tainly known—at least, by the public. It is agreed that they at one time held the titles to all the best property of the republic, both in city and in country, and there is said to have been an admission by the clerical authorities to the ownership of eight hundred and sixty-one estates in the country, valued at seventy-one million dollars, and of twenty-two thousand lots of city property, valued at one hundred and thirteen million dollars, making a total of one hundred and eighty-four million dollars. Other estimates, more general in their character, are to the effect that the former aggregate wealth of the Mexican Church cannot have been less than three hundred million dollars; and, according to Mr. Strother, it is not improbable that even this large estimate falls short of the truth, 'inasmuch as it is admitted that the Mexican ecclesiastical body well understood the value of money as an element of power, and, as bankers and money-lenders for the nation, possessed vast assets which could not be publicly known or estimated' Notwithstanding, also, the great losses which the Church had undoubtedly experienced prior to the accession of Juarez, in 1867, and his control of the State, the annual revenue of the Mexican clergy at that time, from tithes, gifts, charities and parochial dues, is believed to have been not less than twenty-two million dollars, or more than the entire aggregate revenues of the State derived from all its customs and internal taxes. Some of the property that thus came into possession of the government was quickly sold by it, and at very low prices, and, very curiously, was bought, in some notable instances, by other religious (Protestant) denominations, which previous to 1857 had not been allowed to obtain even so much as tolerance or a foothold in the country. Thus, the former spacious headquarters of the order of the Franciscans, with one of the most elegant and beautifully-proportioned chapels in the world within its walls, and fronting in part on the Calle de San Francisco, the most fashionable street in the City of Mexico, was
