OCR Text |
Show THE ISSUE. IN UTAH. The great, the pnramount issue in Utah, now and until it is settled right, is the opposition to church supremacy in civil affairs, including tho defianco of the law under church sanction, its commercial monopolies, and social ex-clusivoness ex-clusivoness and ostracism. Until this great question is settled, all other questions ma really be considered sub' ordinate in Utah public life and politics. poli-tics. In fact, all other questions arc comparatively unimportant. Tho main thing is to inaugurate here a civil government gov-ernment iu which every individual will be froo to express his own opinions and take his own nction in politics, business, and in social and civil affairs, and to establish the responsibility of nil to the law. It will be time enough after the supremacy of civil institutions over a theocratic despotism is established estab-lished in Utah, to take up the questions ques-tions of prohibition, railroad commissions, commis-sions, and the various other projects, helpful or the reverso, that arc urged from time to timo. The American party is tho party that stands for the redemption of Utah from ecclesiastical thralldom. It is idle for any other issue to be pressed to the front. It is usolcps to be insistent upon details, when the main question is still unsolved. Of what value is it to urge prohibition, prohibi-tion, local option, or anything else when we all know that there is hero an overlordship of ccclcsiasticism that will take its own course, will obey or disobey the law as it chooses, consulting consult-ing nothing but its own ecclesiastical and combination interests? If we had prohibition today, does nrn-one imagine for one moment that prohibition would stop the salo of liquor by the Z. C. H. I., reputed to do the greatest liquor business of any concern in tho State? It will be recollected that Joseph F. Smith in a sermon in the tabernacle expressly sustained the action of the Z. C. M. 1. drug store in selling liquor, and rebuked those who found fault with it. His ground, plainly stated, was thnt people wanted to buy liquor, and if the Z. C. M. L drug store did not. sell it, customers would go elsewhere else-where to buj', and the church concern would lose trade. But coming to the .essence of the whole matter, what advantage would it bo to the peoplo if the church should decree that wo should havo prohibition, prohibi-tion, railroad commissions, or any' other of the many things that may be demanded? de-manded? The great point in if all is that it is useless to pass such laws unless un-less the people themselves want thoni. To have them imposed upon tho public by a pricstl' junta would be neither true sentiment nor the free action of the people. Eut under tho present conditions, if wo get these things at all, or if we get anything of importance impor-tance or have anything stopped that wo either want or do not want, we have to look to the church authority to take the action in cither case. It must be confessed by all that this is an abnormal situation to exist in the midst of a republic, and .yet that this is the situatiou in Utah is absolutely abso-lutely clear. We say, therefore, that until wc can get to the proper basis of popular government gov-ernment here in Utah, setting aside the theocratic usurpation which jiscs the forms of a republic to enforce its arbitrary ar-bitrary and despotic decrees, the effort in any direction other than to abate this theocratic despotism is vain. If wo havo to apply to that despotism to get what we want, wo recognize it, and having recognized it we are in a poor condition to fight its dominance right where wc havo invoked it. But it must bo fought, and the fight must necessarily continue until the . whole State is redeemed re-deemed and regenerated until it has a new birth of freedom which will bring it to the light of real popular government. govern-ment. The great fight is on. It is the main fight. It obscures every other issue, no matter how vital or important any ono ma' suppose that other issue to bo. No progress can be made in that other issue or in any subsidiary issue except by applying to the church to cither allow or push the proposition along. This, however, yields the main point, and continues the same old despotism; for a despotism is just as. much a despotism des-potism if it exercises its power for good as if it exercises its power for evil, and tho uniform history of mankind man-kind has been that a despotism is never to be depended upon to do more- goo than evil. Uniformly its course is arbitrary, ar-bitrary, dictatorial, necessarily so. It proceeds from a selfish, one-idea standpoint, stand-point, and thereforo is unfit to meet the requirements and demands of large bodies of peoplo whose real ideas and interests it neither knows nor cares to kuow, since it acts alone for its own sectarian interests and from the personal per-sonal viewpoint of those exercising the dominating power. And so wb repeat, the fight that dwarfs all others in Utah is tho light for liberty and individual' freedom. Uutil that is won, all other fights can fitly and rightly be kept in tho background. |