Salt Lake evening Democrat. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1885-1887, 1885-04-30
THE RULING ON THE EDMUNDS
LAW.

10 prove inc CnarSe OI uIldWluI COHdDltd-
ton, as it does away with that
part of these trials which has
been so revolving heretofore, and
which no man or woman in
all Utah has doubted for a moment.
To defeat all endeavors to show that the
association, which it is now claimed must
be proven, existed, has been held high
merit by those who have upheld the
system which encouraged such associa-
tons; and to bring about such defeat,
all methods. whether of truth or of false
hood, whether refined or brutal, have
been tried. Doing all things to prevent
conviction, no matter how heinous those
things were, nor how much in di-
rect contravention of the most ele-
mentary principles of truth and
morality, the loud cry of religious
persecution has been raised when con-
viction followed after long and tedious
trials had been gone through, and where
there was no doubt of the guilt of the de-
fendant as charged The defense of the
crimes has been far more reprehensible
than the crimes committed. Surely the
new ruling is in the interest of morality
if ever ruling was, and while the ques-
ton of cohabitation different from that in
this particular case was not decided, yet
it must be presumed that while Congress
primarily had in view the suppression of
polygamy, they also had in view the pro-
motion of virtue and chastity among
those who were not professors of the doc
trine of polygamy. Ifthey had not, then
their law is lame indeed That
the Mormon people have been a
chaste people as a rule, none will
deny, but chastity is not the only virtue,
and when the system which they intro
duced to promote and further chastity has
been declared inconsistent with the
foundation of society as recognized
throughout the civilized world, and it has
been sought to suppress it, all other vir-
tues have been sacrificed that the system
might live. Have not the evil results of
the defense of the system far outweighed
any good which it might otherwise have
wrought? In this same case of which we
are now speaking, when it was up before
the Commissioner it took a great effort
and long time to establish the paternity
of child of some three summers. Are
such things conducive to the highest
moral excellence or even to the greatest
chastity? or are they intended to sup
press those terrible evils of the mono
gamic system of marriage, of which SO
much has been heard of late, infanticide
and feticide and the social evil?
The rare occurrence, in an early day
in Utah, of adultery and crimes against
the marriage tie is as much due to the
isolation and strong religious discipline of
the Mormons as to their polygamic sys-
tenn of marriage. Had their marriage
system been the monogamic, under the
same conditions which formerly existed
here, it would have been the same, for
being isolated and religious and holding
to be about the greatest of all
crimes, the Mormons would still have
held chastity the greatest of the virtues,
to which, if necessary, all others should
be sacrificed. Herein lie the true rea-
sons for the absence of brothels and their
evils.
When Judge Zane says that in the re-
lation of the husband and wife lies the
foundation of society, and that to alter
that foundation is to strike at society, he
tells wherein polygamy is chiefly wrong.
To change the unit of the State, is to |
change the State itself, and to introduce
as religion that which takes from the civil |
power of the State the right to define its
own unit, is to allow sect to rule a ma
ton. The first great care of every citizen
should be to preserve the civil power OF
MS country inviolate, as in its preserva-
-lon lies the safety of all other rights.
The preservation of the family re-
luires that personal virtue and chastity
shall also be promoted, and not allowed
o be indiscriminately trampled under
oot. But if Congress has been remiss in
his regard, so too has our own Legisla-
ure, and soon we shall have occasion to
how wherein.