Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1882-06-17
GAHausit, tntelAQenret.
EVENING, JUNE II, 1852
MormOnlsn, East and West.

MermonIsn, East and West.
The New York World has been sub
jected to a good deal of animadversion
and no little ridicule from some OF its
inestimable contemporaries, because it
has sent correspondent out to Utah to
write up fully and, it is to be presumed,
truthfully, the social and moral condi
tion of the Mormons. The reports of
this commissioner are in the highest de-
gree complimentary to the Mormons and
the World is accused of all sorts of mo-
tives, except those which should govern
q newspaper, for publishing what its re-
porter sends to it about the Mormon peo-
pie.
It may he that the World courts their
favor to increase its circulation among
them or that its reputed owner, Jay
Gould, has railroad designs which need
the cooperation of the Mormon leaders
and he seeks to conciliate them by fiat
terry in the columns OF a leading New
York paper, but this has not yet been
made manifest, and, until it is is shown,
the only way to repel any presumption
favorable to the Mormons that arises
from the Worlds correspondence, is to
show that what its representative writes
to it is not true. This has not yet been
done.
We do not understand the World to
claim that the high degree Of
morality and prosperity prevailing
among the Mormons is the result
of their peculiar and obnoxious in
stitution of polygamy, but if such vir-
tues as, it is claimed, exist among them,
can be attained despite their unholy and
indecent plurality of wives, then they
must have some gOodqualities for which
they are entitled to due credit. If these
have always existed and have not been
discovered by those who pretended to
give the public true account of the
Mormons, the World is to be praised for
its enterprise as an explorer; and if they
have always existed and have not been
reported, by reason of prejudice, the
World is still more to be praised for fear
lessly rendering even to Mormon pOlyga
mists what is their due. Especially is
this the case at time when there is so
much malignant Misrepresentation of
the MOrmons, and when even the Utah
commission, as made up, with couple
of ex-senators at the head, seems to be
intended rather to steer Utah into Re-
publicanism than to conserve the social
and political complications which ensue
from the condition of the peculiar peo.
pie who have redeemed its desert wastes
and made them to blossom and support
large population.
The World receives all unexpected
ally in the Rev. DR.. Leonard WOoisey
Bacon's contrast of the social conditions
of Utah and of Connecticut, in the
Princeton Rcricr, wherein he discusses
how dispensation from a Mormon apostle
differs from the "bigamy permit Of a
New England court. BY this term Dr.
Bacon means divorce for other than
Biblical cause, permitting either of the
divorced parties to marry again. He
puts the bigamy or polygamy permits is
sued in New England as standing in the
proportion to Christian marriages at
about one to eight. The proportion
would be larger, he admits, were it not
for the rate at which al Irish Catholic
population, obstinately homogeneous"
is gaining upon the original Puritan
stock. The climax of his illustra-
tions and of his vivid comparisons of
the people of Utah and New England
is reached in the instance he adduces of
a professor of New Testament theology
in an orthodox, theological seminary of
the dominant Christian sect of New
England obtaining "bigamy permits {"
for himself and wife. The fact did
not interrupt his tenure of professorship
nor the course of his official duties-un
less perhaps that he would glide little
lightly in the course of his eXpositions
over the nineteenth chapter of Matthew
and the parallel passages.