Show chairge CHAIt GE to gentlemen athe grand jury you have been selected in tho manner provided by law for the purpose of making inquiry into all publio offenses cs committed or triable within the third judicial district of the territory of utah the limits of which extend over the counties of box elder cache weber eich morgan dayis salt lake and summit tho office and duty of the grand jury are varied and extensive upon it depend the peace and of the citizens and alie entire community no other means is offered whereby criminals other than those choso whoso offenses are triable injustices and police courts can be brought before the bar of justice to receive tuch punishment as is meted out by the law for their crimes ess the grand jury is vigilant in the proa ge cution of abo work prescribed to it the whole body politic buffers and crime stalks through the land emboldened bold ened and almost fearless in the nature of your organization you are the prime conservatory conservators conserva tors of the peace throughout the judicial district over which your power extends the security of every man woman and child in it in the enjoyment of life and property depends upon you life may bo taken and property violently wrested from the possession of its legal owners with impunity and alie courts of justice are powerless if the grand jury fail to perform its duty too strong language cannot be used and too many repetitions of ideas which serve to bring to your attention the importance of your position cannot be made it too often happens that individual grand jurors fail to appreciate etho value of the duty devolving upon them if each of you wiil take home to his own heart the fact that he is here assembled to protect his family and eliat of his neighbor in all bilings which pertain to happiness perhaps a keener appreciation of the duties imposed upon you may be felt and it is in this light I beg of you to con eider the subject in all such portions of the country wherein the powers of the grand jury are perfectly exercised crime has no chance to find a harbor or a resting place it is only in such parts where there is laxity that it can live let the criminal understand that no matter bow high his position may be or however surrounded he may be with wealth or whatever may bo his individual influence his offenses against the laws of the country will be inquired into that he will h bo made to suffer the consequences I thereof and it will not be long before peace and quiet will reign in your midst nothing so debases a community as vice to it the whole people become infected by it and it soon runs rampant it is worse than a vile scourge because it not only kills the body but destroys the soul governments are founded by law the due and proper enforcement of it is what perpetuates their existence and renders the life of the citizen peaceful and enjoyable law is the rule of action controlling the citizen in his duty toward liis government and hii fellow men in order to render the people subservient and obedient to the law there must be a determination on the part of those who have in hand its enforcement to compel obedience and a reciprocal disposition on the part of the people to obey vast numbers of men are prone to be evil doers some are actuated thereto by alie wickedness of their own hearts and in these latter days many are im belled by fanaticism the communist alio has been taught or who has taught himself to believe he has a right to what ho conceives to be and calls a surplus of your property and takes it violates the law which gives you the right to it and which prohibits him from molesting the possession if his peculiar ideas were per bitted to be earned out it is not hard to infer what the result would bo on tha community and there would he no difficulty in prognostic cating how eoon tho social fabric would be torn down and violence and discord take its place in this country all our laws pertaining to crime are written they are the result of mature deliberation aro founded upon what are deemed to be the principles of morality and are supposed tone for the general advancement van cement of that fortion of the human family resident within the territory wherein they are to be enforced Itis unnecessary for me to enter into a discussion of tho form of government under which wo live or to point out where the power lies to enact laws suffice it to say that the territorial limit of tho united states ia divided into what are called states and territories that as to those portions held as territories con gross has power to make laws for alie government thereof with this power in congress and the fact that there were territories it became necessary to enact certain laws in the discharge of this duty and owing to the well known fact that thiera existed within that portion of the territory of the united states called the territory of utah a state of affairs n relation to tho marital rights which were repugnant to the spirit of our institutions and which in all the states of the union was regarded as a crime congress has seen fit to enact a law entitled an act to and prevent the practice of polygamy in the territories of the united states and other places etc to thia law wish to draw your particular attention and in its connection to the oath you and each of you have just now taken you and each ol 01 you have solemnly sworn eliat you will diligently inquire into and true indictments make of all public against the people of this territory corn knitted or triable within this district of which you shall leave legal evidence that you will indict no person malice hatred or ill will nor leave any through fear favor or affection or of any roo ward or the promise or hope thereof but in all your indictments you will state the truth the whole truth fand nothing but the to tho best of your skill and understanding you cannot help being impressed with iio solemnity and weight of llido oath ng well as with its ecjpe and it is duty to tell you that it precedence over and above any other you may have taken under any other circumstances and cur that in obeying its mandates and obligations you cannot in with any other oath you have heretofore imposed upon your consciences either in or man your duties under icare plain and unmistakable and in virtue of it you are clothed with power as throng the government itself having ali us taken this oath and the dutie it is your bounded duty to tee that all tho laws prohibiting crime are enforced not only those passed by the territorial Legislature which you are instructed ia only a legislature with power delegated to it by congress but those passed by the congress of the united states if a band of borso thieves or house I breakers existed anywhere within the third district choso whoso members were known to you and who were known to bo horse thieves and house break ers these being public tenses against the people of this territory it would bo your duty to inquire into the of tenses and truo indictments make against such persons it i your duty to do so because these are of tenses against the law of the state and government of which you in your relation of grand jurors and citizens area part the infraction of any other law imposes the same duty upon you you are no respecter of persons justice is represented as being blind folded and you are supposed to be blind as to individuals to speak figuratively you will sit with closed eydi listening with open ears to the evidence brought before you and only determining if it is legal that the fact or body of tho crime is proven you must not indict through malice hatred or ill will nor will you leave any one through fear favor or affection the good order and well being of society as they now exist throughout the civilized world are based upon the opinions laws and customs which have been shown by experience gained in the interval since govern I ments began to be for the best interests of man each governmental power now existing or which ever has existed or which may hereafter exist is the judge of aliat its laws shall be and in all governments especially such as this of ours chero the will of the people is expressed through the acts of congress such laws are all powerful they are sus preme it will not do to permit bodies of individuals such for instance as the communists heretofore referred to or a religious sect having for its teaching the violation of a statute to override the law or pul it at defiance the powers that bo must bo obeyed and if it does not consort i with the peculiar views of a particular religious body to obey the laws of this country it must either cease to exist BO far a its teachings teachie gs violate the laws of the land or take its departure the one it may do at its pleasure the other must be at the pleasure of the government I have thus said what I have bej cause I am now addressing a grand jury taken from the body of a people in whose midst all the world knows I exists the crime of polygamy against which and to suppress which the act of congress referred to has been enacted polygamy is a crime made so in the eyes of nearly all the nations of the earth and certainly so in all the christian nations and absolutely sol and positively so by the congress of the united states and you gentlemen acting under the terrible solemnity of your oaths are called upon to suppress it without you indict parties engaged in the crime this court cannot convict you ought further to understand that this act of congress was not passed simply to grace the statute books that future generations might read it but that it was enacted in good faith that thero is a determination on the part of the government to enforce it the peace of theland the perpetuity of our free institutions the cn obling of posterity and the present generation and the demands of civilization imperatively acau ire that it shall be done the of the united states representing as it does the advance of civilization and whose moral influence is felt the world over and polygamy cannot exist within the same limit and it is more than apparent it will not be tho government that will have to succumb it will not do for a small portion of the population representing not more than perhaps a hundred thousand to dictate what forty millions do the law dictated by the people must stand and you are expected to aid therein amana you there can be no doubt there is knowledge of the presence of the crime and you must take notice offie fact there is no purpose on alie part of the government or its ives to interfere with the enjoyment of religious liberty that right is accorded to all hut in the exercise of that religious liberty there must bo no violation of any of the criminal laws not one of you would for an instant doubt that if there existed within the confines of the united states a religious sect which believed in the doctrine of human sacrifice and carried that belief into practice by taking human life that the act would be murder and that it would bo right to convict its perpetrators and mako them to buffer the penalty of the law if the law were that all persons who religiously believed in the right to kill and who did kill should go unpunished who would be punished the same course of reasoning can be applied to all other crimes and if such were the law what would be alio moral status of the human bacot in olden times it i said men were permitted to have a plurality of wives if BO there then was no law prohibiting it with that question however wo in aliis day anve nothing to do wo know that our laws do not authorize the act but that on the contrary prohibit it and make alio act criminal to our law wo look and not to a law that is said to have existed nobody knows how many years ago to any new pretended prophecy made to subs serve the bestial passions of bad men however much such persons may seek to shield themselves behind their belief in plural marriages it lias nevertheless been decreed by the people of the united states that such plural marriage is a crime if at the time it is entered into the man has another wife living from whom he has not been divorced according to law wo have heard hero in tho court room tho lost few hours men state on their oaths that they bously believed in the doctrine of polygamy and that as it was a divine right they would not bo committing an against god if they took a plurality of wives such sentiments are obnoxious to the moral tense of more than o roil liono of the people of this country and in alio face of their declared will ought not to be and will not bo tolerated it in unnecessary for mo to depict to you what would be the result in throes to come upon the whole body politic of our common country if aliese pernicious dic were permitted to prevail every honest mans sense of decency can portray the consequences in this community wo arc frequent ly told aa a reason I suppose for exciting our sympathy that the people who believe in this polygamous heresy came to hi country when it was a barren have by their industry made it blosom as tho rose that all this is due to the benign influences fluen ces and teachings of badomi nant church one of wooi foundation atones if not the very key of the arch is polygamy but i this true that those people camo out hero eaily in alio citory of the 11 ll country is true but they were eoon followed by those indomitable men choso whoso kind leavo always been present ablong the advance guard in the progress to the west the discovery of gold in california and a thousand other attendant and surrounding circumstances helped to grow alie rose that is now said to blossom so profusely the gentile clement as the hovers in the teachings of mormon ism are called is hero filled with all that spirit of enterprise which has been exhibited by the american people ever since wo have been a nation and to it more than anything apy thing else is duo the prosperous condition of affairs to this spirit of enterprise these grand old mountains are not only yielding up then hidden treasure but have given up their beautiful valleys and canyons to alie locomotive with its trains of cars laden with tho pro ducts of the east and west and bringing us in pleasant communion with people from all parts of the earth do you gentlemen think it was in the interest of polygamy that these vast changes in zion have taken place do you not rather see in them the purposes of the ruler to teach people their error I feel it is also my duty to say to you that there stands upon the stati ute books of this territory a law de fining what is libel and prescribing I want particularly to draw your attention to it A man or womans comans reputation is johh more to him or her than all else and any one who untruthfully assails that reputation is guilty of one of the highest of lenses known to man besides being a criminal in the eyes of the law it is your duty to protect the citizen in his reputation and against the libelous attacks of evil parties or give him the means thereto I trust in your deliberations if any cases are presented to you that you will see eliat all bradu cers are brought to the bar of justice to be dealt with according to the law it is made your duty by the law to inquire into the cause of every person imprisoned within this district on a criminal charge and not indicted into the condition and management of the public prisons within this district and into the willful corrupt misconduct of public officers of every description within this district and you are entitled to free access at all reasonable times to public prisons and to the examination without charge of all public record within this district I also refer you to chapter ii on ge 87 of the laws of utah for for further specific instructions as to your duties you are also instructed that you do not eit as of the defendant or party charged with any offense ofie nse you ought to find an indictment when all the evidence before you taken |