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Show DUTY. At a banquet given something like thirty ji years ago to General Grant, the toast given Mark Twain to respond to was, "The Babies." In the course of his speech Twain said: "Fifty years hence we shall all be dead, I trust, and then the flag, if it still survives let us ) hope it may will be floating over a republic of 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our increase; our present schooner of state will have grown into a political leviathan a Great Eastern and the cradled babies of today will be !on deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract on their hands." The speech was filled with humor, but there was here and there a suggestive flash like the i closing words of the above. More than half the time is passed, but the facts, the important facts, in the above are more than half verified. The man who was the honored guest on that occasion has for more than twenty years been asleep in his new home on the heights above the Hudson, and ' of the others present, more than half have passed on. The speaker who kept that table in a roar is bending under his years, and has reached the age when the sudden notice of his death will not, when it comes, bring surprise. And the "schooner of state" has indeed become a leviathan, and the flag not only survives, but has taken on new splendors splen-dors and new majesty since then. And the fact that the men of that day were to "leave a big contract" on the hands of the babies of that day is certainly clear enough now. And that is a reminder re-minder that one generation has no right to leave l one unnecessary burden on the generation that 1 is to succeed it. Unsettled questions should be settled, everything that causes friction should" if possible be smoothed down; everything in which there is an apprehension of evil should be cured if possible. There is one unsettled question in Utah, it should be settled; there is friction here, it should be smoothed down; there is much appre- 1 - hension here of sorrows to come; that should be taken away. An apostle of the Mormon church, a few days ago in the Tabernacle, told of the persectution of the Saints since the system was first founded. His was a sweeping indictment of the citizens of four great states. Still, we suspect he could not, searching the world over, find a greater proportion propor-tion of generous souls among all the inhabitants of the earth, than can be found in those four states. The fair inference is that there is something some-thing in the system which he champions which is incompatible with the right. But we need not go back sixty years to trace causes. Ten years is enough. Ten or eleven years ago the chiefs of that system entered into some solemn covenants with the government and people of the United States, and then a peace which the Mormon people peo-ple had never known came to them. That peace has given place to heart-burnings and apprehensions apprehen-sions of sorrows yet in store for the Mormon people. Why? Simply because those chiefs have broken those covenants and their followers have not the strength to insist that their wrongs shall be righted. Until they do, it is right to proclaim their perfidy and to insist that they shall make good, for the longer justice is postponed, the more exacting will grow its demand, and we of this generation have no right to load the generation genera-tion that is to succeed us with burdens which we in our time should remove. It is up to those chiefs to take their ecclesiastical hands out of politics, even as they promised should be done; it is up to them to make any future polygamous marriages in their system impossible; it is right j fl for us to keep sounding a protest against their acts until they do what is right or until an out- i fl raged nation shall take from them the power to ; govern themselves or to have any part in the fl government of this republic, for the years are sweeping swiftly on and this generation has no il right to lay any unnecessary burden upon the generation that is to succeed it. Ours is a government of free men; its foun- -M dations were laid under guidance quite 'as di- IH vine as this Mormon system, and the child of this H republic who is not jealous for its honor, who is 13 not ready to combat any foe that assails it, no 11 matter in what guise that enemy may be presen-ted, presen-ted, is not worthy to wear the badge of citizen- 11 ship, is not worthy to lay his hand on its free ' ballot, is not worthy to take any part, even the IJ humblest, in its government, for it is this genera-tion's genera-tion's duty to take every possible blurden from the generation that is to succeed it. |