West Port Experiment

One of the reasons Chalmers advocated territorial city missions was to reunite the classes, particularly by the clergy’s concentrated evangelistic efforts in the slums.  It was ultimately a missionary policy, yet it had distinct advantages for the social fabric.  Here’s an interesting quote that helps illumine Chalmers’ rationale for the parish plan in urban context:

In a provincial capital, the great mass of the population are retained in kindly and immediate dependence on the wealthy residenters of the place. . . [which] brings the two extreme orders of society into that sort of relationship, which is highly favourable to the general blandness and tranquillity of the whole population. In a manufacturing town, on the other hand, the poor and the wealthy stand more disjoined from each other.  It is true they often meet, but they meet more on an arena of contest, than on a field where the patronage and custom of the one party are met by the gratitude and goodwill of the other (Thomas Chalmers, Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, Glasgow, 1821, p. 51).

As the clergy and benevolent Christian volunteers adopt mission districts in the cities and thoroughly work them, the net effect should be a re-harmonization of the upper- and middle-classes with the working class.

The following is an excellent quote from Thomas Chalmers in his Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation (1821).  In it, he demonstrates one particular viture of the locality principle, on which the parish system is built – it facilitates the zeal and perseverance of the Christian missionary:

” He, with a select and appropriate vineyard thus lying before him, will feel himself far more powerfully urged, than when under the common arrangement, to go forth among its families. However subtle an exercise it may require from another, faithfully to analyse the effect upon his mind, he himself has only to try it, and he will soon become sensible of the strong additional interest that he acquires, in virtue of having a small and specific locality assigned to him. When the subject on which he is to operate, thus offers itself to his contemplation, in the shape of one unbroken field, or of one entire and continuous body, it acts as a more distinct and imperative call upon him, to go out upon the enterprise. He will feel a kind of property in the families; and the very circumstance of a material limit uround their habitations, serves to strengthen this impression, by furnishing to his mind a sort of association with the hedges and the landmarks of property. At all events, the very visibility of the limit, by constantly leading him to perceive the length and the breadth of his task, holds out an inducement to his energies, which, however difficult to explain, will be powerfully felt and proceeded on. There is a very great difference, in respect of its practical influence, between a task that is indefinite, and a task that is clearly seen to be overtakeable. The one has the effect to paralyze; the other, to quicken exertion. It serves most essential!v to spirit on his undertaking, when, by every new movement, one feels himself to be drawing sensibly nearer to the accomplishmviit of it—when, by every one house that he enters, he can count the lessening number before him, through which he has yet to pass with his proposals for the attendance of their children—and when, by the distinct and definite portion, which is still untravelled, he is constantly reminded of what he has to do, ere that district, which he feels to be his own, is thoroughly pervaded. He can go over his families too, with far less expense of locomotion, than under the common system of sabbath schools ; and, for the same reason, can he more fully and frequently reiterate his attentions; and it will charm him onwards, to find that he is sensibly translating himself into a stricter and kinder relationship with the people of his district; and, if he have a taste for cordial intercourse with the fellows of his own nature, he will be gladdened and encouraged by his growing familiarity with them all; and thus will he turn the vicinity which he has chosen, into a home- walk of many charities ; and recognized as its moral benefactor, will lug kindness, and his judgment, and his Christianity, be put forth, with a well- earned and well-established influence, in behalf of a grateful population.”