Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1885-05-18
0be Cai,faster 1i,tclliacnfer.
LANCASTER. MAY IS, 1885.
Bunn's Belligerency.

It is stated in Philadelphia newspaper
that s'Governor William M. Bum, Idaho's
chief executive, will before long return to
Boise City, his leave of absence granted by
the president expiring early in june" and
municates his purpose to continue the
work we begun in Idaho last win
ter, which has for its object the
suppression of polygamy." AS an
earnest of his vigorous executive plans
and of the extreme views (Which he |
admits that he holds upon the subject of |
social evils, he refers to double-leaded |
editorial on Mormonism in his paper, the
Sunday Transcript, of Philadelphia. This
leaves ne. room for doubt in the mind of the
DRat he is about to move on the
l0hs anu iiaremic temples of the salacious
saints" To meet moral issue fraught
with the seeds of death to unborn thou
sands" to preserve his garments of
chastity " from rubbing against the robes
of "lust and lechery," and to vndicate not
only the " revealed religion of the Son of
Man." but to enforce " the laws of the
United States, the laws of the entire
civilized world and the laws of Almighty
God face to face" with their violation, Gov.
Bum is now strengthening himself.
In Philadelphia, where Governor Bum
and his Sunday Transcript are known,
this proclamation of his high purpose will
create no surprise. In purity another st.
Anthony, in holy zeal a modern Peter the
Hermit, and in his horror of the very ap-
pearance of certain evils greater than
Anthony Comstock, it is easy TO believe
that Governor Bum has been employing
all the time of his vacation in Philadelphia
- in preparations for this crusade of the
White Cross in the far West.
But there is some danger that, where he
isknown only by his paper, he may be mis-
understood. And if the issue in which
his soul-stirring, double-leaded proclama-
ton against Mormonism is printed, be like
every other issue of the Sunday Transcript,
it will be calculated to subject Governor
Bum to misunderstanding and possibly to
Misrepresentation. For the chief feature
of its publication is a department in which
it is made to appear, as regularly as the
blessed Sabbath day comes around, that
Philadelphia is perfect Sodom of social
infamy, and that its society is as immoral
and vicious as that which left the memo
rials of its lewdness on the walls of the
buried cities of the plain. Governor
Bunn's most direct drives at the Mormons
and all that has been said of their immor
alities, do not carry with them such story
of shame for Salt Lake City as these reve
lations of the Transcript weekly disclose
for Philadelphia.
Now where Governor Bum is moi
known to be the King Arthur that he is
it may be suspected that his journal either
ious, degraded, demoralizing, matchmaking
sheet, which of course no good man would
refer to as an exponent of his purposes a:
governor of Idaho. If it tells the truth
then obviously Philadelphia offers wider
field for missionary work than Idaho, ol
even Utah, and the president may incline
to think that such fiery zeal for social re-
form is most needed at home.
In either event we fear that Governor
Bum and his Transcript, by inviting at
tention to their exemplary championship
Of the purity Of the fireside, have tempted
all good men to pray that their effective
work may be concentrated upon the short.
range enforcement of the seventh CON-
mandment in Philadelphia, where by their
own accounts there is such alarming de-
cadence of virtue and such need of its
apostles.