believed the only remedy for the evils of industrialization—and its attendant poverty, rootlessness, illiteracy, and threat of revolution—was a parish system, where the lives of the struggling poor could be ministered to effectively. Furthermore, Chalmers believed a parish system could only work if administrated by a well-endowed national church. In 1834, he began campaigning vigorously for a parish system in which no parish was larger than 2,000 inhabitants, in which Christian discipline and cooperation