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the titles to all the best property of the republic, both in city and 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 $71,000,000; and of twenty-two thousand lots of city property, valued at $113,000,000; making a total of $184,000,000. Other estimates, more general in their character, are to the effect that the former aggregate wealth of the Mexican Church can not have been less than $300,000,000; 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 $22,000,000, 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 the possession of the Government was quickly sold