It was impossible for Dr. Chalmers to be long in Edinburgh without having his attention turned to the religious wants of the people there. In the course of a local controversy, carried on with much bitterness, regarding the ’Annuity Tax’—an unpopular impost for defraying the salaries of the city ministers—a proposal had been made to abolish collegiate charges, and thus reduce the number of ministers from eighteen to thirteen. Chalmers had strongly protested against the proposal, and claimed in the interest of the city that the ministers set free from collegiate charges should be intrusted with new parishes, wherever additional churches were needed. Under the Town Council, things had been so managed that the incomes of the clergy had sunk to £400 a year; and the idea of new charges was unpopular, because the Council would have had to provide churches; this opposition grieved Chalmers, and the only consideration that comforted him (as he wrote to a friend) was the increased readiness of the friends of the church to contribute for its extension. For himself, he had hitherto been working in the Cowgate, in the hope that a new parochial charge would be set up for that district. But at the time (1834), the Town Council had refused to make the necessary arrangements for that purpose, although a few years later, the parish of St. John’s was erected, and Dr. Guthrie appointed to it. Meanwhile, Dr. Chalmers resolved to transfer his attention to another needy and neglected district—the suburban village of Dean, or Water of Leith. He had good hopes that he would be able to erect a parochial economy there. The Assembly of that year had appointed him convener of a committee for church accommodation; and in the summer, besides encouraging local efforts, he tried to collect a central fund, for which in July he had made a beginning, having raised the sum of £1677, 10s. He had begun, as he said, with the higher kinds of game—dukes and marquises, but by and by he would come down to parochial associations and subscriptions of a penny a week. He believed that the ’ditchers’ of the country properly cultivated might be found as productive as the ’dukes.’ Anyhow, the moral influence would be greater, because every man that gave a penny a week would be sure to feel a lively interest in the cause. And this was the beginning of that great scheme of church extension which for several years engrossed his energies, as it proved also the forerunner of his Free Church Sustentation Fund, which has proved such a monument of his financial sagacity and skill.