We have already shown that it is ridiculous to attempt to hold the church responsible for the riot. The rioters may have been nominal Catholics; but, if so, they were bad Catholics, for they acted contrary to the principles of their church, and the advice and direction of their pastors, and the church cannot be held responsible for acts done contrary to her orders and in violation of her principles. The rioters, themselves, knew and owned that they were disobeying their church, and defended themselves on the ground that the question was a national not a religious question, and, therefore, not within the jurisdiction of the clergy. Their defence was a lame one, and proved they were no true Catholics; for the church, without assuming to decide the national, party, or political question, had full jurisdiction of the morality of their acts, and was quite competent to condemn the passions of anger and revenge that actuated them and their riotous proceedings, as condemned by the law of God. But there are Catholics in this city of fifteen or twenty different nationalities, and yet the rioters were exclusively of Irish origin, which is full proof that the riot was not Catholic, but Irish. Had it been a Catholic riot, inspired by the church and for a Catholic object, for which the church could be held responsible, Catholics, irrespective of their nationality, would have been engaged in it, and it would not have been confined to persons of one nationality alone. It was, as everybody knows, an Irish riot, occasioned by an old Irish feud between two Irish parties, not an American or a Catholic riot. These hot-headed, disobedient Irishmen, even if Catholics, could not commit the church to their disorderly and criminal proceedings. It is only fair to add that this handful of Irish rioters could not any more commit the great body of our Irish fellow-citizens. According to the last census, there were 201,000 souls in this city who were born in Ireland, to say nothing of their children and grandchildren born here. There probably was not over five hundred, if so many, actively engaged in the riot; but double the number, say there were a thousand, and they are quite too few, even if they were of reputable character, which they were not, to commit so large a body as that of our Irish population, most of whom remained quietly engaged in their ordinary avocations. That the Irish furnish their full quota of rowdies, roughs, and disorderly persons in our large towns, nobody 126 denies; but we must remember that there are plenty of the same class not of Irish origin, and there have been riots, and riots of a very grave character, in which the Irish had no hand, though of some of them they were the victims. We have seen more than one American mob in which the chief actors were respectable, well-dressed Protestant American citizens.