The weakness of the case for the exemption of church property is apparent from the fact that the foregoing easily refuted claims represent substantially the entire case in its favor. At the New York hearing of 1915, and at all other hearings before the various legislative bodies of our land, they have been the only points on which stress was sought to be laid. Incidentally, of course, minor assertions have been made, such as the alleged fact that the church is a public utility, in the maintenance of which the community has a direct interest. This plea, on which small reliance is usually placed, has been fully disposed of by the analysis on a preceding page of the function of the church. Sometimes attention is called to the apparent preponderance of interest in favor of exemption, as witnessed by the number of speakers who appear in its favor at committee hearings and by the number and size of the organizations which they represent. This is obviously the most transparent sophistry. Principles are not to be gauged by numbers. A country in which the mob may dispose at its lightest whim of the rights and liberties of the individual or of the minority is a land of tyranny, and cannot prosper in the end. Moreover, the alleged preponderance does not even prove that the majority of the citizens are in favor of the special privilege dishonestly demanded by the churches. It merely furnishes fresh evidence of the well-known fact that parties with special interests to be subserved by class legislation will organize more efficiently than those appearing for the general interest of the citizens, but not backed by powerful existing organizations well supplied with funds and having much to gain or lose in a financial way by the passage or defeat of the proposed legislation. It is hard to stir up popular interest to the point of action in matters that involve the civic conscience. Nevertheless, the people are slowly awakening to a realization of the iniquity of the manner in which the churches, for their own profit, have played upon the religious emotions of those under their influence; and a day of reckoning is imminent. The sentiment in behalf of the repeal of the dishonest exemption laws is growing continually stronger, and must finally become irresistible.