Biography

Chalmers was born in Scotland in 1742. In 1763, having studied law at Edinburgh, Chalmers traveled to live in America with his uncle. While in America, he debated with Patrick Henry the issue of paying tithes to the church. When he was defeated, he was marked as a royalist and forced to leave America and return to England. In 1786, he was appointed to the Board of Trade, and served that institution as a clerk. Though not among the more prominent members of the political debates of the 1790s, George Chalmers leant his voice to the Tory side and wrote many pamphlets and politicized biographies. His most famous work is The Life of Thomas Paine, in which he assumes the alias of "Dr. Francys Oldys, A.M. of the University of Pennsylvania."

Role in the Conversation

Chalmers is certainly much less of an influential character during the 1790s than most of the others included in this study. However, his importance to the subsequent generations is important enough for him to be included. Chalmers assumed the scholarly, American pen name Francis Oldys, A.M. of the University of Pennsylvania when writing his biography of Thomas Paine, partially to lend localized authority to his voice. However, much of his work is exaggerated, if not fabricated, and is intended to sully the character of Thomas Paine in order to refute his works (specifically the Rights of Man, which predates the publication of this Life by one year).

Summary of The Life of Thomas Paine

In his biography of Thomas Paine, George Chalmers (Francis Oldys, A.M. of the University of Pennsylvania) takes great pains to portray Paine as a devious man, almost completely devoid of morals. He claims Paine's first wife, Mary Lambert died in a mad house, to which she was sent because of ill usage by Paine and that Paine's cruelty also led to the separation with his second wife, Elizabeth Olliver. In addition to this unkindness, he also accuses Paine of drinking to excess and of illegally smuggling tobacco from the West Indies.

In the second half of the biography, Chalmers moves on to the subject of Paine's Rights of Man, which he says is greatly popular, but only because it is yet too new to have encountered critics. Chalmers then gives a preview of what the critics will say. He divides his discussion into two topics: criticism of Paine's language and of the sentiments behind that language. The problems with Paine's language can be divided into several categories, including "the bad grammar of a child" and "the bad grammar of a man" (31). As for the sentiment, Chalmers labels much of it as "Nonsense" and comments that "The great art, said the critics, of Mr. Pain, as a polemic, consists in misquoting plainly, or misrepresenting designedly, the positions of his adversary" (35).