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Show Merely a Simple Duty. Save for a brief interval of two or three years Utah has been a storm center for n full half contury. Tho agitation bean by the insisting on tho part of Amoncan citizens here that the laws of the United States and of civilization should be respected and obeyed. That is nil that has ever been asked. To have made perfect peace here and to have started unexampled progress at any time, only required that the law breakers here should agree to that dema'nd. Is it really a criminal offense to advocate obedience to righteous laws, the laws that in every other state of thla Republic are accepted and obeyed without question? ques-tion? Nothing else has been asked. After the trouble had lasted forty years the chief priests, the men who control the system called a halt and said again should their people be interfered with in their politics, that thoy should espouse any political politi-cal principles that they might please to and vote any ticket they might please to. Within three years with a perfidy unparalleled they were back with their control, defying the very laws that thoy had permitted their people to pass; violating the constitution which thoy had ratified, and presenting present-ing the samo alien front that thoy always had. Last week the senate of the United States, whooped on by tho President of the United States, declared that a man who was eleoted senator through playing upon the superstitious fears of this people, and who has endorsed every violation of law and decency that has over been perpetrated perpe-trated in Utah, was nevertheless entitled to a seat in 'the senate and some senators volunteered to give him a certificate of character for purity and patriotism. The obverse of their argument of course is that the- men and the women who have dared to protest against the treason and rottenness of this sixty years of Mormon rule in Utah are agitators that through some personal ambition would keep Utah in turmoil, and some of the hired liars in this system, poor wreches who have been hired to help keep wolded tho slave chains upon Utah, with foul pens are announcing an-nouncing that if Utah has wrongs she will right them and that those who do not like her ways should get out. They will hardly go. There aro some men who may not be particularly brave but who lmve so far managed to call up. enough courage to be able to do their duty, and such men are not looking to hired and characterless blackguards for advice, and are not apt to follow the advice of such oroatures. There aro somo duties to be performed here. Something is duo the Mormon people and their children; something is due lah and the fact that to carry some petty political points, men high in authority are willing to make I dishonorable bargains with an organization the chiefs of which are reeking with treason and rottenness, rot-tenness, does not in the least change that duty or intimidate Americans from performing it. |
