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Show victed of unlawful cohabitation tut they hare been invariably where the ceremony of marriage has been performed, per-formed, prior to the laws of 8a, and 87, and the breach has been more technical than practical in a large majority of cases. - ' No there is no use denying that the severity of the " punishment for an infringment of these laws,- has acted as a deterring agent in keeping keep-ing a great many of the young people peo-ple of this country from entering into this Order of things, knowing that if they did so, all advancement, politically was cut of!, and for ever more they were at a standstill, but let this new monstrosity become a law, let it pass the two houses of Congress, and receive the signature of the Executive of this great nation, and that moment, by this act depriving de-priving a majority of the male citizens of this Territory of the elective franchise and the right to hold office, for no act of theirs, for no law they have violated, but merely perchance, for having twenty-one 1 years ago been born to parents who were members of the Mormon Church, but never poly- THE CULLOM BILL. ' The avowed 'object of all anti-Mormon anti-Mormon legislation has been the suppression, or wiping out of polygamy, polyg-amy, and the present, proposed, sweeping measure introduced in the national legislature by Senator Cul-lom Cul-lom bases its expediency upon the assertion that it will accomplish the end sought; that by the disfranchis-ment disfranchis-ment of all members of the Mormon Mor-mon church, married or unmarried, polygamists.or non-polygomists, believers be-lievers or non-believers in the doctrine doc-trine of plural marriage, that polygamy polyg-amy will at once cease. If the opposite of this can be shown to be the natural result of the passage of such a law, that instead of suppressing polygamy, it would have the effect of fostering it, then public policy would, demand that this bill should not pass; that so long as our lawmakers believe that this practice is a blot upon the fair escutcheon es-cutcheon of America, that it is a menace to the purity of the American Ameri-can home; that it is a relic of barbarism bar-barism and antagonistic to the genius gen-ius of the republic, as patriots, fathers, fath-ers, lovers of their country's weal, their whole energies should be bent, not for the purpose of having such a law enacted, but for the purpose of preventing a law to be passed which from every natural standpoint stand-point we can view it, would tend to foster and succor the very thing which in their wisdom, after years of gamists, and where is the deterring influence, that is going to act upon them? gone, all rights swept away by one stroke of the Executive pen, reduced in one moment from aspiring, as-piring, ambitions, intellectual American Amer-ican citizens, to aliens, out-casts, men without a country or a hope of a country, and for what? for the purpose or preventing tnem from entering into a tabooed relationship with the other sex. ; That the sages who formulated the "Edmunds" and "iilraunds-Tuclcer" "iilraunds-Tuclcer" laws, looked upon the disfranchising clause as a preventative to a further violation of the polygamy poly-gamy law of 186a, there can be no question, and it was wise to insert in-sert it then, what can they expect as the result of sweeping it away now,' by the act of letting the punishment fall upon all alike, guilty or not guilty, why there is nothing to be gained by an observance of the law, but a certain gratification from a non-observance. " ; That (he national law-makers are sincere in their desires to suppress polygamy, we are bound to believe, but that the 'Cullom Bill,", was conceived for this object, and this alone our judgment rejects, naturally natural-ly it will work in an opposite direction, direct-ion, but it may gratify a few, ' and a very few, of the most rapacious of the persons opposed to the majority of the citizens of Utah. '! - ; That it is tm-Aroerican the cry, of indignation which it has elicited all over the country bean witness, and for the .. safety of American principles, for the honor of ; our country the inhuman monstrosity should be throttled in its infancy, and hot suffered to see the light, or receive nurture lest it grow up to be a monster of such proportions that in after years it may prove a I menace to its nourishers. '1 study they have come to the conclusion, con-clusion, is not good, and should be-extinguished. be-extinguished. To come to this conclusion we will have to take a retrospective view of the.. laws passed having hav-ing for their object the selfsame end as the bill under discussion, and the first we come to is the Congressional Congres-sional law of 1883, which makes the entering into polygamy an offence, and punishes a violation of its enactments en-actments in the same manner as other infringments of national, territorial, terri-torial, or state laws are punished, by fine and imprisonment. This law remained upon the statute stat-ute books, virtually a dead letter for about twenty years, ignored by the efficers of the same government of which it was a law, which they were sworn to see executed in conjunction with all other laws of the land, until by this very dilitoriness that which was only in it incipiency in 62 had assumed huge proportions in 82, when the law known as 'the Edmund's Ed-mund's law went into effect, The framers of this later law, placing the blame of the inifficiency of the former for-mer statute upon the wrong shoulders shoul-ders and not where it rightly belonged, be-longed, by the enactments of the ( "Edmunds" law, saidi fine and imprisonment im-prisonment is not sufficiently severe a punishment to deter these people from the infringement of the- anti-polygamy anti-polygamy law, hence we will make the penalty more far-reaching,' we will not only inflict the former and usual punishment but the unusual one of depriving them of that, which if they have any of the spirit of Americans in their being, will bear harder upon them than fine or imprisonment, im-prisonment, although they are involuntary invol-untary citizen of this country, that is, native born, or voluntary citizens, that is, naturalized, or citizens from choice we will take from them all rights as such, bar them from participating parti-cipating in all matters pertaining to politics, deprive them of holding office of-fice civilly, or being arbiters between be-tween man and his country, or between be-tween man and his neighbor, by making them ineligible to serve as jurors, in fact make them so far as wi ran alipn in their nwn fmintrv- This is what the "Edmunds law," sought to do, and did, for polygo-mists, polygo-mists, upon the theory that it would have a salutory effect in detering others from entering into those forbidden for-bidden relations. - For five years this law. was considered sufficient, until 1887 when the "Tucker-Edmunds" law came along creating other of-, fences all for the same avowed object, obj-ect, the suppression of polygamy, by nuking it obnoxious. ' That these laws have had) the desired effect ef-fect the records of our cwts bear us out in asserting,, for 9 all the numerous numer-ous cases that have been disposed of in the last eight years few, very few, have beea for the main offense, polygamy, po-lygamy, not to exceed half a score, but about one vei annum for eight years among a body of religionists, numbering over two hundred thousand thous-and souls. Can the same thing be said jo; any other community in the United States of the same number that for eight years but one and a fraction cases of bigamy have, been perpetrated for the same length of I time. : . Tree a great many hay been con- |
