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THOMAS CHALMERS, THE ‘GODLY COMMONWEALTH’, AND CONTEMPORARY WELFARE REFORM IN BRITAIN AND THE USA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2014

JAMES J. SMYTH
JAMES J. SMYTH*
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
*
History and Politics, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA[email protected]
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Abstract

Current prescriptions for welfare reform and increased reliance on the voluntary sector often base their appeal on the lessons of history, in particular the apparent successes of Victorian philanthropy in combating ‘pauperism’. This article looks at how this message has become influential in the USA and the UK among the ruling parties of right and left through the particular prism of the neo-conservative appreciation of the work of Thomas Chalmers, the early nineteenth-century Scottish churchman and authority on poverty. The attraction of Chalmers, both to the Charity Organization Society then and neo-conservatives today, lies in the practical application of his idea of the ‘godly commonwealth’ in Glasgow and Edinburgh where voluntary effort, organized through the church, replaced the statutory obligations of the poor law. While Chalmers, and his followers, declared his ‘experiments’ to be great successes, modern Scottish historians have revealed these claims to be false and his efforts failures. Only by completely ignoring the evidence presented by this historiography and continuing to rely on Chalmers's own writings and earlier hagiographies can the neo-conservative approbation of Chalmers be sustained. Such wilful neglect raises questions both about their approach to history and their proposed remedies for tackling poverty today.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 845 - 868
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank colleagues at the Universities of Stirling, Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian, Oxford Brookes, and Tubingen for inviting me to give earlier versions of this article at various research seminars. I would like to recognize also the generous comments of an anonymous reader of the Historical Journal.

References

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101 The Presbyterian nature of the Church of Scotland was organized through a hierarchy of church courts, from the single parish Kirk session at the bottom through the local presbytery, provincial synod, and ultimately the General Assembly. Each year, a new moderator of the assembly is chosen and the position usually is held only once in a minister's lifetime. Chalmers was appointed moderator in 1832 and became the first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland following the Disruption in 1843.

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111 Brown, ‘Liberty and the role of the state’.

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