Show THE DEBATE Contsimation of the raDII u Campbeia Contest in tirr Douse Jacobs Argument Continued from Thursdays Daily Then followed the agitation of the question in the Thirtysixth Congress and Mr Nelson from the judiciary committee com-mittee < f the House in the bill which afterward mbrtantially became the law of 1862 calls the attention of Congress to the ensclnent by the state of Deseret of a law entitled an ordinance incorporating incorporat-ing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint and which was afterward reenacted by the territorial government and which not only authorize the Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saint to hold and occupy real and personal per-sonal estate but by the section of the act it is declared that the real and personal property of the aid church shall be exempt ex-empt from taxation thus establishing A hierarchy obnoxious to the epirit of our institutions anti conferring privileges and prerogatives unknown to any other ec cleili ti al deiomination Such monstrous mon-strous power and arrogant assumption are bt war withl the genius of our government gov-ernment He further says that the territorial terri-torial statute being constructively an act of Congress is in direct violation of the amendment to the constitution article arti-cle 1 providing that Congress shall make no law respecing an establishment establish-ment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof t Mr Cook in the Thirtyninth Congress Con-gress from the committee on the judi ciarv as to the memorial of Utah to reveal re-veal iho act ot 1862 ss the humiliating fact is however apparent that the law is at present practically Ii dead letter in the Territory of Utah and demands that it shall be executed Tnen followed the act of 1862 which provides first for the punishment of polygamy po-lygamy without providing any efficient machinery for the execution of the law Section 2 annuls all acts which shield or countenance polygamy but provides that this act shall be so limited and construed con-strued as not to interfere with the right of property legally acquired under the ordinance or-dinance incorporating the Church of Jesuo Christ of LitterDay Saints but only to such acts as protect polygamy This left the church the owner in fee smple of 400000 acres of the public land and six hundred square milee of territory and the power of the church undisturbed and unbroken and interwoven inter-woven into every fibre and artery of the bodypolitic The law was everywhere in Utah received with derision and has ever since been treated with contempt Later Mr Wade from the committee on territories in his report upon a bill authorizing the printing and distribution distribu-tion of the governors ineSHge which the Utah Legislature refused to print says That the testimony taken by them disclosed the fact that the territory was controlled by a sort of Jewish theocracy graduated to the condition that territory terri-tory having a supreme head who governs gov-erns and guides every affair of importance import-ance in the church and practically in the territory and is the only real power acknowledged there r We have here the first exhibition within the limits of the United States of ra church ruling the state And there all agitation and deliberation delibera-tion looking to the breaking up of this inveterate evil JJ all legislative effort in the direction of uprooting tbis theocracy ended until the Fortyseventh Congress has at last asserted its unlimited power and advanced with vigorous measures to the discharge of its high constitutional con-stitutional duty The fact that nation of people can be gathered on this continent conti-nent EO besotted and ignorant who not only believe such rubbish as the Last Revelation but who would doubtless fight and die for it in the canyons of the Rocky Mountains with the same devotion as did the Huguenots and Waldenses in the valleys of Italy and France demonstrates that extraordinary measures meas-ures are demanded Again Utah is unrepublican Second Because no political community commu-nity can be free that maintains a civil or ecclesiastical law which abrogates the American institution of marriage and substitutes tile system of plural wives In support Mr Speaker of this assertion asser-tion we have the plain lesson the undivided un-divided testimony of all history For example when the world was young Zimur led the savage nomads of the north to the conquest of the luxurious nation of South Asia The sway of the patriarchal chiefs over the tribes having been unlimited the rule of the conqueror over the subjugated races became despotic des-potic Revolutions in Europe have always al-ways resulted in more or less organic change in the constitution of government and society But in Asia while great empires rise and fall the same character has been constantly transmitted from the former to succeeding dynasty And lest the views already stated may be thought to take their color from the passion and prejudice of this heated and widespread controversy I involve the deliberate testimony the cool and unbiased judgment of the great German philosopher Heerena the ablest of all writers on the constitution of the society and government of the U Asiatic nations and the causes of their decay and de gradation when more than a quarter of a century ago he said that all his other reasons and observations were not sufficient suffi-cient to account for the most gloomy phenomenon in the history of tbe human race the fact that the fairest and richest portion of the globe where the mind of man might have been expected to attain its greatest maturity has in all ages been condemned to 3 perpetual slavery How he asks did their strength come tJ be so impaired that in the periods of their greatest prosperity they wore unable to shake off a yoke which to European nations na-tions appears intolerable To answer that question he says we must go back a step and seek the cause of the phenomenon in the defective constitution consti-tution and condition not of their civil institutions but their domestic relations Polygamy has at all times prevailed there and polygamy according to all the principles of nature has s tendency to promote unlimited despotism No one who is aware how closely they are connected con-nected can deny the influence which the better or worse condition of the domestic relations has on those of society at large The popular saying that a republic to be permanent must be founded on virtue appears to be only a consequence of the more general piinciple that civil freedom is closely connected with morality moral-ity and that the one inevitably perishes with the other Now there is no one custom more adverse to virtue in general especially the domestic virtues the chief sources of all true patriotismthan that of polygamy By this we may ex plain the phenomenon that no nation practicing polygamy has ever attained to a true republican constitution nor even to that of a free monarchy Nay it may be confidently asserted that it would be unable to maintain a government govern-ment of this kind even if presented with it S Polygamy at once produces domestic tyranny by making woman a slave and man a tyrant and Roc ity at large thus I becomes n combination nrt of fathers of families but of household tyrant who by the practice of tyranny nave been fitted to endure it He who is tyrannical in authority will be abject submission A plurality of wives also as it diminishes dimi-nishes conjugal terdernegp gaps the foundations of parental attachment and thereby impairs the interest which every member of the etate should feel in iu preservation and prosperity The ideas of country and family which pmong the Asiatics appear always to hve been separated if the first of them be not altogether wanting have been ever closely associated in the minds of the nobler nations Attachment to the one has always produced pro-duced devotion to the other the beet father of a family has always proved the best citizen and from this source has flowed not ocly a respect for the authority author-ity of law and the magistrates but that heroic courage and contempt of death which fire tbe rude inbabitantof ancient G3rmany when flgbting for his wife his children and his country to rush upon the pikes of the Roman legions And so Mr Speaker all along down the ages the human race has been marshaled mar-shaled in these two grand divisions Asia withpolygamy on the one hand after all its struggles and convulsions today the same rigid unchunge ble hopeless empire em-pire of force as in the dawn of the world Europe and America with monogamy on the + otber through the ennobling influence of the Christian home and the irresistible devotion to country it engenders en-genders mounting through centuries of persecution and slaughter and the loss of all things to the possession of personal liberty and constitutional government God in the march of his empire has thundered his warning and planted his cross in the sky And if you will but listen reverently to these voices of the age you will retrace every backward step take up your unused powers and proclaim te all the neonle that in the judgment of this House il is needful yea imperative to the adoption and practice by this embryo state of republican repub-lican principles that so long as this church rules ibis state and polygamy inspires in-spires its thoughts and dictates Ua action so long as its accredited ambassador comes to us in the person of at avowed polygamist a confessed violater of the laws of Congress so long will this House refuse the territory admission to the federal Union and its agent admission to this floor I yield twenty minutes of my time to the gentleman from Tennessee Mr Pettibone a member of the committee on elections To be continued T |