of Ireland, and even in the north he was received with respect, and with entire confidence in his sincerity and singleness of purpose. A marvellous reform was made in the habits of his disciples, who numbered, it was said, nearly half the adult population of Ireland. The duties on Irish spirits fell from 1,434,573l. in 1839 to 852,418l. in 1844. Statistics showed an extraordinary diminution in crime. The judges in their charges attributed the unusual peace of the country to temperance. At the summer assizes in Cork in 1844, and in the following spring assize, the calendar contained the name of one prisoner.
In 1843 Father Mathew came to London. His meetings, despite some opposition from roughs, were held successfully. Society offered its homage. He met the members of the administration, and was treated with great kindness by Sir Robert Peel. ‘H. B.’ (John Doyle [q. v.]) bore testimony to his popularity by one of his famous sketches, where the good friar appears administering the pledge to ‘a rare batch’ of all the leading people of the time.
Mrs. Carlyle, in a letter to her husband of 9 August 1843, thus describes one of the meetings she attended (Froude, Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, i. 220–4): ‘I found my youthful enthusiasm rise higher and higher as I got on the ground and saw the thousands of people all hushed into awful silence, with not a single exception that I saw—the only religious meeting I have ever seen in Cockneyland which had not plenty of scoffers at its heels. … Father Mathew took me to the front of the platform to see him give the pledge. From one to two hundred took it, and all the tragedies I have ever seen, melted into one, could not have given me such emotion as that scene did. There were faces of both men and women that will haunt me while I live; faces exhibiting such concentrated wretchedness, making, you would have said, its last deadly struggle with the powers of darkness. … When I went to bed I could not sleep; the faces I had seen haunted me, and Father Mathew's smile.’ The pride and happiness of Irishmen at the change in the national ways were unbounded, and the hope of future prosperity for a people, ‘sober, regenerate, and free,’ was universal. But a great calamity was impending—the famine—a disaster destined to check the social regeneration of the people, to overwhelm the Old Ireland for which Father Mathew had laboured; and to bring into existence a new country which should know him only by tradition.
He saw early the misery that was coming, and bent all his energies to save the lives of the peasantry. His appeals for help to English and American friends were most generously met. The government was guided much by his advice, and after the second year of dearth few deaths were directly traceable to starvation, but meanwhile the loss of life had been appalling. In the midst of the labours which the famine brought upon him, the great honour of his life was offered him. He was named by the clergy of the diocese for the vacant bishopric of Cork. The choice was not ratified by the Vatican. He was perhaps considered in Rome to have erred from an excess of the love of his neighbour. A pension was granted to him in the same year by the kind interposition of Lord John Russell; this, together with a public subscription, relieved him of liabilities incurred in organising his temperance associations, and founding temperance clubs and libraries throughout the country.
In 1848 it became apparent that he was overworked. He disregarded symptoms which showed that rest was needed, and suffered from an attack of paralysis, and though he seemed to have speedily recovered, he was never restored to his former vigour. But his activity of mind and love of his work remained the same. He had had pressing invitations to follow his flying countrymen to America, and, against the anxious advice of his relatives and friends, he determined to go. He reached New York in July 1849, and was received by the mayor and citizens as their guest. He was invited to Washington, and by a resolution unanimously carried in congress he was admitted to a seat in the floor of the house. The same honour was paid him in the senate. He travelled to all the principal cities. He preached in the catholic churches to large congregations, and afterwards held his temperance meetings. His strength was failing, but he was sustained by the enthusiasm for doing good, which never left him to the end of his days. The memory of his labours in the United States is preserved in numerous societies called after his name.
A second illness, more severe than the first, compelled him to yield, and he was at length prevailed upon to come home. He returned to Ireland in 1851. During his short stay in Dublin on his way to Cork, he was received with much kindness by Archbishop Cullen, who informed him that it had been proposed in Rome to raise him to the rank of a bishop. But his health rendered the discharge of any active duties of the episcopacy impossible, and on this ground he was allowed to decline the honour. In Cork he was welcomed
