No words can adequately describe the fear which fell upon good men all over the land when the real character and purpose of the riot became known. Considerable sympathy had been felt for the first day’s movement, which was rightly regarded as a protest against the stupid inefficiency of the courts, rather than an outbreak against the established order. But when the awful anarchy of the succeeding days came to be understood, and the true nature of the plot against society to be appreciated, there was something like a panic among men who had stakes in the prosperity of the nation, and whose wealth or homes depended upon the maintenance of order. It was not a hopeful sign that, in the midst of this horror and dread which fell upon men of property and standing, the socialists everywhere openly expressed their sympathy with the “revolution,” and their belief that the Chicago riot was only the first gun in a battle which was to rage over the length and breadth of the land. Nor was the attitude taken by the Irish any the more reassuring. They had not engaged in the riots at Chicago, neither had they opposed the rioters. So far as could be learned, not a single member of any of the great Irish societies had been molested in person or property during the riots. In other parts of the country, too, the Irish leaders spoke with a new and strange tone. They expressed a strong condemnation, it is true, of the excesses into which the rioters had been “driven;” but in no case did they denounce the rioters themselves, or fail to express their sympathy with what they were pleased to term “an oppressed and struggling common people.” Two days after the troops had taken possession of the city, the leading daily paper managed to collect enough material and men to issue a small four-page sheet. The leading article in this issue, in deliberately chosen but unmistakable language, charged that the Irish organizations of the city had not only sympathized with the rioters, but had in many instances actually given them material aid, furnishing them arms, acting as spies for them, and offering some of the leaders hiding-places when search was made for them after the restoration of order. No denial was made to this. But the Irish Press responded to the charge with a counter-accusation. It declared that the article was the result of partisan spite, inspired by the fact that the Irish usually acted with the political party to which their editorial assailant was opposed. With few exceptions, the Press of that party took up the cry, and charged his paper with having insulted “a vast and respectable body of citizens, in order to make contemptible political capital.” The excitement gradually subsided,--as it was the misfortune (or the wickedness) of the American people that excitement over public wrongs always did. But good men everywhere continued to look to the future with a dread which they did not dare to put into words.