The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1886-02-04
The Threat Against the Mormons.
To the Editor of TIE Euening Post:

=
: To the Editor of TIE Euening Post:
Sir: Your editorial OF Saturday even
on the anti Mormon bill that has jus
passed the Senate, evinces the fact tina
you are not ready to countenance Law
that looks to the confscation of re,
ligious commun:ty's property because
some of its members are alleged Grim
inals.
The proposition to put fourteen
United States officials into re-
lig1oas corporal on, against thir
teen honest fanatics avowedly to
outvote the representatives of the
rightfuI owners of he property,
ana thereby to S u. in the name of the
United States government, substance
that belongs to the Mormon community
as Justly as Trinity Church belongs to
the Protestant Episcopal Church, seems
a cambrous and expensive mode OF rob-
berry.
It differs, however, not in spirit, only
! in its modus operandi, from the propo-
sition of one of the leading lights in
! Massachusetts theology and ethics who
proposed to set a watch for William
| Penn and his co-religionists, that they
might be captured, before landing, their
substance taken and their persons en-
shaved. The early New England saint
thought it sufficiently stimulating TO
the enterprise of his co-saints to point
out the fact that the pestilent Quakers
were rich. especially their leader, and
| that their substance should be laid hold
OF for the use and benefit of the ortho-
doX. He did not propose to limit the
expedition to to bare majority in order
to accomplish the robbery, nor did be
propose to make the thieves salaried
officers of the commonwealth, but he
did propose that the commonwealth
should stand by and protect them by
their great moral worth and godly in
huence.
Political and ethical evolution have
wrought their refnements since the
days of which have spoken, and Mr.
Edmunds, New England saint,
adjusted to the environment of modern
because some of its men,
bers are alleged to be guilty of las
civious cohabitation'' a thing that he
knows is common throughout the
United States, yea, in his own town.
his own State, and In an aggravated |
form in the great capital, where strict |
enforcement of the law would place |
some of those who helped to make it
behind the bars.
Should The House pass this bill, and |
it become law, its reactive influence
will be so great and rapid that in the |
near future the Mormnns will have to !
be enumerated by millions, instead of |
by hundreds of thousands, as at present. |
Legislation so palpably unjust, I'M
constitutional, and tyrannous is sure TO
defeat the object aimed at, and raise up
friends and supporters of the perse.
cuted.
To pass law that would compel the
public registration of all marriages in
Utah and the other Territories, so that
the Mormon so-called celestial II Marriages
could not be kept secret, and thus
facilitate the trial and conviction OF
those guilty of an indictable offence,
would be the work of statesmen. But
to enact this infamous measure, which
would turn loose upon an honest, in
dustrious, religious community band
Of legalized, salaried robbers, would be
that ought to cause the
modern Turk to hang his head in guilty
shame. PRFsByTER. i
NEW YORK, January y.