cause which operated in Ireland: the Church, maintained by the State, was not maintained for the sake of religion or education, but to provide for favored sons of the invaders. The bishoprics were filled with appointees of the Spanish court. The support of their establishments was made a legal burden, and the story of the Established Church in Mexico runs in a parallel with that of the Established Church in Ireland. "It was the policy of the Spanish cabinet to cherish the temporalities of the Mexican Church. The rights of primogeniture forced the younger sons either into the profession of arms or of religion, and it was requisite that ample provision should be made for them in secure and splendid establishments. Thus all the lucrative and easy benefices came into the hands of Spaniards or their descendants, and by far the greater portion of the more elevated ecclesiastics were persons of high birth or influential connections." [1] It was inevitable that the causes and customs which gave princely incomes to clergymen without congregations in Ireland; which enabled bishops of the Establishment, entering as paupers their sparse dioceses, to leave
- ↑ Brantz Mayer.
