The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1886-05-27

violate their cOncciencee, the feulteu-
tlary shall be their future home; thai
death itself would be preferable to the
renunciAtion demanded. You may
call them stubborn. and say
they are bigots and fanatics
you may even declare them
insane, but you must admit that they
are human. and if you will read history
; you must confess that tLey are acting
in accordance with a weli-known and
always recognized phase OF human ma
ture. Ii is not brayado-it is sincerity
il is devotion 10 belief and not defiance
to authority. IL is not disrespect for
the opinions of others. but faithfulness
to their own belief. Men who are not
sincere, who are dishonest with them
selves and not honest with the world,
who are "pla, ing q card" in the hope
that Il will win, do not 20 to the lengths
that these men have gone; they
do not reject what the world
would look upon as honorable lib
Grafton, and to crafty a senti-
ment. or TO be stubborn and mulish.
lock the prison doors ON themselves and
voluntarily enter upon an existence The
most terrible and revolving that the ed
ucated and refined man can conceive OF.
Say, for the sake of reaching the
matter from that standpoint. that Snow
and his associates are misguided and in
error; that they are fanatics. and in
sanely devoted TO false religion-these
admissions will not alter the fact that
the prisoners are human and sincere. |
Being sincere men they should be
treated as il the desire were 10 lead |
them from their instruction. II
will be no credit 70 the Government
to drive or torture them into an
OF their error if they are
not convinced. Suppose all these pris-
oners had accepted the Governors
offer, and come forth to
freedom and desirable associations,
1oes anybody presume TO say that one
IF them would have been convinced
hat the act which sent him to prison
vas wrong7 They would have come
'ut hating themselves with a hate
tronger and more bitter than any that
'thers could feel towards them.
In the light OF the. past conduct Of
he Mormon prisoners, with the letter
Thieh appears in another column be
ore il, and with the consciousness a
taring it in the face that these ?
risoners, comprising octogenarians. .
nd young men not out Of their TWEEN h
les, composed and signed that docu- G
lent with full understanding that 10 4
1me of them it might mean imprison- :,
tent for the remainder Of their days on v
nth. Government should seriously @
sk itself il its methods and course OF y
ealing with the Mormons are not
rong; IL their natural tendency is not G
defeat the end desired, and crystalline
I'd make incurable what the nation is =
eased 10 call fanatioism7 There may d
, a way Of leading the Mormons
TO an abandonment of their peculiar "
arital belief and practices, but it is Ii
,parent that that way Is not by the
iprisonment of men who. with the
i'm walls of the Penitentary sur a,
unding them and the prospect of Il
Iding their days in the gloomy prison, u
III refuse amnesty and assert that "
.ath is preferable to q remuneration OF
eir faith. Government has gained \
)thing after it has confined every Z
,lygamist in the Penitentiary, !.
it has strengthened the :
18th and intensified the belief c,
Id determination OF all the .
After all this vigorous
arfa:e against the practice of plural
arriage, and in the light Of the results
the onslaughtitshould occur to states ~
en- that another plan ought to be l
led, and that plan should recognize
Ie fact that polygsmy, If a crime, is a "
'cial crime and can best be dealt with
I'd oombatted by social influences. r.
society and nineteenth GEN.
ny civilization certainly ought to be in
lential enough 70 overcome and cure =
hatever is evil in the marriage system L
the little community out here in Utah.
e have ever believed that the corrective -
cure be needed-erist in
e people themselves. III association .
It'll the world and the influence of the
lvanced civilization of the age cannot
Tercome and eradicate the plural wife
stem. there must be a confession that
'lygamy is stronger and more forceful -
an modern Christianity and days ~
in which event 1t will as
.redly exists despite all the laws that A.
N be enacted for its destruction.
TIE WIFE of Louis Riel. the Canadian n,
bel. who was executed for treason de-
= l.