Thus, by the force of his well-known character as a genuine Christian patriot, even before the commencement of the Temperance movement in the south of Ireland, Father Mathew had risen to the highest estimation among his people. The affability of his manners, his readiness to listen to every grief and care, and, if possible, to remove it, the pure and self-sacrificing spirit of his entire career, were eminently calculated to seize upon the quick, warm impulses of the Irish heart, and to make his word law. Some 20 years ago there was no country in which the vice of intoxication had spread more devastation than in Ireland. All efforts to restrain it were in vain. The late Sir Michael O’Loghlen’s Act for the Suppression of Drunkenness was a dead letter; many even of the wise and good deemed it hopeless and incurable, and it was said that the Irish would abandon their nature before they abandoned their whisky.
There were those who thought otherwise. Some members of the Society of Friends and a few other individuals at Cork had bound themselves into an association for the suppression of drunkenness, but were unable to make head against the torrent. In their despair these gentlemen, though Protestants, applied to Father Mathew. Father Mathew responded to the call; with what success ultimately we suppose that our readers are all well aware. The work, however, was not the work of a day. For a year and a half he toiled and laboured against the deep-rooted degradation of the “Boys” of Cork, the ridicule and detraction of many doubtful friends, and the discountenance of many others from whom he had expected support. At length he had the satisfaction of seeing the mighty mass of obdurate indifference begin to move; some of the most obdurate drunkards in Cork enrolled their names in his “Total Abstinence Association.” His fame began to travel along the banks of the Shannon. First, the men of Kilrush came in to be received, then some hundreds from Kerry and Limerick; until, early in the month of August, 1839, the movement burst out into one universal flame. The first great outbreak was at Limerick, where Father Mathew had engaged to preach at the request of the bishop; and the mayor of which city declared that within 10 months no less than 150 inquests had been held in the county, one half of which were on persons whose deaths had been occasioned by intoxication. As soon as the country people heard that Father Mathew was in Limerick they rushed into the city in thousands. So great was the crush, that though no violence was used the iron railings which surrounded the residence of “the Apostle of Temperance” were torn down, and some scores of people precipitated into the Shannon … We have not the time or the space to follow Father Mathew in his Temperance progresses. Some idea of their results may be formed when we state that at Nenagh 20,000 persons are said to have taken the pledge in one day; 100,000 at Galway in two days; in Loughrea, 80,000 in two days; between that and Portumna from 180,000 to 200,000; and in Dublin about 70,000 during five days. There are few towns in Ireland which Father Mathew did not visit with like success. In 1844 he visited Liverpool, Manchester, and London; and the enthusiasm with which he was received there and in other English cities testified equally to the need and to the progress of the remedy.
It only remains to add, that in Father Mathew the ecclesiastic was completely absorbed in the Christian, the man of goodwill towards all his fellow men. To him the Protestant and the Catholic were of equal interest and of equal value. Again, no man ever displayed a more disinterested zeal. He spent upon the poor all that he had of his own and reduced to bankruptcy his brother, a distiller in the South of Ireland, whose death followed shortly upon the losses resulting from the “Temperance” crusade. Yet this man, and other branches of the family, though extensively connected with the wine and spirit trade, not only bore their losses without a murmur, but even supplied Father Mathew with large sums of money for the prosecution of his work. A few years since, Her Majesty was pleased to settle upon Father Mathew an annuity of 300l. in recognition of the services which he had rendered to the cause of morality and order; but even this we understand was almost entirely absorbed in heavy payments on policies of insurance upon his life, which he was bound to keep up to secure his creditors.
8 FEBRUARY 1867
WILLIAM DARGAN, of whose death we have just been informed by telegraph, was the son of a farmer in the county of Carlow. Having received a fair English education, he was placed in a surveyor’s office. He obtained the appointment of surveyor for his native county, but soon after resigned, from a feeling that he could never in that position be able to advance himself as he thought he should do if he were free to do the best he could with his talents. The first important employment he obtained was under Mr Telford, in constructing the Holyhead road. He there learnt the art of road-making, then applied for the first time by his chief, the secret of which was raising the road in the middle that it might have something of the strength of the arch, and making provision for the effectual draining off of the surface water. When that work was finished Mr Dargan returned to Ireland and obtained several small contracts on his own account, the most important of which was the road from Dublin to Howth, which was then the principal harbour connected with Dublin. Soon after this he embarked in a career of enterprise which, owing to the state of the country at that time, and the nature of the works which he achieved, will cause him to stand alone as a leader of industrial progress in the history of Ireland. There was then on every hand a cry for “encouragement” and protection. In the name of patriotism people were invited to purchase certain articles, not because they were good, but because they were of Irish manufacture. To be personally engaged in business of any kind was considered vulgar. It was a thing to which no “born gentleman” would stoop, because if he did he would be put in Coventry by his class. The most wealthy manufacturer, no matter how well educated or gentlemanly, if he attended at his counting-house, or looked regularly after his business, would have been blackballed at any second or third rate club in Dublin. A gentleman might, indeed, amuse himself at some sort of work for the benefit of his health; but if it were for the benefit of his purse, and for so sordid a consideration as profit, he immediately lost caste. Trade might be a good thing in its way, but it should be left to men who were not born with gentle blood. Protestants of the middle classes, who had no pretensions to such blood, had imbibed from their “betters” much of the same contempt for industry and the same respect for idleness; while the Roman Catholics had not yet sufficiently recovered from the effects of the Penal Code to enter with self-reliance and persistent energy into any sort of industrial enterprise. It was under such circumstances that Mr Dargan applied himself to study the wants of his country, which, so far as the working classes were concerned, had derived so little benefit from political agitation. Such a man would naturally embrace any opportunity that opened for extending the benefits of the railway system to Ireland. Kingstown had superseded Howth as the Dublin harbour. It was increasing fast in population, and the traffic between it and the metropolis