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Show . 1- A Wealthy Church- The wealthiest church in the world, proportion- ' ately to its numerical strength, is, .perhaps, the Protestant Episcopal church of Ireland, It lias an accumulated fund close on $40,000,000, while the total number of its adherents, men. women and children, is only a little owr 500.000. The big fund is mainly the result of the compensation received for being' disestablished and disendowed by the Gladstone act of 1S70. Before that time and for two centuries previously the "Irish Church," as" it was officially designated, though the church of but a small minority of the population, received all the tithes, paid by Catholics as well as Protestants, and thus the Catholic Irish were compelled by law to pay an annual tax for the maintenance of .the Protestant Prot-estant church. The accumulated fund above referred re-ferred to is, therefore, to a large extent the money cf Catholics, a fact'which does not seem to'trouble the consciences of the gentlement of the "Church of Ireland," as the disestablished sect. now styles itself, with as much right to the title, as it formerly had to that of "Irish Church." Freeman's Journal. Jour-nal. ' . "' '". |