What he undertook was, to relinquish all claim to the fund raised by assessment, and provide for the poor of St. John's parish through the church-door collections alone. It was arranged that the then actual inmates of the town's poorhouse, connected with the parish, would be maintained as before, but that no new cases would be sent there; all the new outdoor cases, and all the other cases of pauperism, were to be defrayed from the congregational fund. Hitherto the cost of the poor in the parish had been at the rate of L1400 per annum, whereas the collections amounted to only L480. Thus, though not at first, yet ultimately, St. John's Church would be responsible for an amount of pauperism that had hitherto cost L1400.
The unwearied visitation of the deacons produced highly beneficial results. Sometimes very appalling cases of distress were found to be wholly fabulous. A poor woman applied to a deacon to bury a grown-up daughter who had died that day. He refused until he had made a personal visit. This he did, but no such person could be found. Next day the woman renewed her application: a young man was sent by the deacon to verify the woman's statement; but she disappeared in the crowd. When the matter was stated to another deacon, he wondered whether the woman's husband, whom he had helped to bury six months before, were still alive. The two went in quest of the family, and found the buried husband and the dead daughter performing all the functions of life.
In other cases, relatives were induced to take charge of destitute children, or older children to take charge of younger. In one case, the father and mother of a family composed of six children both died; three of the six were earning wages, and three were unable to work. The three elder applied to have the three younger admitted to the poorhouse. It was pointed out to them by Dr. Chalmers's agents that this would be a great slur on the family; and a small quarterly allowance was promised if they should keep together. The advice was taken, and the quarterly allowance was but twice required. The family lived together, gaining a character for independence and brotherliness that in itself must have been a considerable help to their success in life. And many other such cases occurred.
The result of these operations, during the three years and nine months when Dr. Chalmers personally presided over them, was instructive and striking. The whole number of new cases admitted on the roll was twenty, and the annual cost of these was L66. The number of cases originally committed to Dr. Chalmers was ninety-eight, of whom twenty-eight had died, and thirteen had been displaced in consequence of a scrutiny, leaving (with the twenty new cases) seventy-seven on the roll, the cost of whose yearly maintenance was L190. In the second year of their operations the church was able to take the whole of the poorhouse inmates connected with the parish off that institution, at an expense to themselves of L90 a year. In this way the pauperism that had cost the town L1400 was now managed at an expenditure of L280. And the pauperism itself became a decreasing quantity. 'The St. John's deacons, mingling as they did familiarly with all the families, and proving themselves by word and deed the true but enlightened friends of all, did far more to prevent pauperism than to provide for it.'
It cannot be said that his theory of pauperism was a hasty scheme, the result of mere benevolent impulse, or that Chalmers did not take sufficient means to acquaint himself with the subject in all its aspects. He had already given expression to his ideas in the _Edinburgh Review_, and shown that the matter had engaged his most earnest study. Later, he made an elaborate journey through England in order to become personally acquainted with the places and the persons there most conversant with the subject. This visit embraced Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Gloucester, Wells, Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth, London, Bury St. Edmunds, Bedford, and Nottingham. The journey occupied seven weeks, and in the course of it he came into contact with many of the public men who were interested in that class of subjects, conspicuous among whom were Lord Calthorpe and Mr. Fowell Buxton. The anti-slavery leaders, such as Mr. Z. Macaulay, Mr. Babington, and Mr. Clarkson, were generally sympathetic, but their energies were too much absorbed in the anti-slavery movement to admit of their throwing them into Dr. Chalmers's scheme. Indeed there were but few men of mark at that time interested in social questions. In his sense of the urgency of these questions, Dr. Chalmers was before his age. The more immediate object he had in view, that of gathering information, was sufficiently accomplished; but there is no indication that he made much progress in indoctrinating public men with his views. If ever he cherished the hope that a party would arise in England who should deal with pauperism on his lines, that hope was never fulfilled. Nor was it the privilege of Dr. Chalmers to find his experiment carried out thoroughly in other places, or even to witness its permanence in his own chosen locality. For several years it continued to prosper; in 1830, ten years after the commencement of the undertaking, he informed a committee of the House of Commons that the whole annual expense of St. John's pauperism for the preceding year had been L384; and in 1833, Mr. Tufnell, an English Poor-Law Commissioner, reported: 'The system has been attended with the most triumphant success; it is now in perfect operation, and not a doubt is expressed by its managers of its continuing to remain so.' Why, then, did the system not extend? Mainly, we believe, because Chalmers stood alone in that unrivalled energy which could not only conceive and plan the scheme and fight down its opponents, but likewise find competent agents, and inspire them with his own spirit in order to carry it into effect. It was a scheme that demanded a strong magnetic power on the part of its head to overcome the _vis inertiae_ of ordinary men, and send them into the field, and keep them in the field, vigilant, alert, unwearied, and hopeful. No doubt his principles were acted on to a certain extent in many parishes where there was no pressure of poverty;[2] but we are not aware of any instance in which his plan was boldly made to do duty in the heart of a large city parish.