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Show The real significance of it. A paper, extraordinary in many respects, and signed by Joseph Smith, appears in the current North American Review. This Joseph Smith is president of the re-organized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Josephite church), with headquarters in Iowa. The article contains many grave misstatements of fact, for which the writer may be innocent through Ignorance, Ignor-ance, but they are misstatements nevertheless. For instance, he declares, in substance, that there was no polygamy practiced in the church during the life of Joseph Smith. Utah has still scores i of people who admit that they were polygamists then; that though one man was excommunicated for preaching polygamy, and though prominent women of Nauvoo signed a paper denying that there was any such belief or practice, those signers sign-ers were at that very moment wives of polygamists. poly-gamists. He declares that the old organic law of the church regarding marriage remained In full force up to the time of the death of Joseph Smith. That can only be treated as an hallucination, hallucina-tion, for the direct evidence against Its truth Is overwhelming. He affects to believe that the reason the Saints were driven from Missouri was because they were mostly eastern people and opposed to slavery. That statement is but the creature of a lively imagination, there is no evidence behind it ' to support the statement, but we think he is right i t i S in asserting that polygamy was not charged as a V Mormon offense in Missouri. But it was different in Illinois. There it was directly charged and was one of the counts in the indictment against the Saints. And it was true. He says it was not until 1852, eight years after the death of Joseph Smith, that polygamy was ploclaimed by Brigham Young. That is true so far as the open proclamation was concerned, but at that time Brigham Young and his brothers, the Snows, and scores of others, had already been polygamists for probably twelve years. The writer in the Review then traces the legislation legis-lation passed by Congress aimed at the suppression suppres-sion of polygamy and the efforts made to obtain 4 ( statehood for Utah and affects to believe that the reason Utah was held as a territory so long was f a fear that the votes of two senators from Utah ' might i the Senate be decisive in favor of one y party and against the other, which shows that the author of the article has been too careless to keep track of events. He effects to wonder why effective effec-tive laws against polygamy were held back year after year. It would require a book to make that clear though there is no misunderstanding touching touch-ing the matter in Utah. He reviews the prosecution prosecu-tion under the Edmunds-Tucker act, the convictions convic-tions that followed and the penalties enforced and then asserts that "after a time judges and officers became disgusted with the apparent futility fu-tility of endeavoring to establish the supremacy of law by such means." That is a view of the case never advanced before and must be due entirely en-tirely to the lively imagination of the writer in the Review. The Edmunds-Tucker law was pushed for , three or four years, then the church property was seized, then a bill was introduced into Congress to disfranchise all Mormons, and that brought the manifesto put out by President Woodruff. The i Review writer injects the following sentence into his article: "How does it happen that at each attempted successive effort at legislation something some-thing has intervened to prevent that legislation or to change its application or operation, until finally either by an oversight on the part of Senator Sen-ator Edmunds who framed the ennabling act or the cunning ot those who formed the convention that framed the Constitution under which Utah was admitted, polygamy is made to mean simply mi . the act of marrying more than one woman?" There was no mystery, no cunning about it all. The Manifesto had been isued. To have the escheated es-cheated property oj. the church restored the heads of the church, under oath, had declared that the Manifesto meant not only the taking of no more plural wives, but the extinction of the old polygamous poly-gamous relations, and a pledge for the future strict adherence to the law was signed by the First Presidency and all the apostles. It was on those pledges and the further pledge that there should be no more interference by the church in politics, that the church property was restored and statehood state-hood was granted. The Gentiles of Utah withdrew with-drew their opposition, believing that the church would keep the pledges. There was no spirit of persecution among Utah Gentiles, or in Congress. It was realized how many innocent women and children were involved; it was known that throughout Utah there were plenty of polygamists who had each only a little farm and one house, and there was an understanding that they should not be disturbed. That the pledges have all been shamefully broken does not count against those who believed that there must be some honor in an organlza- , tion that claimed to be a church whose chiefs were in direct daily communication with Almighty 1 God. It only shows that a great political and commercial machine can adopt a holy title if it pleases and then well, "When the Devil was sick, The Devil a saint would be, When the Devil got well, Devil a saint was he." The final question in the Review is whether polygamy has any political significance in the United States. The answer is no. There is some polygamy in Utah. The young Mormons were born saturated saturat-ed with the spirit of it. Their veins were filled witn it at their birth, but there is neither special significance to it, nor any menace because of it, beyond the teaching that through the gratification gratifica-tion of animal passions the greatest exaltation may be hoped for in Paradise, and the other fact that when once involved in its meshes, those thus involved are hopeless slaves of this thing called a church. It is this church itself that is the menace, this church with its claim that it is God's government on earth and has a right through its high priesthood priest-hood to absolutely control the acts, the minds and the votes of its subjects and to work as it has steadily worked for seventy-three years to overthrow over-throw a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and on its ruins to erect a despotism as binding, as narrowing and as steeped in tyranny as was ever any ancient despotism of Asia which has reduced to and held in semi-barbarism the nations there for four thousand years. |
