The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-05-15
NO DIVISION HERE.

Our esteemed San Francisco contempor-
airy, the ancient and honorable Cau has re-
vived the proposition to divide Utah be-
tween the neighbor states. Colorado and
Nevada, the line TO be drawn along the
SUBMITS of the Wasatch range. The paper
says:
The effect of this would be to increase the
population OF Nevada to about two hundred and
twenty-five thousand and to swell the area OF
Colorado to about one hundred and forty eight
Thousand square miles, nearly the area Of Cali
fornla. Both states would be induced to ac-
qulesce by the advantages each would reap
from the partition. No portion of Colorado is
more fertile than the valleys of the Green and
Upper Colorado. With proper agriculture they
might sustain a population of millions And
Nevada, with an addition OF $780, 600 people,
would be able to carry on state government.
The Can explains that the excuse for this
is found In the fear that the Mormons are
not sincere in their professed abandonment
OF polygemy, and the apprehension that
Utah once in the Union sit will be diff
cult for the federal authority to deal with
them" As to the power to make the d.
vision, wiping this territory out of exist
ence, the Can settles that off hand:
The assent of Utah to the partition is not es.
sential. The constitution provides that no new
state can be carved out OF other states without
the assent of the latter But it says nothing
about territories. A territory is, in fact, sat
rapy of the general government, and enjoys
limited local self government purely through
Congressional bounty. Congress may divide
Utah into as many pieces as it pleases without
asking leave.
Having arranged matters to its own Xix
ing our contemporary proceeds to undo all
by raising the objection to the plan that it
might work in such q way that Nevada
would be gobbled by Utah, not Utah by
Nevada, and instead of the destruction of
a polygamous territory Congress might Gre
ate polygamous state, this apprehension
being based on the suggestion that 1S0,000
citizens Of Utah would be apt to count
more than $4,000. the aggregate population
of Nevada.
| We presume these division schemes will
be brought forward periodically until the
Utah problem has been finally solved by
the admission of the territory to the Union
as free and sovereign state. Certain it is
that geniuses of the pattern of the Cal
writer have brought the plan to the front
at least twice year for the past decade
only TO have their trouble for their pains,
as Congress has never given any consider
alton 10 their suggestions and Utah
has kept intact, steadily and proudly
moving forward, all her people con-
fdent that in time the great
and generous American community will
understand how cruel it is to hold quarter
of million loyal citizens in the condition
of territorial serfdom. Nobody here ever
thinks 1t possible that greater wrong will
be perpetrated and the identity of Utah de-
stroyed by blotting the territory from the
map and apportioning the people among the
surrounding commonwealth.
! AS TO the sincerity of the Mormon por-
ton of the population, in the matter of the
abandonment of polygamy, is it not time
that at least intelligent editors were mani
Testing some confidence in the honesty and
integrity of their fellow men9 When vigi-
liant officers and prying neighbors have been
unable to discover case of plural marriage
in years, when the courts show no record
of such amarriage, is it not time that we put
some faith in the solemn declarations OF the
Mormons themselves that polygamous mar.
riages have been discontinued? Everybody
comedies that the Mormops are honorable,
trustworthy and reliable in everything
else, hence why not trust them in this mat
ter, when everything goes to tprove they
are dealing fairly and faithfully keeping
their pledge?
OF course nobody can say when the bar
win be removed and Utah permitted tc
take her place in the Union as 8 sovereign
state. The emancipation may come soor
or it may be delayed for years, but come
when 1t may, all our people, the Gentilet
no less than the Mormons, want the ident
ity of the local commonwealth preserved
our territory held intact and the state Il
be Utah. However widely we may differ
on other matters we are a unit on thi.
proposition, and we ali love Utah better
than any other spot on the big earth.