The Lawsons shared the opinions of radicals, who argued that aristocrats were parasites of the state raising the price of the people's bread as a means of helping the landed interests and to add revenue to the state coffers which could be used for the anti-Christian purposes of corruption and foreign war. In 1843, after attending a series of travelling lectures given by Chalmers and Candlish, they re-enacted the prominent debates relating to the question of Church and State and discussed the Scottish church and its recent schism, when 451 ministers seceded, leaving the Kirk to form the Free Church of Scotland. In 1843, they debated the Rebecca Riots; and after Daniel O'Connell electrified Ireland with his desire to repeal the union they consumed endless hours debating the everlasting Irish Question. In 1848, they contemplated the events surrounding the revolution, when the morning newspapers reported some fresh upheaval, spreading relentlessly across Europe, shaking kingdoms and thrones, causing terrific slaughter in France, provoking Chartist riots in England, and bringing home lessons of deep political importance. Throughout the 1840s, they debated the morality of war, with particular reference to the Afghan and the Chinese Opium Wars. As the wars concluded the question of peace came to the fore. The leaflets of Elihu Burritt' a leading peace campaigners were awaited and absorbed on publication, while another apostle of peace, Henry Richard made a lecturing visit to Brayton. Lawson completed his education by reading The Nonconformist, edited by Edward Miall. Many of these early Whig refrains forged his character and formed his opinions and convictions pushing him along a path that led from romanticism and Evangelicalism to Cobdenism.