nd the Church may be of
advantage to him, for it has an abundance of money at 6 per cent. per
annum, while the outside money-lenders charge him 2 per cent. per
month. The Church, too, may have a mortgage upon his house over-due;
and woe betide him if he should undertake a crusade against the Church.
This is a string that the Church can pull upon which is strong enough
to overawe government itself.

This money-power of the Church yet lacks completeness and concentration
to make it even a tolerable substitute for the power lost by the
abolition of the Inquisition, as this wealth is distributed among 12
independent bishops. But, having succeeded in establishing the temporal
power of her bishops in Mexico more firmly than in the United States,
the Papal court made another step in advance. In 1852, Mexico was
electrified with delight at the condescension of the Holy Father in
sending a _nuncio_ to that city. For two full years this representative
of the Holy See was _feted_ and toasted on all hands, as little less
than the Pope himself, whom he represented. But last year all these
happy feelings were dashed with gall and wormwood by an announcement
that as the bishops controlled all this immense property by virtue of
their spiritual authority, there was a resulting trust in his favor, or
at least in favor of the Pope, whom he represented with full powers. It
was Pandora's box opened in the midst of "a happy family." There was no
disputing the nuncio's law; but to render to him an account of their
receipts and disbursements, or to deliver over the bonds and mortgages
to this agent of the Pope, was most unpleasant. The old Archbishop
keeps fast hold of the money-bags, which, so far, the keys of Saint
Peter have been unable to unlock. The battle waxes loud and fierce
between the parties and their partisans, and Santa Anna stands looking
on, dreaming of the happy time when, through the internal dissensions
of the Church, these accumulations of 300 years of robbery and false
pretenses will fall into the public treasury, and the people as well as
the government will obtain their enfranchisement.

The money-power of the Church has proved sufficiently strong to save it
from the hungry maw of a famishing government, and to stand unaffected
by the revolutions that surround it; and now and then, when too
bitterly assailed by some political reformer, it finds relief in the
assassination of the assailant, as in the case of the eloquent