Show INJUSTICE IND AM INFAMY Oon confronted fronted and cowed but not crushed OUR DELEGATE IN THE HOUSE OP OF representatives exposes the monstrosity called the edmunds tucker BM bill POINTS OUT ITS AND ra FALL ALCIAS and lu appeals to the States State mans sense of fairness FULL TEXT OF THE SPEECH mr CAUSE mr speaker it is a dorkof work of supererogation to point out the enormities of this pro proposed ased legislation which while professing pro professing lessing to be lor for the suppression of polygamy in the territory of utah is actually a measure intended tended iu to suppress the mormon church and place its property in the handsol of a receiver under ordinary circumstances I 1 would content myself with entering a formal protest serenely confident that enlightened mankind throughout the world will in due time condemn such legislation as wrong in theory of fundamental constitutional constitutional brov provisions i undemocratic and un american and wantonly destructive of the dearest most sacred rights of humanity there has never yet been a wanton exercise of arbitrary power whether by unrestrained executive authority or dy by pre judice J impelled legislative enactment which did not as t time ime rol rolled ledon on bring its own revenges this bill rudely overrides and sets at naught the eternal the immutable principles upon common rights ot men are bottomed do you flatter yourselves that you ca can n with impunity trifle with the rights of your tel fel do you sa crince your own sense of right ano an justice and bend your better jude ment to the demands of a false public sentiment which owes its existence ence to two unworthy sources religious intolerance and bigotry and the arts bf unscrupulous designing self seek ing n men whose only object is the plundering de r ing of my people and hope that you yon a and your posterity will escape the p e il bat heretofore has sooner or 1 eilen lat a t e en visited upon those wilfully bre g the unchangeable laws governing ern the destinies of nations france today to day still pays a as s for long years she has been paying the penalty for the revocation of the edict of nantes that wanton act as shortsighted s it was arbitrary as senseless as it was wicked dro drove ve beyond the borders of france a of souls comprising some of the best blood and best intellects of the french deop people ae the protestant Em egres driven from their homes in france stripped of their property carried with them to england to germany and to the wilds ot america not only then their religion but that training and discipline of mind which the school of adversity always teaches and today to day you can read on the brightest pages of the histories of the countries receiving the refugees the great reat achievements wrought by them england owes to them and their posterity much very much of her preeminence pre re eminence in the worlds commerce germany is their debtor both in the arts of pease peace and war strike from your galaxy of statesmen and warriors fro from your role of great teat men in a the aks walks of life the names of french huguenots Huguen and their descendants and see what a void there would be england lost in great pt what she gained through her kindly reception of the persecuted fleeing n from ot other r lands by y her er impolitic i politic and a atrocious abrocio a treatment ent of puritan englishmen and catholic irishmen had she been content with wity driving the puritans from her own soil und and not sought to impose unwarrantable restraints upon them in the homes they had established upon this continent it is today to dat day all english speaking people would woul be united under one government the grandest and greatest upon earth the condition ot ireland today attests most eloquently the incon tessible tes tible fact that legislation like this you propose to enact never has and ne never verwill will accomplish aught but the creation of a plague rue spot in the body politic which in her case has festered for for many centuries and is at this moment the dominant issue in english politics do you say I 1 am presumptuous in comparing compari ug the despised mormons cormons with the french huguenots Huguen the english puritans and the catholic irishmen in numbers we will iro probably bably not equal either and yet there are nearly a quarter 4 of a million who hold that reli religious fous belief in the united states this thi bill strikes at the property of the mormon church and proposes a test oath to professors of the mormon faith it is true that our religious establishment Is only fifty six years old but in that short period our people have been drivon from three states by mo mob violence our property destroyed our prophet and leaders murdered iti in cold blood and forty oue one i years a ago 0 we had in the dead of winter t to 0 gi leave lave our homes on the east ba bank of the mississippi river which we had won by honett toil and make an unparalleled paralleled pilgrimage of more than 1500 miles across trackless plains and unknown mountains to find beyond the pale of civilization a new abiding place we found a desert land not then the domain of the united states the first act of the pioneer band nearly all of whom eliom came of good new england pennsylvania and new york stock was to hoist the stars and stripes and take possession in the name of the united states a government which we then beti believed eved and still believe to be of divine origin this country was at t war with mexico the mormons cormons Mor mons driven from their homes home soh on the banks of the mississippi and living in tents and rude huts I 1 scattered in camps along the way from the mississippi sis sippi to the missouri had bad been especially ally appealed to by the president to furnish a 4 battalion of five hundred men to make a forced march across the continent and help seize and hold california the appeal was responded to although it required every fifth man to abandon his family at the outset of a an a enforced journey long arduous and perilous vilous but whither no one then terilous te knew new save that their tabernacle was to be beset set up somewhere beyond the icky mountains in making this heroic sacrifice as in hoisting the tag flag of their country on the mountain peak overlooking the valley of great salt gait lake and taking pos session in the name of the united Sti spates ates the mormon pilgrims were bmp amp simply y doing their duty they believed and tsu taught ht t then b e as they belive and te teach ab to today day that the government ol of the united states was found founded ed by men who were inspired of god it mattered not what they had suffered at the hands of lawless men ot or wherein those in authority had bad failed to do their duty the mormon religion imposed upon those who accepted the faith the sacred obligation of supporting defending and aggrandizing that government the establishment of which was but part of the latter day dispensation the achievements of the mormons cormons s speak eak ifor if or themselves they found a esert desert region in the interior of the continent which the few white men who nho had theretofore penetrated pronounced an waste hostile savages held the then supposed to be only habitable places round about almost 2000 miles of plains aud and mountains uninhabited save by warlike savage nomads separated us ua from the eastern frontier line between great salt lake valle valley y and the few scattered spanish settlements on oa the pacific more than miles of F till still more inhospitable deserts and rugged mountains intervened the history of mankind does not afford another such example of a people stripped of all ail their possessions and anc wito with the scantiest possible provision successfully sf ally accomplishing so marvelous busun un undertaking within less than two years more than five thousand souls made the pilgrimage from the banks of the mississippi to great salt lake valley growing on the way their provisions and making the raiment with which they were clothed what was endured during that exodus the awful suffering iro from in hunger until the first years crops were grown aedma aured in the valley would require a far more eloquent tongue than mine to adequately describe men and women who were children then will tell yu you that even now they experience in dreams an aftertaste of the pangs of hunger gnawing at their vitals through the long and dreary winter of 1847 48 all stores were neld under strict guard and meager rations meted out but for the kindly assistance of the scarcely better provided indians who taught our people to find dig and cook wild roots starvation would arve been the lot of all the weak and ailing those of you who nave made the journey across the plains over the rocky mountains and ahr through jugh the great valley in palace cars and seen the wonders wrought by the persistence the industry and the thrift of the mormons cormons Mor mons can have only the faintest idea of what the transformation has cost the people whom you yon now deliberately libera tely propose to turnover turn over to insatiable spoilers I 1 hazard nothing mr speaker when I 1 make the statement that but for the mormons cormons the building of the union and central pacific railroads would have been an utter impossibility more than that sir but for the work of reclamation accomplished in two short years among the dreary wastes of salt lake valley the Califor california niu and oregon pioneers of 1849 and succeeding years could not have made the overland journey from the missouri to the pacific we marked out tte the way built the roads bridged tile the S streams established ferries and along the line planted settlements I 1 repeat sir that not only would the construction of a continental iron highway have been indefinitely ly postponed save for the mormon settlements in the intermountain inter mountain region but bat today to dayall day all that vast region now populous erid grid ironed with railroads yielding millions upon millions in the products of mines and of sou soil would be bb scarcely better known than it was forty years ago it if the materiale immaterial mate riall work accomplished by the mormons cormons has been such as to challenge the admiration ot of the world their political moral and intellectual achievements have been none the less remarkable they have not only reclaimed waste places deemed irre claimable before their advent they lave not only subdued nature and nade made the desert to blossom as a gdrdon of flowers they have no only ailt cities and towns town rall railroad road and telegraph ele graph lines but they flaye bave dotted the be land they won from sterility every where with school schoolhouses ho uses and places of worship it Is our proud boast boas that but ut few of the oldest states in the union can show a less pereen percentage tage of illiteracy lliter acy than the mormon population of f utah there is no community on the face of this earth where so large a percentage of the heads of fa own their homes domes ninety per dent cent of mormon heads of families in utah uliah own the houses they live it in and the lands they cultivate cul of all the states and territories in the union there are but thirteen showing a lower percentage of total population who caa not read connecticut having the same as utah 3 3 per percent cents the money raised for 6 school h ol 01 purposes in utah is greater in amount t than the school funds of three states and of any of the territories save dakota and more than that sir not one dollar of the school f und fund by far the larger part of which comes from mormon taxpayers is used for sectarian I 1 purposes burp e 8 I 1 akie school books of the public bl c 8 schools c bools of utah are as a absolutely b sol 01 pu te ly fre free from efrom mormon teachings as are tho those e used 4 the district of columbia the only successful ul ed by the general government to reclaim indians from a savage state and tew teah h them the arts of peace and make them thrifty agriculturists and usef useful ul citizens have been the work of the mormon church and its missionaries 01 I 1 assert only that thai which I 1 know to be tr true U e when I 1 declare that on more than one occasion the mormons cormons have prevented costly indian wars not only in utah but in the adjoining territories one of the miny many slanders so industriously triou sly spread abroad concerning my people is the statement that ane great mass of ef them are densely ignorant sir the official statistics give the lie most emphatically to this reckless assertion ser tion has the state of connecticut a densely ignorant population but three and thirty seven hundredths of the inhabitants of the state of connecticut can not read precisely the same proportion of the people of utah U tah iv in 1880 could not read another unfounded slander spread abroad most in by our enemies is the charge that the population of utah is largely made up of foreigners who are ign ignorant orant ana unfit to be citizens of the united states what abat do the statistics prove according to 0 the census of 1880 the total population po on af utah was of this number were males and females the males outnumbering the females by of the total population were native born baru and foreign born there were native born males aad native born females and the foreign born males were and the foreign born tei lei males while the proportion of the foreign born population of idaho is to lo of wisconsin 41 california 51 minn minnesota eulota dakota 62 arizona 65 98 nevada e ada lin in utah utah it is only in dakota Ore oregon new jarw hampshire rhode island jori michigan fic higan maine massachusetts florida arkansas washington colorado and new mexico the foreign born population increased during the decade preceding the census of ef 1880 from which these statistics are taken in utah it had de crease dand utah showed a more rapid decrease in its foreign born population during the period named tha than 11 twenty nine of the states and the district of columbia mr speaker I 1 assert without fear of successful contradiction that anat there is not upon the face of the globe another agricultural and pastoral community where the average of general intelligence is so high where so small a percentage of men women and children can not read mats is no idle boast it if I 1 dared to trespass upon your time and your you r patience I 1 could bring overwhelming proof of my as bertion ser tion it is the universal verdict of the intelligent and unbiased observers who have visited utah andigone and gone among her people the fact that the mormon people fi have aveina in a high degree capacity for self government is attested by their history I 1 defy any impartial student of institutional history to the legislative enactments of the territorial assembly of utah beginning with our provisional government and coming in down clown to date and fall to pronounce t the highest encomium gium upon the wisdom the fairness the justness and equity of the mormon government of utah A gentleman who has devoted years to a critical study of their ecclesiastical and political institutions says the wisdom of their leading men is ie bic cx amplified in the founding and elaboration of a local government which will receive the unqualified approval of every student of history in the settlement of no other western territory has the distinguishing feature or of old now new England the principle of town meeting community self government been so rigidly adhered to as in utah Brig hafti aih young who was preeminently great as a leader of men and a builder of communities i was a native of vermont his chief co laborers were either natives of now new england ney ner york pennsylvania or the western ol of ohio their civil like their ecclesiastical policy was essentially democratic they built not tor for today to day but for all time the |