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102 less the servant of the inland consumer, because, though he does not labour immediately for his gratification, he labours for a return from foreign countries. This return comes in articles of luxury, which fetch a price from our inland consumers. Hence, it is ultimately from the inland consumer that the manufacturer of the exported article derives his maintenance. Suppose, then, that trade and manufacture were destroyed, this does not affect the ability of the inland consumer. The whole amount of the mischief is, that he loses the luxuries which were before provided for him, but he still retains the ability to give the same maintenance as before to the immense population who are now discarded from their former employments. Suppose this ability to be transferred to government in the form of a tax. Government takes the discarded population into its service. They follow their subsistence wherever it can be found; and thus, from the ruin of our trading and manufacturing interest, government collects the means of adding to the naval and military establishments of the country. I therefore anticipate that Bonaparte, after he has succeeded in shutting up the markets of the Continent against us, will be astonished—and that the mercantile politicians of our own country will be no less astonished—to find Britain as hale and vigorous as ever, and fitter than before for all the purposes of defence, and security, and political independence." Such was the theory of Chalmers, studied with much care, written with patriotic enthusiasm, and published at Edinburgh in the spring of 1808. It was perhaps as well that no opportunity occurred of testing its soundness, owing to the remissness with which the Berlin decree was executed, so that it gradually became a dead letter. Chalmers, however, was so impressed with the urgency of the danger, and the efficacy of his plan to remove it, that he was anxious to obtain a national publicity for his volume; and with this view he had resolved to repair to the capital, and negotiate for bringing out a new edition by the London publishers. But this event, which might have altered the whole current of his life, and changed him into a Malthus or Adam Smith, was prevented by a trying family dispensation, so that instead of embarking in a Dundee smack as he had purposed, he was obliged to attend the death-bed of one of his sisters. It is to be observed, however, that his studies in political economy were not to be without important results. In after years they were brought vigorously and successfully to bear upon the management of towns and parishes, and the cure of pauperism; and above all, in organizing the provision of a church, that threw aside, and at once, the support and maintenance of the State, when conscience demanded the sacrifice.

In this way, the first twenty-nine years in the life of the subject of this memoir had passed. But still, it gives little or no indication of that Dr. Chalmers who was afterwards so widely renowned throughout the Christian world of—that very Dr. Chalmers whom the present generation so fondly loved, and still so vividly remembers. As yet, the record might serve for an amiable enthusiastic savant of England, France, or Italy, rather than a Scottish country minister intrusted with the care of souls, and preparing his accounts for the close of such a solemn stewardship. But a series of events occurred at this time by which the whole character of his mind and ministry was to be changed. The first, and perhaps the most important of these, was the death of his sister, an event to which we have already alluded. She had departed amidst feelings of hope and joy that far transcended the mere passive resignation of philosophy; and the affectionate heart that pined within the lonely manse of Kilmany, while