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Birth of Philosopher Francis Hutcheson

francis-hutchesonFrancis Hutcheson, Scotch-Irish philosopher and major exponent of the theory of the existence of a moral sense through which man can achieve right action, is born on August 8, 1694 in Saintfield, County Down, Ulster. He is remembered for his book A System of Moral Philosophy. He is an important influence on the works of several significant Enlightenment thinkers, including David Hume and Adam Smith.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Hutcheson is educated at Killyleagh in modern day Northern Ireland and studies philosophy, classics, and theology at the University of Glasgow (1710–1716). While a student, he works as tutor to William Boyd, 3rd Earl of Kilmarnock. Following his return to Ireland, he founds a private academy in Dublin in 1719 and teaches there for ten years. In 1729 he returns to Glasgow to succeed his old master, Gershom Carmichael, as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, a position he holds until his death.

Hutcheson is licensed as a preacher in 1719 by Irish Presbyterians in Ulster, but in 1738 the Glasgow presbytery challenges his belief that people can have a knowledge of good and evil without, and prior to, a knowledge of God. His standing as a popular preacher is undiminished, however, and the celebrated Scottish philosopher David Hume seeks his opinion of the rough draft of the section “Of Human Morals” in Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature.

Hutcheson’s ethical theory is propounded in his Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), in Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1728) and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense (1728), and in the posthumous A System of Moral Philosophy (1755). In his view, besides his five external senses, man has a variety of internal senses, including a sense of beauty, of morality, of honour, and of the ridiculous. Of these, Hutcheson considers the moral sense to be the most important. He believes that it is implanted in man and pronounces instinctively and immediately on the character of actions and affections, approving those that are virtuous and disapproving those that are vicious. His moral criterion is whether or not an act tends to promote the general welfare of mankind. He thus anticipates the utilitarianism of the English thinker Jeremy Bentham, even to his use of the phrase “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” Hutcheson is also influential as a logician and theorist of human knowledge.

Hutcheson spends time in Dublin, and dies while on a visit to the city on August 8, 1746, his fifty-second birthday. He is buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary’s, which is also the final resting place of his cousin William Bruce. Today Saint Mary’s is a public park located in what is now Wolfe Tone Street. He lies in what is now an unmarked grave in the Dublin he loved and where his best work was done.


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Birth of Samuel Haliday, Irish Presbyterian Minister

burning-bushSamuel Haliday, Irish Presbyterian non-subscribing minister to the “first congregation” of Belfast, is born on July 16, 1685 in Omagh, County Tyrone, in what is now Northern Ireland. His refusal to sign the Westminster Confession of Faith leads to a split between Subscribing and Non-Subscribing adherents.

Haliday is the son of the Rev. Samuel Haliday (1637–1724), who is ordained presbyterian minister of Convoy, County Donegal, in 1664. He then moves to Omagh in 1677, leaving for Scotland in 1689, where he is successively minister of Dunscore, Drysdale, and New North Church, Edinburgh. He returns to Ireland in 1692, becoming minister of Ardstraw, where he continues until his death.

Haliday enters Glasgow College, enrolled among the students of the first class under John Loudon, professor of logic and rhetoric. He graduates M.A., and goes to Leiden University to study theology in November 1705.

In 1706 Haliday is licensed at Rotterdam and in 1708 receives ordination at Geneva, choosing to be ordained there because of its tolerance. He becomes chaplain to the 26th (Cameronian) Regiment of Foot, serving under John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in Flanders. He is received by the Synod of Ulster in 1712 as an ordained minister without charge, and declared capable of being settled in any of its congregations. For some time, however, he lives in London, where he associates with the Whig faction, in and out of the government, and uses his influence to promote the interests of his fellow-churchmen. He opposes the extension of the Schism Act 1714 to Ireland. In 1718 he takes a leading part in obtaining an increase in the regium donum and the synod of Ulster thanks him. He introduces two historians, Laurence Echard and Edmund Calamy, in a London social meeting with Sir Richard Ellys, 3rd Baronet.

In 1719 Haliday is present at the Salters’ Hall debates, and in the same year receives a call from the first congregation of Belfast, vacant by the death of the Rev. John McBride. He is at this time chaplain to Colonel Anstruther’s regiment of foot. It being rumoured that he holds Arian views, the synod in June 1720 considers the matter, and clears him. His accuser, the Rev. Samuel Dunlop of Athlone, is rebuked.

On July 28, 1720, the day appointed for his installation in Belfast, Haliday refuses to subscribe the Westminster Confession of Faith, making instead a declaration to the presbytery. The presbytery proceeds with the installation, in violation of the law of the church, and in the face of a protest and appeal from four members. The case comes before the synod in 1721, but though Haliday still refuses to sign the Confession, the matter is allowed to drop. A resolution is, however, carried after long debate that all members of synod who are willing to subscribe the confession might do so, with which the majority comply. Hence arises the terms “subscribers” and “non-subscribers.” He continues to be identified with the latter until his death. A number of members of his congregation are so dissatisfied with the issue of the case that they refuse to remain under his ministry. After much opposition they are erected by the synod into a new charge.

The subscription controversy rages for years. Haliday continues to take a major part in it, both in the synod and through the press. To end the conflict, the synod in 1725 adopts the expedient of placing all the non-subscribing ministers in one presbytery, that of Antrim, which in the following year is excluded from the body.

Haliday is a lifelong friend to the philosopher Francis Hutcheson. In 1736 Thomas Drennan is installed as his colleague in Belfast. Haliday dies at the age of 54 on March 5, 1739.

(Pictured: The burning bush is a common symbol used by Presbyterian churches; here as used by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. The Latin inscription underneath translates as “burning but flourishing”. In Presbyterianism, alternative versions of the motto are also used such as “burning, yet not consumed”.)