Morning journal and courier., 1882-05-19
Friday Morning, May 19, 1882.
FORBES AMONG THE HORIZONS.

|. Friday Morning, May 19. 1882.
 FORBES AMONG THE HORIZONS.
 Archibald Forbes, the celebrated English
 war correspondent, has travelled much and
 seen much. He has, to use his own words,
 ''been over much of Europe, over all of In
 dia and it's adjoining countries, Afghanistan,
 Beloochistan, Burmah and Ceylon, in the
 north and west and south of Africa, and in
 various out of -the-way islands in miscellan-
 eous oceans" During his travels he has
 been accustomed to keep his eyes open, and
 his work for the press has helped to make him sharp and careful observer. He has recently been travelling in the western part of this country, and in the course of his jour- neying has come to Salt Lake City, where he has spent some time studying the Mormon question. His view of it is decidedly inter- esting
 He has found that the Gentiles are afraid that there will not be sufficient severi- ty exercised under the Edmunds bill and that the commission, after convicting and pardon ing the offenders in the past, will take the word of the Mormons for allowing polygamy to die out in the future. The Mormons, on the other hand, declare the bill to be im- practicable in detail and impossible as whole, for they say that each individual polygamist can if he chooses defy conviction, aud that it is absurd to suppose that if all confess all can be punished to- gether. So that everybody speaks of the Ed o1c f5 1oC, the Mormon wives. MT. Forbes thinks, the situation is of unredeemed horror ''The women of Mormondom have to choose be- tween running their husbands or living in miserable dishonor and sacrificing their hopes of the future on which all their happiness in the past has been built. few husbands will accept this sacrifice at their wives hands, but surely if any crime will be punished hereafter it will be this! Some others will compromise with the present. relying upon good fortune of some kind to set them free again later on. But the majority will be true to the women whom they have married in just as good faith as ever any of the Old Testament patriarch y
 Mir. Forbes says that Mormonism is not ''the wind and-wet inflated pumpkin the world at distance believes: it is good firm pumpkin to the very core The Mormons are not the drunken, self indulgent, lawless set of men that the envious malice of local Gentiles would represent them to be. On the contrary they are, class, sober, hard working and orderly. Of polygamy, as he has seen it in Salt Lake City he says: ''Itis neither unnatural, wicked nor licentious. The demeanor of women here is, as compared with Europe, chastity itself, and the children are just such healthy, pretty, vigorous chil- dren as one sees in the country or by the sea side in England-and, in my opinion mo- where else. Utah-born girls. the offspring of plural wives. have figures that would make New York envious, and they carry themselves with almost Oriental dignity But rem ember, Salt Lake city is city of rustics They do not affect 'gentility' and are careful to ex- plain at every opportunity that the stranger must not be shocked at their homeIy ways and speech There is an easiness of manner therefore which is unconventional but it is only blockhead who could mistake this nat ural gayety of the country for anything other than it is. " But while MT. Forbes finds poly 1 gamy in Mormondom respectable" he does | not admire it and would not advocate it.
 Mir Forbes testimony is valuable, as that of an experienced and presumably unpreju- diced observer. But were the polygamy of | the Mormons twice as ''respectable'' ss Mr | Forbes finds it it would have to go The | people of the United States do not consider | it respectable.