The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1879-12-09
THE UTAH

Although the text of the Presidents mes
sage to Congress has not been yet received, it
is gratifying to know that the document con-
tains at least one important recommendation.
The Chief Executive takes very decided
ground in regard to polygamy in Utah. At
tention is called to the open violation of tie
law on the subject in that territory, and to
the importance of dealing vigorously with the
question, in view of the fact that the time is
rapidly approaching when Utah will demand
admittance as a State. He recommends that
polygamy in the Territories be made a bar to
suffrage and to sitting on juries, and that a
test oath be used to ascertain the facts.
If Congress will but take definite and posi-
tive action in the matter of ~suppressing the
twin relic in that priest-ridden dependency,
there is little probability that the present
scheme for admission to the privileges of
statehood will receive countenance from the
national lawmakers. For this reason A
determined effort on the part of the govern
ment to bring polygamists TO the bar of JUS
tice would call forth from the Mormon peo-
pie all the disloyalty and treason which
heretofore they have succeeded partially in
suppressing. All their inherent ~antagonism
to the authority of the United States all
their natural and cultivated hatred and con-
tempt of Republican institutions would be
brought to the surface, and those whose maud
lin s~entimentalism has always furnished ex-
cuses for the "down-trodden and prosecuted
people," would nave their eyes opened to the
unpatriotic and revolutionary impulses of
that dangerous sect.
Polygamy is the foundation stone upon
which those crafty priests have reared their
religious structure. A quiet submission to
the will of the government in expurgating
that tenet from their faith and in peaceably
surrendering TO the courts of justice all those
who have violated the law of '62 would be a
public acknowledgment from the church dig
nitaries that the revelation touching polyga-
nous marriage was not of divine origin, for
they ayow that under no circumstances will
they obey mans laws in preference to the in
functions of the Almighty. Mormonism is
rooted in a soil of foul and blasphemous
imposture. Its chief opponents have no
sympathy with the Union, no respect for its
laws and no interest in its prosperity. Their
only ambition is to make money and gain
power, and, in order to crafty that desire,
they will under no circumstances imply by
any concession to the government a lack OF
faith in the divinity of their own revelations.
A promise to eschew polygamy in the future,
and to counsel their deluded followers not to
enter that sacred marriage relation, would
necessltate their speedy abdication from pow
er, for if polygamy is once interdicted, Nor
monism sinks below the level of all other
religions and those divinely inspired gentry
whose revelations have authorized its intro
duction are presented in their true colors as
frauds and impostors.
Therefore there is no reasonable hope
that the doctrine of polygamy will cease to
be taught and practiced in defiance of the
we'll established laws of the land, and as long
as Congress insists upon the abolishing of the
sacred ordinance as a condition of being ad-
mltted in the Union, there is not the remotest
possibility that Utah will ever become a State.
The popular cry with the Mormons is polyg-
amy or revolution, and if the dispatches from
the Los Pinos Indian agency are reliable,
they have already begun indirectly an armed
resistance to the laws of the government.