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Show gel VOL. III. To the Women Nos, 11 tptrpi $f;m Jmc I(h om & 12. of America: Let every happy wife and mother who reads these lines give her sympathy , players and efforts to free her sisters from this degrading bondage. Let all the zvomanhood of the country stand united for them. Thete is a power in combined enlightened sentiment and sympathy , before which every form of injustice and cruelty must finally go dozvn. Harriet Beecher Stowe. THE OUTLOOK. Eds! Standard: You asked me for an article on Jere Black s argument legislaagainst further tion, made before the House Judiciary Committee. I havent seen the argument, and if I had should not expect to accomplish anything by commentfor a great ing on it. Black speaks the principle national party in straining and cover to of local fedthe to protect something injuriousin Pennsyleral whole. It was tried was yet Presivania while Washington dent. It was appealed to by the Hartford Convention in the war pf igi2 to treason to justify their contemplated the whole under plea of fidelity to a to the part. At was again pushed by South front in nullification-timeslavCarolina; and lastly in defense of Washery within our own memory. force. The paington put it down by triotic sentiment of the country, roused by war with England, overPresiawed in New England, dent 'Jacksons firmness sent it to the rear in 1832. The last time, under the appeal, ten States broke off from the Union, and it cost four years of war to beat down their armed opposition. Still it is in them big as ever. It is of no use to argue with it or about it, It is good and necessary in its place. When it rises beyond reason, it will albeat it back ways be easy enough to with the sentiment of nationality; but if it were once killed out, nothing would stand between us and a gieat central government, which could exercise any despotism that the will of the sanction. majority happened to fife, and get event Haitian June self-governme- franchise, not because they are idiots, or insane, or havent a stated amount of property, or havent paid taxes at least a poll tax, are not of age, .or are not native or naturalized citizens, but because they are polygamists. Polyis a under the statutes. felony gamy We have tried to punish it in the ordinary manner, but are unable to. Therefore we deprive it of political power. But that is, unconstitutional. It is punishing a man for a crime of which he is merely charged, not convicted. They have not chosen to chal-lang- e the proof. They have pleaded guilty. The criminality is not only confessed, but paraded and glorified. by general taxation, would be better than the scores of such feeble institutions as sectarianism now supports in infinitely better.-- But the active men of the times have no zeal for the State, only for their sect, whatever it may be. This, as is well known is extending to the common schools, and the day draws on, when, between the struggle of the sects for the control of education, the public school system will everywhere topple in ruins. That is, unless the march in that direction is arrested, and what is going to arrest it? tho-y-Stat- on nt s d, sec-tarianzi- v gnnbmul1 or. 7:2. SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, FEBRUARY AND MARCH, 1883. But these are nice points, and they may as well be left to the Senators and the lawyers and Representatives, judges to settle. For one, I havent the slightest idea that they will be settled against the Mormons. I begin to look on Mormonism as a fact accomplished. Its principle that of a priesthood of divinely inspired men is as old as the human race. The Egyptians had it, the Hindus, the Hebrews, the Christians, the Catholics in an order of priests, the Protestants in an inspired book The Romans of all ages Assyrians. Romans, English never had much ue for it, and they have struggled for thousands of years with it. If is not too much to say that the degradation of any country in any age can be exactly measured by the degree to to which the people have surrendered their thoughts and their consciences In into the keeping of a priesthood, adherents an of ancient the States the priesthood of foreign origin are increasing faster than those of all the adherents of the priesthood of a book, together; which is not of so much consequence as the fact, that, take the two together, differing in degree only, not in quality, they are apparently gaining on the free man who decline to wear the yoke of either. In Utah the adherents of a priesthood of native and recent origin increase in the same ratio. Why not? It seems to be in the air. The Rev. Joseph Cook announces the death of Rationalism, and dances on its grave. There are many signs of a wavering in the lines of battle, of the inclination of the standards, in fact, issue here, at As to tne question toward the side of repression. of all the representative Congress, as constitutional powthe has the people, If Absolutism, in government and re er to legislate for the territories. under its own it errs in the use ol that power, its ma- ligion, no longer fights all the people proper colors. We thought we had won jority can be changedits by acts can be set something for human freedon when we into a minority; or In. D- provided for secular education, for free aside by the Supreme Court. Utah of the discussion, and for universal suffrage. epriving a certain class in of the But these defences have been turned. franchise, it has in one sense school system is being word done only what every political The public a gov- gradually mined and counter-minesociety does when it organizes and the tendency is toward the ernment, prescribes its powers, andthe instead of the secularizing of The genmethod of their operation. is this the ten. eral principle first formally announced education. Not only is going on. Our in the Declaration of Independence, dency, the process denominational, that the authority of government tests universities are mostly to educate Catholics in the consent of the governed, implies founded and run not citizens. Take the affirmation of the natural right to and Presbyterians, of is the the higher schools any State, multivote, since that, after discussion, by this sectarian zeal, and it wav the governed express assent or plied beVound that they are vitiating dissent. This principle is granted, in will such res- the whole system of education. There general, but is subjected to them that they are triction and regulation as to the majori- are so many of In another paupers, as it were, and could not; fill needful. seem may ty ' office they undertake if they sense, if you are asked why this class the One good university in a is disfranchised in Utah, you will be would. for examThey are State like Ohio, or Illinois, bound by truth to answer: the State, supported deemed unfit to enjoy the right of ple, founded by anti-Morm- !(cr own ng es, For the adherents of priesthood have the ballot, and this organ and weapon of free government they are using to destroy it. The press, too, our own press, the secular press, is muzzled; it, like our courts and our Congressmen, must be tolerant. What, have we struggled through blood and fire these thirty or forty centuries to reach toleration, and now shall we go back on it? Besides, the advocates of repression have their own press as well as their own schools and universities. See them, now, stand up in the person of Jere Black, and ask, Are you going to take ballots from these people because they have got a better organized priesthood than any cCyoU? Where is your liberty of con- Hasnt a mail 'got a natural right to be the slave of a priest if he wants to? And with what consistency can you deny him the use of the ballot in defense of his religion or of his politics? There is where we are, and that" is why the Mormon is justified in looking upon his system as an established fact. Attack it as you will, he will science? meet you with your own weapons, all forged in the furnace of Toleration. He appeals to your own principles, those you hold most dear, in defense of his right, he seems to think, to be free, but as it seems to you, to be a voluntary slave. Looking all over the modern world, nothing appears to lighten the future for man. Every great government of Europe, where they have had experience of priesthood for 1,500 .years, is engaged jn a fight with it; and even the iron Bismarck, with united Germany at his back, finds it a drawn game. Eight millions of men under arms to hold down the universal vol- cano of dynamite, mental, moral, religious,' social and material, that breaks out yesterday in Ireland, the in day before in Belgium, in France and Italy, Spain, always in Russia. In the British Commons, the birthplace of, liberty, we see the leader of a nation challenged to deny complicity with political assassination, to which seven centuries of misrule have reduced his countrymen, and he dare not do it. A to-da- y w PRICE 10 CENTS. And in the friends of freedom will be forced to forego toleration. Rosseau pointed out the fact that toleration cannot be exercised , toward a fellow lodger whose first and last principle and effort is to burn ' down the house, over your head. And any formof theocracy necessarily has for its moving impulse the desire ' to destroy Republican government. They are mortal foes. We shall see the State forced to take its stand upon an absolutely rational secular basis; inculcating an ethical instead of a traditional religion; and fighting on every hand, and with every means, its mor-- , tal foes; stripping them of political power; taking the control of education away from them; and preventing them, at all hazards, from disseminat' ing their doctrines. That is what has got to come; and when, through that kind of discipline, theocracy in all its forms has learned toleration, the State can again recur to it. But it must first allow the incendiary to burn down its house over its head, it seems. Our war is agninst all forms of oppression; but we must" adhere to our own principles of warfare, until the exigencies of the battle, force us to be as unscrupulous as our enemies are. That is what Blacks argument means, and it is why such arguments find willing ears. We cant afford to vio- - ,J late our own principles, even in, unless forced to. Well, then, we shall ultimately be forced to. And then, we can congratulate ourselves that we have allowed events to control us instead of controlmg events, as men always do. It is indeed questionable whether man can do more than float on the current stream of tendency, wheresoever it bears him. I, for one, am weary of talking, land long for the day of action. A I)e orved Compliment. self-defen- se self-evide- nt , self-defen- se, , The Omaha Bee of last Monday had the following well merited notice of Utahs Governor and Secre- tary: Arthur L. Thomas, for the past four years Secretary, and a portion of the time Acting Governor of Utah Territory, arrived in this city Saturday night and registered at Millard. Mr. Thomas is just returning home from Washington with the commission in his pocket entitling him to four more years in the same office. He is quite an energetic, painstaking official, and has given good satisfaction in Mormondom,and his friends generally will rejoice in President Arthurs appointment Utah is also fortunate in the possession of a Governor like E.H.Mur-rawho is an able man and a perfect The friends of freedom everywhere gentleman in every respect, with the stand on their doctrine of Toleration, nerve to do his duty under all cirwhile the foes of freedom take ad- cumstances. - vantage of it and laugh in their faces. And this will be the result: A struggle will be forced upon the believers that will turn manin kind back from the principle of toleraThe creed of priesthood, no tion. matter what the kind or the country or the age, has no place for toleration. Tho$e who accept it cannot tolerate. self-governme- nt y, . - - Cohn Bros, can be found in their new store, two doors above their old location, where bargains can now. be secured in all classes of dry goods and fancy goods. Call and see for yourselves, .and also inspect their new stock of Spring goods. |