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Show !Is It Not Time to Hedge? Some of the chiefs of the Mormon church are ! shrewd men. They ought to see what is in the ! air. They must remember how fiercely they i fought, how they compelled their poor people to 1 go to prison by the hundreds leather than to come within the laws; they must remember how the ' News lied to the people with the same unction that it now does, telling them that the Lord would care for his own, and how at last everything failed ; and disfranchisement stared them in the face, ! and compelled their then chief to put out what ' for courtesy was called a revelation. They knew all the time that It was no- revelation, that it was merely a tricky evasion to let themselves down easily to their own people and to stave off -jj the inevitable from them. They have profited j In one way since. By breaking their pledges to . the President, Congress and the country, they . . have retained their power over their people, but J has it been worth the cost? And what shape are J 1 they in now? They dare not run Senator Smoot 1 1 for the senate again. They know of course that i I they could elect him, but. they know that were fl they to there would be another protest, this time 1 quite as incisive as was the first one and that be- v ' fore the case reached a second decision, the last one of them would be disfranchised, for the next it , time the full treason of their methods would be .?", brought out and the American people would at ! last be aroused in earnest to have all power taken L t from them. This is what is coming, and it is I I moving more swiftly than they think. Moreover f thousands of their people are sick and tired of ! 1 this everlasting contention, this duplicity, this lying ly-ing on the part of the church organ; this con- i stant assertion that the people are absolutely v free. They are so tired that many of them are -i . even now ready to break away. Our belief is that quite 800 of them voted the American ticket in this city last November. In all their contentions conten-tions against the law and .the rights . which the ; lovornrtt'ent gave the- Jjabple, What ' jiiaver they; ; gained? So far they have held .thoirpoWf overt,;, '-this people, but would -not their-powr-fcjnoreT binding were they to give the people all the rights of American citizens? Had they not better bet-ter have another revelation? Would it not be . better to have it now before the awful power of the United States is awakened against them? They claim that the constitution of the United States was inspired, but yet for sixty years in this valley they have been setting it at naught. What would Great Britain or France or Germany do under similar circumstances? And is it fair to do 1) what they would not dare to do in any other .and on earth? Better get in under the countrys' laws? |