The recklessness of the enactors of the New York tax law is visible in its blanket nature. Not satisfied with exempting property in actual use, the statute contains a provision by which the tax assessor is called upon to become a telepathic expert, and to divine the intentions of a corporation holding land out of use! Not only property actually used for religious purposes is to go untaxed, but also land where the construction of buildings for the purpose of worship "is in good faith contemplated!" No method for testing the "good faith" is provided, nor any safeguard against abuse of the "good faith" clause. No more open invitation to fraud could be devised. No penalty for evasion is provided, and no means of collecting back taxes, in case the church corporation, after grabbing land from the heart of the city, and holding it ten or twenty years under the pretense of intending to build on it at some future time, shall find it impracticable or undesirable to carry out the "contemplated" action, and shall sell the land at an increased valuation, and put a handsome amount of money into its treasury through the kindness of government in promoting this species of land speculation without risk. Should the property depreciate instead of rising, there is still time to use it for church purposes, and nothing is lost. Every other land speculator must at least take some risk; but the church is playing a sure game and cannot lose. The community pays the bill for the benefit of the sure-thing gambler. If it be urged that this particular clause allows the same abuse by any other form of exempted corporation, the answer is that this only makes the evil all the greater. The clause would be bad, even if it applied only to corporations rightfully held exempt from taxation on the property in actual use by them for public purposes; and the wrong is multiplied by its application to the churches, which have no legitimate claim to exemption under any conditions.