1870s.

Liberalism in both the west of Scotland and northeast Ulster was thrown into disarray by Gladstone's declaration of support for Irish Home Rule. As a consequence, the Liberal party throughout Britain and Ireland was split into pro– and anti–Home Rule factions. Thomas Sinclair became chairman of the Ulster Liberal Unionist organization that emerged in June 1886, while the West of Scotland Liberal Unionist Association was formed in October. A unionist alliance in the area was quickly concluded with the weaker Conservatives, as both parties believed that Home Rule for Ireland was a direct threat to the imperial unity upon which Glasgow's economic prosperity was based.Footnote ¹¹⁴ A similar ad hoc arrangement emerged in Ulster, and it is important to remember that opposition to Home Rule involved a coalition of often antagonistic interests—economic, political, ideological, religious, social, and geographical.Footnote ¹¹⁵ As befitted a coalition of interests, unionist identity politics could combine Imperial, British, Irish, and Ulster elements in a variety of ways. Though the numerical heartland of protestant Ireland was the northeast, opposition to Home Rule in 1885–86 and 1892–93 was on an all-Ireland basis, and southern Anglican landlords in particular assumed prominent leadership roles within the movement, not least because the House of Lords retained its unlimited veto of legislation until the Parliament Act of 1911.

Moreover, Irish unionists did much to cultivate support among like-minded groups within Britain. In that context, Presbyterian Liberal Unionists were important because they represented the prosperous and politically liberal middle class of the northeast, who could offer a reasonable and convincing case to Scottish Presbyterians that their support for Home Rule was misguided.Footnote ¹¹⁶ The Free Church in particular tended to support Gladstone's Home Rule proposals in order to gain support for the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland.Footnote ¹¹⁷ As a consequence, deputations of Irish Presbyterian Liberal Unionists were a common feature in the west of Scotland. Both Irish and Scottish Liberal Unionists shared the conviction that the Union provided the best framework for liberty and prosperity in both areas and were portrayed by the unionist coalition as the antithesis of the sectarian Orange Order that had close links with the Conservative party in Ulster. Some of these Presbyterian Liberal Unionists looked back to the late eighteenth century and contrasted the conduct of the Union parliament with the last experiment in Irish self-government, Grattan's Parliament of 1782–1800.Footnote ¹¹⁸ The memory of Presbyterian involvement in the United Irishmen was also utilized. In 1888, James Shaw, sometime professor of political economy at the University of Dublin and a prominent Presbyterian layman, stated that he and his fellow Liberal Unionists did “not fear to speak of ’98.” He went on to suggest that they too might well have rebelled in 1798 given the enormity of Presbyterian grievances that had not been addressed by an unresponsive Irish parliament under Anglican domination. Since then, however, remedial legislation passed by the Union parliament, including Catholic emancipation and the 1870 Land Act, had satisfied the demands of his forefathers who, if they had been alive, “would be contented and loyal subjects of the Empire.”Footnote ¹¹⁹

Although Kelvin continued his scientific research and writing, his public life from the 1880s became associated with Home Rule. It is noteworthy that Kelvin's opposition to Home Rule was shared by a large number of British and Irish scientists, including T. H. Huxley and John Tyndall, who believed that the establishment of an Irish parliament beholden to the Catholic hierarchy would threaten scientific modernization.Footnote ¹²⁰ According to S. P. Thompson, Kelvin “flung himself with intense eagerness into the Unionist cause” and was chosen president of the West of Scotland Liberal Unionist Association.Footnote ¹²¹ A practical outcome of this was a change in his religious observance. He left the Free Church in Largs on account of the minister's support for Home Rule and began to attend the Episcopal church instead.Footnote ¹²² Just as he desired a unifying theory in his science, and unity between his religion and his science, so Kelvin strove for unity of the Empire and unity among opponents of Home Rule. Imperial unity was a key motif for Kelvin. According to Sir Edward Fry, writing in 1903, Kelvin was “rather smitten with the idea of a vast empire knit together for all purpose of mutual support and help,” made possible through electrical communication and facilitated by free trade.Footnote ¹²³ In terms of party politics, he often expressed hope that party government would end and saw the unionist alliance as “the great political event of the latter half of the nineteenth century.”Footnote ¹²⁴ Kelvin opposed Home Rule because it would be detrimental to the best interests of Ireland by undermining stability and the rule of law and by crippling the economic prosperity of the northeast and, by extension, that of Glasgow.Footnote ¹²⁵ From the outset, Kelvin advocated the unionist cause as an expatriate Irishman. In a keynote address at a public meeting in June 1886, he stated that he “spoke as an Irishman, and because the present question was a matter of life and death for his native country.”Footnote ¹²⁶

Unsurprisingly, Kelvin's public advocacy of the unionist cause in the west of Scotland brought him into contact with Liberal Unionists from his native Ulster, and he visited Belfast with Joseph Chamberlain in October 1887.Footnote ¹²⁷ In May of the previous year, a deputation of Irish Presbyterians arrived in Glasgow for a series of events, and the Conservative Unionist press made it clear that it was a politically Liberal deputation. Kelvin was meant to chair their meeting on 26 May but was detained. He conveyed his “warmest sympathy” for the object of the meeting and especially for the need to inform English and Scottish audiences of the true nature of Irish affairs. The stand-in chairman declared that he “was perfectly persuaded that Ireland had no more patriotic son than Sir William Thomson.” Speeches by Professors W. D. Killen and William Todd Martin of the Presbyterian College, Belfast, emphasized that Home Rule was not a matter of party politics but, to many, “a matter of life and death.” They expressed their fear of any religious ascendancy in parliament and education and questioned whether such an arrangement could bring peace and prosperity to Ireland. The longest speech was delivered by Thomas Sinclair, who covered a variety of reasons for opposing Home Rule, including the intensification of “religious bitterness” and the probable disintegration of the Empire. He also highlighted what he viewed as the dire financial consequences of increased pauperism, the outflow of capital with fleeing protestant landlords, and cripplingly high levels of taxation.Footnote ¹²⁸

Kelvin continued his advocacy of the Liberal Unionist cause throughout the rest of the 1880s and in the run up to Gladstone's introduction of a second Home Rule bill in February 1893. His elevation to the peerage at this time owed much to the support of powerful patrons, including the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and a clutch of aristocratic Liberal Unionists, the 15th Earl of Derby, the 8th Duke of Argyll, the Marquis of Hartington, and the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava.Footnote ¹²⁹ Gladstone's bill was eventually passed by the House of Commons but defeated in the Lords in September 1893. Kelvin and others warned against complacency, for as long as a party had Home Rule for Ireland as part of its platform, the “menace” to the United Kingdom remained.Footnote ¹³⁰ In March 1895, a large anti–Home Rule demonstration was held in Glasgow. The Liberal Unionist press in Ireland and Scotland was eager to stress that this was a meeting of political Liberals, not Orange Tories. A delegation of members of the Irish Unionist Alliance and the Ulster Convention League attended the meeting in the city hall, and there were speeches by Thomas Sinclair and J. M. Inglis of Dublin. Kelvin's speech at the reception noted the ignorance of Scots about the Home Rule proposals, saying that he “looked upon the work of the deputation as a work of the truest patriotism; and in Scotland, in regard to this matter, they were in need of a good shaking up.” The evening meeting was chaired by Kelvin, who emphasized all-Ireland opposition to Home Rule. “Throughout the whole of Ireland the intelligence of the people was very strongly against any proposal whatever for the establishment of a Parliament in Ireland.” He referred to the last experience of Home Rule in Ireland during Grattan's Parliament and how that had resulted in the rebellion of 1798. The delegation, he claimed, represented “the loyalty, the patriotism, and the intelligence of Ireland” and seemed particularly gratified at the message of defiance from Unionists in Derry, from the city whose apprentice boys in 1688 “successfully resisted … the rebel efforts at their destruction and at the separation of Ireland from Britain.” Sinclair, in his speech, noted that the meeting was “presided over by the most brilliant of living Ulstermen and the most staunch of Scotch Unionists” and reiterated his belief that Home Rule would imperil religious liberty and end the economic prosperity that Ireland enjoyed under the Union.Footnote ¹³¹

Kelvin continued to take on political engagements in late 1906 and early 1907, but owing to poor health, he had to cancel a trip in September to open the new laboratories at Queen's College Belfast.Footnote ¹³² His health declined during the autumn, and he finally passed away on 17 December 1907. His death and subsequent funeral in Westminster Abbey were met with heartfelt sorrow in Belfast by the Conservative and Liberal Unionist press. The Conservative Belfast News-Letter stated, “By his death there has passed away not only the greatest Ulsterman of the nineteenth century, but the greatest scientist of that century, which witnessed such magnificent scientific triumphs.” In the language of Ulster Unionist identity politics, the editorial described Kelvin as being a product of “Ulster Scot” intellectual stock; a “true Ulsterman” who took pride in his Ulster Scots background and Belfast; a “typical Ulsterman” in his practicality and business sense; and a powerful supporter of the union, whose advocacy even in death would remain “a powerful asset to the cause he did so much to maintain.”Footnote ¹³³

A public meeting was convened in Belfast City Hall on 21 January 1908 to discuss how practically to commemorate the life of Kelvin.Footnote ¹³⁴ Over £900 was subscribed and a variety of speeches focused on a number of different aspects of his character and work, including the practical cast of his mind. The speeches, including one by Thomas Sinclair, also challenged the commonplace assumption that eminent scientists were agnostic or unbelievers, whereas Kelvin stood as an insurmountable counterexample along with C. G. Stokes, P. G. Tait, James Clerk Maxwell, and Balfour Stewart. The committee decided to erect a statue, though the process of choosing a site proved controversial and protracted.Footnote ¹³⁵ The statue was finally unveiled to the public in the Botanic Gardens on 19 June 1913. Sir Joseph Larmor, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was chosen as the speaker, and the ceremony received wide coverage in the local and national press, including the nationalist paper in Belfast, theIrish News. Larmor's tribute focused on Kelvin's science and politics. The reputation and achievements of Kelvin, he claimed, “belong to all the world; yet we of Ulster have taken care to assert our special interest in his career.” His name would “pass down the ages as the outstanding guiding spirit of the period when the weapons of physical science were brought out of her secluded armoury and turned to the reconstruction of our material civilization.” Moving on to his politics, Larmor, as a Unionist MP for Cambridge University, observed that Kelvin was “strongly moved by what he regarded as a rash and perilous proposal to burst those links of common government and a common polity which have moulded us and the sister island into a United Kingdom.” Although Kelvin saw himself as an Irishman, Larmor suggested that, “Here we perhaps see the historical Ulster blood assert itself, the same which, as one has heard, made his grandfather an emphatic figure in our countryside in times that were profoundly stirred amongst us by the reverberations of the American and French Revolutions.”

The statue itself depicted an upright Kelvin holding a picture of the vortex model of the atom in his left hand and leaning against a magnetic compass on a stand. Iwan Morus observes that the “combination of civic pride, philosophical insight, and industrial prowess represented by this statue says a great deal about nineteenth-century physics and what it came to stand for.” Yet the statue also allowed for the expression of other interpretations of Kelvin, interpretations that reflected the influence of his father and the religious and political principles he developed in the north of Ireland. The speeches in January 1908 and by Larmor in 1913 emphasized his place at the front rank of Christian philosophers and as a champion of Liberal Unionism. It was fitting that these themes were rehearsed in Belfast, for it was here that his father had expressed his commitment to the same principles—principles that had not been extinguished by the conservative religion and politics of Henry Cooke but had continued to be expressed by Presbyterians and Liberal Unionists in Ireland as well as in Scotland.