That this is not mere speculation may be seen by a glance at history, where it will be found in land after land, and in century after century, that favoritism to the church, wherever tolerated, has wrought incalculable evil to the people, largely through the heavy accumulation of wealth by the ecclesiastical body. So unendurable has the condition become that in country after country the only possible relief was found to be through wholesale confiscation, thus settling accounts at one stroke. Thus, Henry VIII of England became a reformer in spite of himself, and though personally a dishonest tyrant with few if any redeeming features, at least conferred a lasting blessing on the people of England by forcing the church parasites to disgorge enormous values which had become means of the most intolerable oppression. France and Portugal, though for centuries staunch Catholic countries, found the wealth of the church and the impoverishment of the people to go regularly hand in hand, and were finally forced, in decreeing the separation of church and state, to adopt stringent measures for breaking the monopolistic power of the hierarchy. The Philippine insurrection against Spain was largely an uprising of an outraged people against the priests and friars, who were coming to own everything, and to reduce the population to a state of vassalage. The part played by the priesthood of Mexico in the impoverishment of the people, while the church revenues waxed greater and greater, is familiar to all who are acquainted with the causes which have brought that unhappy land to a state of chaos and wholesale bloodshed. SOME RESULTS OF THE SYSTEM.