The Capuchin friar's temperance campaign from 1838 to 1848, says Townend (British and Irish history, U. of North Carolina- Wilmington) was the single most extraordinary social movement in pre-famine Ireland, and a unique mass mobilization in modern European history as measured by the number of people it involved and its impact on the social fabric and the evolving national consciousness. Mathew (1790-1856) campaigned in Ireland and in Irish diaspora communities in Scotland, England, and America. The book is distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

This text examines how a popular Franciscan friar, Father Theobald Mathew, was almost single-handedly responsible for the transformation of Ireland into a temperance stronghold in the 1830s and 40s.