The St. Johns herald., 1885-07-09
St. Johne, Thureday, July g.
INDEPENDENCE DAY,

Independence day at St. Johns passed off quietly. Nothing oc- cured to disturb the peace and usual good order of the town. Iso- lated from railroad and telegraphic communication, no effort had been made to collect together the peo- pie of Apache county, at the Coun- ty seat; other points therein, more easy of access by the people, and which could be supplied with greater facility all the necessary paraphanalia of such occasions had prepared for such demonStra- tions fitting our National Holiday. In the Mormon district of the town, we learn from reliable persons in attendance, that their festivities were strictly and purely American in their presentations to the peo- pie; that nothing but the most pa
 triotic sentiments were uttered by their orator or by any speaker who followed him; that reference was made simply on the growth and prosperity under the Constitution as it was framed, and under its several amendments the coun- try had prospered beyond that of any other government on the hab- itable. globe. It is further said that Miners oration gave no evi- .dence that his people were practic- ing or living in defiance of the Constitution and the laws of the country upon which he was be- slowing with honied tongue his lavish praises. He made no ref ,erence to the undeniable truth that to create this heaven favored lib
 erty, the people not only fled from the dictates of a priesthood and church that would have held them in eternal bondage; would have wasted their substance in its un- teasing savage demands for all the profit of their toll, of all the hope ful results of their labor and the sweat of their brow. He did not tell them that this great church, this mighty congregation was led by well-fed, aristocratic leeches both in Church and State, from which the men of the seventeenth century with their wives and child
 ren had fled. He did not sketch for the reflection of his ill-fated and misled hearers the striking re- semblance between the favored condition of the noble tramps and mugwumps who were sustained and supported in icentious ease and idleness by the toilers in those days when the Pilgrim Fathers steered the trail craft for the sun set land, or found the home of their creator, God, through the treacherous seas, and the condi- tions of their Lord, the President of their church, and their masters, the apostles, bishops and elders. It is not noted that he made any reference in his oration, that the pilgrims left a country where the wealthy idler and the aristocratic could enter into plural marriages, and make such terms with the wo- men they debased as to leave them and their ofsprings without in heritance of name or fortune; that they founded a church without a bishop, a state without king: that they framed their laws to cor rect the evils to which they had been compelled to submit, and, upon their theory of popular vir- the, individual rights and public safety, perfected during a century and a half later, the Declaration of Independence was made the Ma tional Gospel and the Constitution of the United States was adopted for the guidance of all the people,
 In public matters like 4th of July celebrations, orators of the day,