the
Rebellion first broke out, all the chapels in Dublin were closed, and
the Administration, as if guided by some unintelligible infatuation,
issued a proclamation, commanding the Catholic priesthood to depart
from the city. Those who refused this senseless and impolitic edict were
threatened with the utmost severity of the law. Harsh as that law was,
the Catholics obeyed it; yet even this obedience did not satisfy the
Protestant party, or rather that portion of them who were active agents
in carrying out this imprudent and unjustifiable rigor at such a period.
They were seized by a kind of panic, and imagined forsooth that a broken
down and disarmed people might engage in a general massacre of the Irish
Protestants. Whether this incomprehensible terror was real, is a matter
of doubt and uncertainty; or whether it was assumed as a justification
for assailing the Catholics in a general massacre, similar to that
which they apprehended, or pretended to apprehend, is also a matter of
question; yet certain it is, that a proposal to massacre them in cold
blood was made in the Privy Council. "But," says O'Connor, "the humanity
of the members rejected this barbarous proposal, and crushed in its
infancy a conspiracy hatched in Lurgan to extirpate the Catholics of
that town and vicinity."

In the meantime, so active was the persecuting spirit of such men
as Whitecraft and Smellpriest that a great number of the unfortunate
priests fled to the metropolis, where, in a large and populous city,
they had a better chance of remaining _incogniti_ than when living
in the country, exposed and likely to be more marked by spies and
informers. A very dreadful catastrophe took place about this time. A
congregation of Catholic people had heard mass upon an old loft, which
had for many years been decayed--in fact, actually rotten. Mass was
over, and the priest was about to give them the parting benediction,
when the floor went down with a terrific crash. The result was dreadful.
The priest and a great many of the congregation were killed on the spot,
and a vast number of them wounded and maimed for life. The Protestant
inhabitants of Dublin sympathized deeply with the sufferers, whom
they relieved and succored as far as in them lay, and, by their
remonstrances, Government was shamed into a more human administration of
the laws.

In order to satisfy our readers that we have not overdrawn our picture
of what the Catholics suffered in those unha