Show POLYGAMY AS A DISABILITY f i The New York Times takes no stock in the boyish way Congress hash of dealing with the Mormon question The Times has been specially spe-cially of the way in which < Mr Cannon has been treated from the time the certificate was wrongfully given to the man who was not elected during all the stages of congressional dodging and dallying dally-ing until the present No person who has regard for the right as it is understood in the republic can approve ap-prove the course that has been pursued pur-sued The passage by the House of the bill fixing the qualifications of I delegates in Congress called forth an editorial in the Times v hich we reproduce below It must be admitted that the anti polygamy bill passed by the House of Representatives a few days eince is a desperate remedy for the Mormon evil The most important provision of this scheme of law is that no person guilty of bigamy or polygamy shall be eligible to the offic of delegate in the House of Representatives from any territory Tbe Constitution provides that each house of Congress shall be the judge of the qualifications of its own member This being the Cbse it would be competent for the House to declare by simple resolution resolu-tion that no person guilty of any specified speci-fied offense shall be eligible to a seat as delegate or as representative The difficulty diffi-culty with a simple resolution in this particular case however would be that it might be rescinded at any time provided pro-vided votes enough for that purpoae could be mustered in the House Tne bill as passed becomes the law of the land when it has received the sanction of the Senate and the signature of the President To repeal fbi law would require more time and more numerical strength in both branches of Congress the i the rescinding of a simple rule of the House A resolution resolu-tion can ba readily reacinded A statute of the United States is i a much more formidable for-midable affair Allowing that there will be no difficulty in convicting a polygamous person of the ofiecse described in the bill we are confronted con-fronted at once with the proposition that Congress has selected from the calendar one crime which by statute shall be held to disable the offender It is to be presumed that the clause in tho Constitution that gives to each House the right to determine the qualifications of its members includes the right to determine those qualifications o amoral a-moral grounds Thus we can imagine that a notorious counterfeiter might be refused a seat in Congress or if once seated might be expelled by a two thirds vote > as provided in section 5 of thearticle relating to the qualifications of member Congress may enact that a certain das of offenses shall be held to be crimes disqualifying the offender from taking a seat in the House or Senate But the catalogue of criminal offenses is very large In some states of the Union those are crimes which may not render the offender amenable to law in another state The use of profane and blasphemous blasphe-mous language the sale of intoxicating liquors and the dealing in lottery tickets are among these offenses If Congress may single out any one of these offenses as tbe subject ot a special enactment politically poli-tically disabling the offender it may gnus disable the bigamous or polygamous person It would be as competent for Congress to declare by statute that a blasphemous person shall not be eligible to a seat in either house as to enact that a person having two or more wives shall not be eligible It does not meet the case to assert that bigamy is a practice that is recognized as a crime in every state in the Union If the criminal is to be excluded ex-cluded from a seat in Congress he should be excluded because each of the two bouses acting uader its constitutional privilege excludes all criminals not because be-cause ha has committed one offense in the calendar which has been selected on account cf its peculiar enormity But the bill just passed by thn House does not apply to Representatives in Congress Con-gress it is leveled at delegates from territories ter-ritories Of course we all know that this means that no polygamous delegate from Utah shall be eligible to a seat in the House Is there danger that bigamous persons shall apply for admission as members from state that this inhibition and disqualification is limited to territorial delegates Vhy should a bigamist from a state be admitted ad-mitted and a bigamist from P territory be excluded It is not an intelligent and manly grasp of the subject which singles out polygamy as the only statutory of l fanse which shall work disqualification and then limits the disqualification topes to-pes ns claiming to represent territories n would seem as if there ought to be manliness and courage enough in the House of Representatives to refuse a polygamist or a bigamist or a counterfeiter counter-feiter or a murderer a seat provided the offender shall have been convicted of the offense charged In the case before us it is proposed to bind this House and each successive House with the concurrence of the Senateto the interdiction of a special offense of-fense It is i assumed that the House will not be able to meet question of polygamy polyg-amy as it comes up Congress after Congress Con-gress in the person of individual aoDli cants for seats To fortify the weak and give an excuse to the tim d in the House it is thought desirable to set up a prohibition prohi-bition which the bigamous Territorial Delegate may be directed to behold when ha ventures to the door of the Capitol The timeservers may say We are very sorry but there is the law and yon cannot can-not come in More truthful however those who desire to crush out Mormonism Mormon-ism will poin to the law as not easy ot repeal and will felicitate themselves on having devised an effectual barrier against which the covert friends of Mormonism in Congress may vainly rage Many difficulties surround the Mormon problem prob-lem This latest device does not indicate a speedy and honorable deliverance from these vexatious entanglements |