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Show THE ANCIENT TWISTER. W In the body of an editorial the News injects ml the following: M. Just think of an attempt to prove that the Mi "Mormon" Church has broken its pledges in the Jr State Constitution! What had the Church to do wj with an instrument that declares, "There shall be m no union of church and state?" Do the protestors 1 mean to say that the state has broken its pledges I to the nation? If so, in what way? Even If the surmises and accusations and reported violations It of the law are true which we do not admit what ml would these few cases of law-breaking prove, ex-MgL ex-MgL ' cept that they should havo been prosecuted? P That is adroit, is it not? What is the Mor-I Mor-I mon church? As it looks to an outsider it con- m sists of a First Presidency and twelve apostles, H or in as much as the head of the Church is In H daily telephope connection with Almighty God, II the Church seems to bo mostly the First PresI-, dent. As to the State Constitution there were two apostles and no end of other high church officials of-ficials in the convention that framed it, and every one of them signed it, and moreover, every high church official in the state helped to ratify It. Hence the' Church through all its active directors is bound by it. But that is not quite all. The present head of the Church declared, before there was any call for a constitution that the Church was not only done with polygamy but that thenceforth the people should no more be interfered inter-fered with politically; that they should espouse any political principles they pleased to, and vote whatever ticket they pleased to without restraint. re-straint. That this pledge has not been kept is what the complaint is about. It is reasonable, too, because had the same high authority at that time declared that "with statehood obtained we, the chief officers of the Church, will run the politics poli-tics of Utah; we, will join the ruff-scuff crowd in conventions and nominate whom we please; the evening before election day we will sena out our teachers to tell the people whom the First Pros!' dent would like to have them vote for." Why, of course, there would no statehood have been given them In that way the pledges of the Constitution have been broken to the nation, the pledges of the controlling forces of the Church have been broken to the nation until to siy that Utah has a free government is as absurd as to say Turkej' has. The twistings of the News, its apparent obliviousness ob-liviousness to the real facts do not in the least change those facts. Statehood was obtained through broken pledges and through such per-fldity per-fldity on the part of the controlling- forces of the so-called church as would kindle the envy of the toughest gang that ever ruled Tammany Hall or set in array the Democratic primaries of Kentucky. Ken-tucky. Hence we say to Gentiles that it is self-stultification self-stultification to engage in politics with the Mormons Mor-mons of Utah, because the most honest of them are bound by such oaths to obey their prlosthood that they dare not rebel though hey know perfectly per-fectly that they are but carrying out the unparalleled unparal-leled perfidy of their chiefs, and worse, they believe be-lieve they are doing it for Christ's sake.'1 |