Show MORMONS AND POLYGAMY Just What a Philadelphia Editor Thinks In attempting to suppress Mormonism Mormon-ism on account ol the existence of polygamy in Utah New Mexico Wyoming and elsewhere in the great far west the civil government is brought face to face with the momentous mo-mentous problem of ecclesiastical authority au-thority and the rights of conscience However patently immoral or eien tially irreligious this institution at plural marriages may be in our con coption of it there can bp no doubt of the sinoeiity of the great mass of the misguided people who adhere to it Apart from this institution it i mutt be conceded that Mormonism I has a right not only to toleration but to protection With the subject at primary and paramount allegiance to spiritual authority no matter how imperious its claims may be neither I the state nor the Union has any warrant war-rant in either written or unwritten lAw to interfere Government local or national can prpperly deal only with practical results Actual infrao ions of the regulations it establishes for the peace and order of eociety and for the security of the individual maya > may-a punished but the civil power can rightfully wage no crusade upon mere principles however mischievous in their tendencies and however menacing by reason of being thoroughly thor-oughly systematized and organized It must wait for Eorre overt act There can be no pereecu ion for opinions Even the worst intentions are not punishable able unless accompanied by some attempt tempt to execute them Our law of conspiracy is carefully guarded against abuse in the hands of the magistracy and something must be done in pursuance of an unlawful combination before its participants become indictable Section 3 of the fourth article of the federal Oonstitu ion empowers Congress to make all needful rules and regulations respeot ing the territory or other property belonging longing to the United States and action 4 of the same article pie scribe that the United States shall guarantee to every state a republican form of government Tho first of the ten amendments which became operative almost concurrently with the adoption of the Constitution de dares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise exer-cise thereof A thoughtful consid eration of the scope and import of these features of the organic law of the Union can hardly fail to emphasize em-phasize the difficulties and doubtt which environ the whole Mormon question The territorial rules and regulations must not be such as to contravene religious freedom Nor can conditions involving such interference inter-ference be justly affixed to the admission ad-mission of new states framed from the territories provided the plan of cov rnmeiit proposed be republican inform in-form It is a manifest pttitio prineipii to aver that any specified system of belief be-lief and practice touching religions matters no matter how monstrous or absurd is in fact irreligious and therefore not entitled to free exercise exer-cise as a religion The adoption by the civil authority of such a censorship censor-ship of creeds would be a direct step toward a religious establishment It would be to institute a religious test at once Criteria of this sort maybe may-be > formulated by a church but not by the United States The attitude of American polity is one of entire impartiality and indeed neutrality toward all professedly religious sects It does not undertake to define what religion is nor to mark the boundaries bound-aries beyond which lies irreligion The rights of conscience and the liberty of opinion belong alike to the Catholic and those representatives of the poles of religious thought the Agnostic Christian Jew and deist are equal in the presence of our public pub-lic law Between Episcopalian Presbyterian Baptist Methodist Unitarian and Quaker the nation makes no difference though the state may thus discriminate if a sufficient suffi-cient majority of its voters EO > > ordain formation dissent and negation as to the dogmas of theology stand upon the fame plane An entire divesture of faith a complete denial of the sacerdotal oan be put under federal outlawry no more than orthodoxy of the most pronounced and conservative conserva-tive description As woman by some strange and perverse fatality is in one way or another at the bottom of all the trouble in the world so in this Moron Mor-on imbroglio the kernel of the controversy is the question of wives This the state has an undoubted right to regulate but it is a moot point whether such power can be constitutionally exercised by the general gen-eral government Wives are a good ling and very handy to have about the house but there may be too much of a good thing In none of the thirty eight states of the Union is any male person allowed more than poe wife at a time All without exception have statutes against bigamy Were it not for the notable fact that a great many men do not marry at all and have no desire even cr so much as one wife it might be suspected that envy had something to do with the current uncharitable feeling toward the manyspoused i Latterday Saints As a considera ion of natural ethics abstractly viewed and without regard to eccle aatical ordinances or civic statutes a good deal may be said in favor either of single or yinral matrimony The circumstance Chat in civilized countries the number of men is about equal to that of women might betaken taken as an argument from nature iD behalf of the onewife plan were it not for the puzzling fact that where the patriarchal system has been in vogue the female sex preponderate the supply in each case thus answering answer-ing the demand This interesting problem of sociology may be left to the evolutionists to solve The poly amist can claim that the Levitical law which the leading Christian denominations de-nominations have adopted from Jnda ism does not prohibit a plurality olives ol-ives It may be furthermore alleged against monogamy that it it i almost universally supplemented by the social vilA a apology for the temporizing course of the Government toward crmoDum for the last quarter of a century may be found in the intrinsic difficulty of the question Polygamy ii as knotty as it is naughty A bill of indictment cannot be framed to include an entire community Pros culionsof individual polygamists through defect of t nezesiary legal evi aence or from the refusal of juries to convict For this it to nci easy to devise a remedy The time is coming when something decisive will have toe to-e done out what that something ii no statesmanship has yet been able to discover Meanwhile Monaonism marches on and fixes its hold more strongly with the lapse of every hour upon vast tracts of our domain Philadelphia Record Jan 14 |