Chalmers had now had experience of both the great political parties, and with equally disappointing results. His grand project of a church commensurate with the necessities of the country (so far as these were not provided for by the nonconformists) was nearly as far off as ever. But his experience in raising money for church extension gave him hope in another direction. When he knocked at the door of the Whigs on behalf of church extension he was refused. When he knocked at the door of the Tories, he found that they might have endowed the church, but they would have enslaved her. They viewed the church ’as an engine of state, not as an instrument of usefulness.’ He was now about to knock at the door of the people; and he cherished no little expectation that through them he would yet succeed in his scheme of making Scotland a spiritual garden. Dr. Chalmers concurred cordially with the measures taken by the church to resist, or at least protest against, the encroachments of the civil courts. He approved of the Claim of Right as affirmed by the Assembly in May 1842. He preached the opening sermon at a convocation of ministers in November 1842, and was a leading counsellor at that remarkable gathering where from four to five hundred ministers pledged themselves to leave the Establishment if no measure of relief were passed by the Legislature. His view, as to the duty of the church, when no such measure of relief was provided, was as clear as day. Amid the numberless perplexities that for years past had caused such anxious consultations and fears lest a wrong step should be taken, he found it an unspeakable relief that the path of duty in the last and most important step of all was so clear. And so, on the famous 18th of May 1843, Dr. Chalmers was at the side of the Moderator, who happened to be his own colleague in the university, Dr. Welsh; the names of both were subscribed to the Protest that was laid on the table of the Assembly; and when Tanfield was reached, and a General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland was constituted, its first act was to call to its chair the man whose reputation throughout the Christian world was by far the highest, and whose influence in bringing about the Disruption had been by far the greatest. Regarding that Assembly, Chalmers wrote to his sister, ’Never was there a happier Assembly, with a happier collection of faces, than in our Free Church, with consciences disburdened, and casting themselves without care and with all the confidence of children on the Providence of that God who never forsakes the families of the faithful.’