Show THE ANT1POL TGAMY PROMISE The Mormon Convention has at last framed its antipolygamy clause and y has made it quite as strong as anyone could have expected They have publicly pub-licly proclaimed that the Lord whose i laws they have pretended to be keeping in the defiance of the statutes of the United States is to have no further say in Utah politics God has been shelved and His principles have been found incompatible l with a republican form of government His people have oven gone so far as to promise that under their government of Utah at a State obedience to His com I I mend in regard to plural marriage shall be forever an offense against the laws not to be repealed without the consent of I 0 Congress even though the polygamy T revelation should be reinforced by a dozen more of its kind I Heretofore God has commanded and been obeyed now God commands and commands in vain I k According to the lesser church organ the Statehood move is not a religious j move and therefore cannot be in obedience K obedi-ence to any especial command from on I Itl high but as they put it up it is simply 1 a resolution on the part of the members T of the Church to come within the prevailing r pre-vailing ideas of public morals Amore A-more inconsistent stand could not be taken What utter nonsense to I pretend for a moment that the Mormon leaders are not behind the scheme what childish folly to try to hide the hand of George Q Cannon in every move that is d made I Had they come out frankly as a church and as the church that has BO long fought against this thing had they come with tho sanction of that God who has so long held them back there would iw have been acme cround upon which to base our confidence in the I sincerity of the move but as it is the whole thing leads the most sanguine to an involuntary dis < trust It is a promisefrom the slaves themselves to give up slavery while their owners remain in the background and say not a word So much for the insincerity in-sincerity of the promise Now suppose that they were granted the boon they ask could they not well afford to live up in their own peculiar way to the promises they have made The section under which the promise is made reads as follows SEC 12 Bigamy and polygamy being considered incompatible with a republican form of government each of them is hereby forbidden and declared a misdemeanor Any person who shall violate this section shall on conviction thereof be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars dol-lars and be imprisoned for a term of not loss than six months nor moro than throe years in the discretion of the court This section shall be construed as operative without the aid of legislation and the offenses prohibited by this section shall not be barred by any statute of limitation within I with-in three years after the commission of the offense nor shall the power of pardon be extended thereto until such pardon shall be nroved by the President of the United States Now what a picnic this would be The crime would first have to be detected de-tected by an officer whose eyes are blinded by his own sins the indictment would have to be found by a Grand Jury consisting of fellowpolygs tho case would be tried before a Judge witli half a dozen wives on his own conscience it would be prosecuted by the young husband of two or three blooming beauties it would be submitted for a verdict to twelve men having an aggregate of thirtysix women clinging to their breasts Woman suffrage suf-frage would be reinaugurated and your neighbors wives would sit upon the jury at your trial Now is it likely that under these circumstances there would be a single sin-gle conviction Is it likely that there would be a single indictment Is it likely that there would be a single arrest ar-rest And what if such a thing as a conviction did occur what would be the result Six months in the Pen a fearful punishment for a crime that is now expiated expi-ated by a term of five years imprisonment and a fine of a thousand dollars 1 They say it shall also be punishable by a 1 fine of not to exceed one thousand dollars dol-lars and they purposely forgot to add not less than one cent Now what does their promise amount to even if it were lived up to It means that if the Nation will give them all the sacred rights of Statehood with all its glorious privileges restore the outlawed polygamists to full citizenship return to the women their franchise release all prisoners serving terms for cohabitation I and quash all indictments now pending if tho United States will give them all this they will kindly agree to take any fool polyg who insists upon being caught and wont be prevailed upon to avoid conviction and send him to the Pen for six months The promise is magnanimous magnanim-ous in the extreme and Congress must be careful not to be caught with so tempting tempt-ing a bait |