On the succeeding days, however, the elements of the mob changed. The same nucleus remained, but other constituents were added to it. Thieves and plunderers joined it, for the sole purpose doubtless of robbing in safety; probably the first peacebreakers themselves, not ordinarily pilferers, carried off the articles of value, which were scattered among the ruins their rage had created. Scheming politicians fanned the flame which their teachings had already lit; the journals which are almost undisguisedly in favor of a dishonorable peace, and of a return of the Southern States with slavery untouched, skilfully incited, while seeming to discourage, the now rum-maddened and blood-drunken fiends; the idle, the vicious, the curious joined the throng, and the motives of the mob became as varied and diverse as its elements. Some hoped to stop the draft and remain unmolested at home. Others hoped to stop the draft, in order to stop the war, and enable them to say to the South, We have prevented your subjugation: give us our political reward. Some hoped to overthrow all law and order, that they might revel in the wealth they could then sequester. The great mass probably neither knew nor cared to what end they tended--their worst passions were aroused and controlled them; they luxuriated in violence and bloodshed, and their brutal instincts were satisfied. That the riot had any significant religious characteristics is not probable. Catholics were in it and of it, and so were Protestants. The mob was composed principally of those who scout all pretence of religion of any kind, and who are as little influenced by the priest as the negligent Protestant is by the preacher. Had it been otherwise, the priest who endeavored to get the body of Colonel O'Brien would have easily prevailed; for no church-going Catholics would refuse, in their wildest frenzy, the request of a priest for the possession of a dying man. That there are honest bigots in the Catholic Church who believe that within her pale only is safety for the human race, who believe, furthermore, that republican institutions are incompatible with her full supremacy, and rejoice, therefore, with holy zeal, at anything which seems to indicate their instability, is doubtless true. Some such individuals may have been among the rioters, urging them on in their frenzied work. But the manly, sincere, and indignant castigation given by the Catholic priesthood to the wretched miscreants on the Sunday following the disturbances, precludes any possibility of suspicion that the Church was either aware of the intended uprising, or that it approved the purposes or actions of the mob. In deciding, then, as to the real character and purpose of the rioters, two distinct classes of persons must be taken into account: those actively engaged in insurgent proceedings, and those who, not appearing on the scene of action, incited and sustained the former in their demonstrations.