A few weeks later, in January 1805, the University of Edinburgh lost one of its most eminent professors—Dr. Robison, of whom mention has already been made. Professor Playfair obtained his chair, leaving that of mathematics, which he had held before, to be filled up. Chalmers was again in the field, but no qualifications that he could appeal to were a match for those of the successful candidate—Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Leslie. In the course of the contest he came for the first time before the public as an author. Among the candidates was the Rev. Dr. Macknight, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, in opposition to whom Professor Playfair had written to the patrons, remonstrating against such a conjunction of offices. Mr. Chalmers's pamphlet (which was anonymous) was entitled, Observations on a passage in Mr. Playfair's Letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, relative to the Mathematical Pretensions of the Scottish Clergy. He had ceased to have any personal interest in the case, and his whole object was to show that a Scottish clergyman might be abundantly qualified for the duties of a chair in addition to those of a parish. 'The author of this pamphlet,' he said, 'can assert from what to him is the highest of all authority, the authority of his own experience, that after the satisfactory discharge of his parish duties, a minister may enjoy five days in the week of uninterrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science in which his taste may dispose him to engage.' When the religious views of Mr. Chalmers underwent the great change which will be described afterwards, he was much distressed for this publication, and did his utmost to withdraw it from circulation. In a discussion on pluralities in the General Assembly some years afterwards, he argued vehemently against both the principle and practice of pluralities; and, being twitted with having at one time pronounced in their favour, he candidly admitted that he had done so, but it was in the days of his spiritual blindness. The chair involved was a chair of mathematics. 'What, sir,' he asked, 'are the objects of mathematical science? Magnitude and the relations of magnitude. But then, sir, I had forgot two magnitudes: I thought not of the littleness of time; I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity!'
However imperfectly he might have been discharging the duties of his Kilmany charge, Mr. Chalmers was exceedingly kind and exemplary to the members of his own family, one of whom, his sister Jane, for whom through life he had the warmest affection, kept house for him, while various others were more or less resident in his manse. One brother, George, a favourite of the family, spent some months at Kilmany in the autumn of 1806, in very touching circumstances. He was a sailor by profession, and at the age of twenty-three commanded a merchant ship, which being attacked by a French privateer, gallantly drove off the enemy; but the skipper, lying down on deck, exhausted after the fight, caught the seeds of consumption, which gradually prevailed against him. His mother, three of his sisters, and two of his brothers were all around him at Kilmany, but no material improvement took place. Returning to Anstruther, George calmly awaited his coming end, with a firm trust in the merit of his Saviour. Every evening one of Newton's (of Olney) sermons was read at his bedside by one of the family in rotation. It was one of the books which his brother had lately denounced from the pulpit of Kilmany, as drawing men away from the wholesome teaching of the gospels. Yet to his dying brother it brought heavenly comfort. And evidently that brother enjoyed a secret something which he had not. Could he be wrong? Must there not be reality in the experience that took away all fear of death, and made the youth of twenty-three so willing to die? 'The deep impression made by George's death,' says Dr. Hanna, the chief biographer of Chalmers, 'was the first step towards his own conversion.'
Less than two years after, his sister Barbara, who was five years older than himself, sickened and died. The same fell disease which had cut off George proved fatal to her. But her father could write of her that she showed a cheerful submission to the will of God, and a humble confidence in the satisfaction of her great Redeemer. Here was another case of one very near and dear to him deriving all her support and comfort in the hour of death from a source which he had been accustomed to associate with superstition and fanaticism. Again the question could not but force itself upon him, Must there not be something real in it, after all?
As to the ordinary management of his household, being under the control of his sister, it proceeded in the ordinary fashion without much interference from him. He was easy, and easily pleased, but he was not an absent-minded dreamer. At an early period his chemical studies had led him to believe that the time would come when coal-vapour would be purified and used for illuminating houses; and when he got a new manse, he had pipes laid in it, in anticipation of this domestic use. When coffee was introduced as a beverage, he believed that in burnt rye he had found a rival to it, and used to have it produced for his friends. Once when it was proposed to subject the two substances to a sort of competitive trial, and a select company assembled to pass a verdict upon them, a cup of genuine Mocha was first handed round and much approved of; then a second cup was presented, and being tasted was pronounced to be much inferior; whereupon Mr. Chalmers burst into laughter and exclaimed, 'It's your own Mocha coffee, the second cup is just the same article as the first!' At another time, when some friends were to be at dinner, it turned out that the whole resources of the larder could produce nothing but two kinds of dried fish. Nothing daunted, Mr. Chalmers had both of them properly served; and the covers being removed, called on his guests to make their choice. 'This, gentlemen, is salt fish from St. Andrews; and that is salt fish from Dundee.' Of course he had to be often on horseback; but as a horseman he did not excel. 'What most provoked him was the frequency with which his horse threw him. At first he was much interested in noting the intervals between each fall. Taking the average length, and calculating how far a dozen falls would carry him, he resolved to keep the horse till the twelfth fall was accomplished. Extremely fond of such numerical adjustments (a singular result of the mathematical structure of his mind), he was most faithful in counting them. In this instance, however, the tenth fall was so bad that his resolution gave way, and he told his servant to take the horse to the next market and sell him forthwith. 'But remember,' he said, 'you must conceal none of its faults; you must tell that it has thrown its master ten times.' 'But who,' asked the man, 'will think of buying the horse if I tell him all that beforehand?' 'I cannot help that,' said Mr. Chalmers; 'I will have no deception practised, and if nobody will buy the horse, you must just bring him back again.' Nobody did buy the horse; ultimately in return for a book he was transferred to his neighbour, Mr. Thomson of Balmerino, whom the animal served quietly and faithfully for many a year, without showing any vicious tendency; whence it came to be surmised 'that the peculiarities of the case were not in the animal but the restless and energetic horsemanship of the rider!'
His patriotism was intense, and not only did he fulminate against Bonaparte in the pulpit, but he joined the volunteers, and held commissions both as chaplain and lieutenant.
The early years at Kilmany passed with little change except a visit to England in the beginning of 1807. These English visits, rare in those days, enlarged his horizon, and showed him much that he did not find at home. At Liverpool he preached for a Mr. Kilpatrick, and we may gather the character of his ordinary pulpit lessons from his two subjects—in the forenoon on the comforts of religion; in the afternoon on drunkenness. His impression of Woodstock showed that intense admiration of nature which remained to the last: 'I spent two hours in the garden. Never spot more lovely—never scenes so fair and captivating. I lost myself in an elysium of delight, and wept with perfect rapture.' At Oxford there was kindled a reverence for English academical life and learning which never left him. 'I was delighted with the academic air and costume of the place; and amid the grossness of a mercantile age, it is the delight of my spirit to recur to the quiet scenes of philosophy, and contemplate what our ancestors have done for learning, and the respect that they once paid to it.'
Three weeks were spent among the sights of London. He had a lively interest in all he saw, especially in all that concerned science and the mechanical arts. Among his old friends and neighbours were two sons of Fifeshire manses, rising to that high distinction which he coveted in his own department,—John Campbell, afterwards Lord Campbell, and Mr. (afterwards Sir David) Wilkie. He was greatly interested in all he saw of royalty: Windsor, with all its glories; the chapel-royal there, where the King and Queen and Princess Elizabeth seemed so simple, frank, and devout; and he noted especially a view he had of these royal personages at St. James's, when her majesty returned his salutation with a 'condescending notice.' Not in the vulgar sense, but as useful and ornamental elements in the social fabric, he had a high regard for royalty and the nobility. 'I am charmed with the cordial and affectionate loyalty of the people. I saw a glow of reverence and satisfaction on every countenance, and my heart warmed within me.' Sheridan was the great orator of the day, and oftener than once he heard him speak. He used to give two instances of Sheridan's readiness of repartee when standing the fire of the hustings at Westminster. One elector complained that he was not satisfied with his treatment of the Carnatic. 'My dear sir,' he said, with a significant bow, 'the affairs of the Carnatic are in much abler hands.' Another elector, with a very ugly face, raised on the shoulder of the mob, said, 'If you do not alter your ways, I will withdraw my countenance from you.' 'I am delighted to hear it,' said Sheridan, 'for it is the ugliest countenance I ever beheld.'
Cambridge attracted him even more than Oxford: 'It smells of learning all over, and I breathe a fragrancy most congenial to me.' As if he had foreseen Girton and Newnham, he said, 'The very women have an air of academic mildness and simplicity.' He preferred it to Oxford, apparently because its objects of interest were not so concentrated, but really, in all probability, because it was the great sanctuary of mathematical study. 'In Cambridge, everything wears a simplicity and chasteness allied to the character of philosophy, and the venerable name of Newton gives it an interest that can never die.' The glories of York Minster entranced him. Wherever he went he made careful observation alike of all that was beautiful and all that was instructive. He returned to Kilmany in July (1807), after an absence of nearly three months.
Immediately after his return, Mr. Chalmers set himself to prepare for the press a work of considerable size and research, entitled an Inquiry into the Extent and Stability of National Resources. Political economy had always attracted him. At the time of this publication, much fear was expressed that the continued war with Bonaparte, implying the shutting against Britain of all the ports of the countries to which his influence extended, and the confiscation of all cargoes of British goods, would exhaust the resources of the country and ruin its foreign traders. Mr. Chalmers held strongly an opposite opinion. Whether he succeeded in proving his contention may be a question; certainly his position was paradoxical. But his sagacity, as the result has proved, came out in more than one indirect form. With reference to the income-tax, he contended strongly that it ought not to be charged on the whole of a man's income, but only on the part that remained after providing for the necessaries of life. It was only a few years ago that effect was given to this view in the case of small incomes. Another matter for which he contended strongly was our obligation to provide a better living for our soldiers. He denounced the compulsory system of enlistment—it ought to be a voluntary service. And it ought to be a service of limited duration; the nation had no right to make an exception against soldiers and sailors when all other servants were engaged for a limited number of months or years. 'Let it no longer be a slavery for life, and let the burning ignominy of corporal punishment be done away.' It was many years before these suggestions were acted on; Chalmers lived to see his proposal of limited enlistment carried out, when a friend of his own (Lord Panmure, afterwards Earl of Dalhousie) was Secretary at War.
In this and in later writings on political economy it has been well remarked that 'he bent the whole energies of his thought, not so much on its abstruser theories, as on those practical and vital problems which tend to meet the difficulties and ameliorate the condition of the working classes.' 'He was the first political economist,' says Mr. Dodds, 'who seized with a forethought and philanthropy equally before his time upon the condition-of-the-people question, as the paramount, the coming question of the age.' His opinion as to the dynamic by which the desired change was to come underwent a great change when his religious views changed; at the present stage he hoped that the forces of reason would gradually effect the desired improvement; afterwards he saw that these forces would be of little avail without the power of the Gospel.