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Show TEXT QF THE WOODRUFF MANIFESTO WHICH FIGURES SO PROMINENTLY IN THE INVESTIGATION OF REED SMOOT On September 26, 1890. President TVilford Woedrnff, the official head of the Mormon Church, issued a manifesto in the words following: ....... "To Whom it may concern: "Fress dispatches having been sent out for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that t he Utah Commission, in their recent report re-port to the Secretary of the Interior, alleges that plural marriages are still being solemnized, and that forty or more uch m arriages have been contracted in Utah since last June, or during the past year; also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuation of the practice of polygamy, I, therefore, as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. We are not teaching-polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice, and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have, during that period, been solemnized in our temples or in any other place in the Territory. "One case has been reported In which the parties alleged that the marriage took place in the Endowment En-dowment House in Salt Lake City, in the spring of 1889, but I have not been able to learn who performed the ceremony; whatever was done in this matter was. without my knowledge. In consequence of this alleged occurrence, the Endowment House was, by my instructions, taken down without delay. Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the Court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention in-tention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise. . ''There is nothing in my teachings to the Church, or in those of my associates, during the time specified speci-fied which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy, and when any elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such' teachings, he has been promptly reproved. And now I publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage for-; for-; bidden by the law of the land. WILFORD WOODRUFF, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. |