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Show A Wealthy Church. The wealthiest church in the world, proportionately proportion-ately to its numerican strength, is perhaps the Protestant Episcopal church of Ireland. It has an accumulated fund of close on $40,000,000, while the total number of its adherents, men, women and children, is only a little over half a million. The big fund is mainly the result of the compensation received for being disestablished and dis endowed i by the Gladstone act of 1870. 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 com-pelled by law to pay an annual tax for the maintenance main-tenance of the Protestant church. The accumu lated fund above referred to is, therefore, to a large extent the money of Catholics, a fact which does not seem to trouble the consciences of the gentlemen of the "Church of Ireland." as the disestablished dis-established sect now styles itself, with as much right to the title as it formerly had to that of "Irish church.' Xew York Freeeman's Journal. k |