The apologists for church exemption find themselves in a position of great embarrassment when the nature and amount of the exempted property are called into question. In the difficulty of securing accurate and complete figures they attempt at once to minimize and to magnify the amount involved. In pleading for the country churches, they raise the cry of poverty, and solemnly aver that these feeble institutions are so dependent on state help for their existence that without it they must inevitably perish. The claim is both false and irrelevant. It is false, because the taxable property of the country churches, as may be readily seen from the preceding discussion, and may be learned by any person through direct observation, is of extremely low value, and bears far less proportion to the available income of their aggregate membership than the holdings of the city churches. The few dollars of taxes which an honest fiscal policy would impose on the average country church would be raised without the slightest difficulty. As a matter of fact, it is not the "poor and struggling country churches" which are lobbying against the removal of exemption; it is the wealthy city corporations, which use the "poor country church" argument as a means of drawing a red herring across the track, and diverting attention from their own handsome pickings. The claim, even if true, would obviously be irrelevant, since it is not the business of the state to keep churches alive. Forgetful of their professed fear on behalf of the struggling country churches, however, the apologists for religious graft lay tremendous stress on the assertion that the amount which the state loses through the churches is a mere bagatelle, and that the taxpayers would not gain enough to help them much, if it were reclaimed. A pat retort, of course, is that if this be the case, it is amazing that the churches have become so terrified at the idea of handing over so small an amount to the state. Wealthy as they are, if the sum is as trivial as they say, they will never miss it, and can afford to be honest, and to conciliate the favor of those who are now driven away from the gospel by the greed and grafting spirit of the agencies which represent it. Like the fiction of the dying country churches, however, the claim is both false and irrelevant. It is false, as will presently be shown by some of the figures which have become available; and it is irrelevant, because the moral character of a thief is not to be graded according to the amount of loot which he has succeeded in acquiring. The recognition of the right of the church to receive a subsidy from the state, and thus to make the separation of church and state a dead letter, would remain as serious a crime against the democratic principle, if not more than a single dollar were involved. NEW YORK'S BLANKET EXEMPTION LAW.