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Show E WHO ARE ENEMIES? Whenever a Mormon speaker, from Joseph F. " Smith down, refers to any one who dares to " criticise any act of any Mormon, the invariable JT charge is that such an one is "our enemy." It j$ does not matter whether it is an editor, or a r preacher who has lived a blameless life from f childhood, or a band of devout ladies, against the r pure shield of their sincerity and truth there is f not the film of the lightest breath, the same charge is hurled. One would think they would N weary of this after a while, lest their own people would see and comprehend its falseness and bru-i bru-i tality, because this charge, first and last, includes pretty nearly the entire American people. At , the same time, they admit that they could not have done what they have done in this land in any other land on earth. An old man spoke to the Saints in Logan last week and he reiterated the charge, and added to it that the purpose of ; ' these enemies was to disfranchise all Mormons ! and then to rob them of their property. Now I that man cannot remember, looking back through . all the years of his life, of any Gentile who has ever tried to injure or unlawfully obtain the prop- $ erty of any Mormon. The Deseret News made $' that stale, flat and unprofitable charge on an aver- J age of once a week for a dozen years prior to ft 1890. It knew all the time that it was not true, but the News used it to keep alive the hatred K among the Mormon people of this government of j the United States and its people. )! As to the other charge, we have pointed out I to the chiefs of the church, a thousand times, that unless they would cause their system to conform ' to the righteous requirements of the Constitu- ( tion and laws of the United States, calamity would surely be inflicted upon them, because no 1 government, much less a government that rested upon the will of its free citizens, could afford to t ignoreN the teachings of a band of men whose pur- pose is to- overthrow free government and rear Iin its tJtead a kingdom to be ruled by a company ; of self-eiected priests. To obviate all this danger, dan-ger, apprehension and fear, those chiefs "have "nothing to do but to keep the covenants which ' they of their own accord voluntarily entered into fifteen years ago. If they will not do that, it is a plain case that their lust of the flesh and lust of power is infinitely greater than their love for the people wl they pioffiss to be the shepherds of. We would think that they would fear that the people wouW drop upon that fact, and au- . thoritatively ask why this persecution should always al-ways follow them, why they cannot be in accord with the generous and true men and women of the United States. Is it so much to ask these priests to conform to the laws of civilization and to keep out of politics? Is it well to hold as enemies ene-mies all who make this demand, and to keep perpetually per-petually advertising them as such to a people who have been brought to believe that they are truthful truth-ful men? All the present trouble, in the main, started when Reed Smoot announced himself a candidate for the highest office in the gift of the people, when the people knew his first allegiance was not to the government he was seeking to be a senator of? Was it not a natural result? And is it wrong to demand that the chiefs of a creed shall give up that ambition? |