become apparent in the next chapter. In one important respect, however, the Church has the greater guilt. Poor the State is, undoubtedly, though no sane social student will fail to see how profitably a large part of its expenditure would be diverted to education. But the Church is wealthy, immensely wealthy. The vast revenue I have already described, together with all parochial dues and collections, goes to the secular (or parochial) clergy, in whose larger churches and cathedrals immense treasure has accumulated. While the workers in parts of Spain must labour for about five pesetas (3s. 6d.) a week, and while despairing schoolmasters must set their hands to whatever incongruous employment they can discover to augment their £10 to £20 a year for teaching in barn-like structures, the wealthier churches house incalculable treasure, and the clergy usually live in great comfort. The wardrobe of the image of the Virgin at Toledo would alone suffice to build hundreds of fine schools. One robe bears, says Mrs. Bates, “85,000 large pearls, and as many sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds.” The crown used to decorate the statue is worth £5,000, and the bracelets £2,000. The total value of this useless and senseless jewellery in the great churches of Spain is beyond calculation; and the country is too poor to educate more than a part of its children, and that with ridiculous inadequacy. Cordova alone has 600 priests to 55,000 people; and Cordova is on the verge of bankruptcy.
But this overwhelming sufficiency of parochial clergy with its incalculable wealth, is not the chief source of offence to enlightened Spaniards. A vast population of monks and nuns and Jesuits, who do no parochial work, is spread over the land, and amasses wealth with even greater success than the secular clergy. In the heated conflicts of the two bodies the truth is suffered to leak out. A Spanish prelate, Mgr. José Veleda de Gunjado, has recently declared that these regulars (monks and nuns) own two-thirds of the money of the country and one-third of the wealth in property, etc. While they flaunt vows of poverty before the ignorant peasantry, they draw out of the healthy circulation of the impoverished country a colossal proportion of its resources. A religious review (the Revista Cristiana—quoted in Diercks's
