Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-04-22
THE OPEN VENIRE AND WHAT IT
DECIDES.

danger to freedom when used by men
whose aim is oppression and plunder, yet
in Utah it wards off much greater dan
ger, danger that many have called for
as means of preserving liberty, and that
danger was a Legislative Commission for
Utah. The decision in the Clawson case
has set at rest forever the question of the
feasibility of obtaining juries, both grand
and petit, in Utah when the names in
the panel have been exhausted. Here
tofore the moment a jury was
not obtained on or about the
second drawing of names from the
panel, the cry has been raised, We must
have commission and that, too, COM
mission with vast powers to be exercised
Gas in their discretion may seem best, :"
assuming, of course, that those who were
| to compose the commission would have
as wondrous wisdom and virtue as they
were to have wondrous powers. When
it has been suggested that commission
would have to encounter this difficulty or
that, and it was asked how commission
would get over it, the reply has ever
been, eve can't say, but they would
soon find out and these difficulties will be
solved when We get commission" The
position of those who have been
calling for a commission has been
the position of those poets of
whom Lamertine says that they
are forever seeking after poetry and in
spiration in the clouds when these are
to be found in the streets each day. So it
is with the advocates of commission.
Not having discernment enough to see
that the solution of all questions which
are made offenses against the law is the
enforcement of the law, they have called
soft and low or loud and long for some
thing out of the ordinary to meet the
case, much like those who are compelled
at manual labor to make living declare
that their true forte is epic poetry, but
that an ungrateful world will not heed
them. 1t is strange thing how men
who make no extraordinary success
of life in the common walks of
mankind, think that they are
specially created and divinely endowed to
accomplish some great work, some work
which battles men whom the world term
great. The only fault with them and
their theory is that they are always wait
ing for something to turn up, never once
dreaming that things don't turn up unless
some one turns them.
If there were a commission here could
they do any more than is being done for
the enforcement of the law and the ex-
tirpation of polygamy? The very first
thing a commission would do would
be to spread the eagle and make
it screech for liberty. And the eagle which
they would have, would be like one
that Audubon saw and of which he says
that he saw it pursue fish-hawk and
make the hawk disgorge a fish the hawk
had swallowed and the eagle itself then |
swooped down upon the fish and swal- |
lowed it itself. 1t is not pleasing COM
parison with the bird of freedom, but this |
bird seems to be the favorite fowl of |
those who cry SO much for liberty and
commission.
But to be serious, the decision in the
Clawson case proves that much, if not
most, of our trouble has come from the
fact that our courts here have not
known the law which has always been
in existence, nor the resources which wei e
at their command in the existing law,
but have wanted something grander and
more profound than that which they did
not know, or ignored. In every effort
which Judge Zane has made to enforce
Ihe law and use the resources at his COM
nand, he has been sustained, and as vet
he has not found it necessary to call for
any additional legislation. While the
people of Utah condemn Judge Zane
or his active enforcement of the
avs against polygamy, yet they :
)we him much for demonstrating
he fact that with rigid and continual
of the laws as they are, those
avs are ample to meet the exigencies of
he Utah problem. For the benefit of
hose who have the commission craze we
will cite the Tribune of this morning to
how that our view is correct:
SIS it not clear enough that polygamy
nd church rule have ceased to be useful
l the progress of humanity in Utah, and R
nat they have in this region reached o
leir fatal limit - L