THE MORMON PROSECUTIONS
A WORD IN THEIR DEFENSE—POPULAR ERRORS REGARDING THEM.
To the Editor of The Tribune.
SIR : A correspondent of yours at this place writes or telegraphs: You have already published the section of the Territorial statute, passed by an exclusively Mormon Legislature in 1852, when Brigham Young was Governor, and approved by him, under which the present in dictment is found. O. course that law was never intended to punish the act of polygamy as practiced by the Mormons. It was aimed at a totally different offense, that of sexual intercourse without the formality of a Mormon marriage. This fact has been variously commented upon by visitors since the commencement of these proceedings. It has happened that several prominent members of the bar. East and West, and one United States Judge, have visited the city temporarily during the past week. To all these the Court-room has been an object of interest, and criticisms not altogether favorable to the positions assumed by the Chief-Justice have been publicly indulged in. The visiting Judge to whom I have alluded remarked to your corre-spondent that in his opinion the intent of the law should govern the pro-ceedings under it, and that as the man who passed the act did not intend to stand up as infamous one of the prominent articles of their religious faith, it would be a gross perversion of law as well as of justice to so con-strue the act as to make the system known here as "plural marriage" lewdness under the act. He characterized the course pursued by the prosecuting officer, under the sanction of the Court, as rather the trick of a pettifogger than the well-directed effort of a sound jurist to punish crime. With the act of Congress against polygamy—the very crime which it is now sought to punish by this prosecution—still on the statute books unenforced; with the duty of the prosecuting officer plainly pointed out by the terms of that Congress enactment, he failed to see the propriety of instituting proceedings under a Territorial statute, designed solely for the punishment of prostitutes and other vile characters.
Allow me to show that this is an assumption unsustained and unsustainable by a particle of proof. Nothing what-ever was offered on the trial of Hawkins to sustain it-it was not even attempted. There is nothing in the statute itself to show that those who made it did not mean precisely what they said, no more nor less, as McKean charged his jury. There is no proof but Mormon testimony that the men who framed the statute were polygamists, either in theory or practice; and that testimony has not been adduced yet in this controversy, doubtless from the knowledge that it would not and ought not to have any weight.
Why? Because, from the organization of the Mormon church in 1830 to Aug. 29, 1852, about six months after the approval of this statute, every Mormon leader, priest, publicist, preacher, missionary, agent, conference, book, or periodical, that alluded to the subject at all, classed polygamy as fornication, or adultery, or lascivious co-habitation, almost in the identical language of this stat-ute, denounced and condemned it as a gross crime, de-nied indignantly that the church believed, taught, or practiced it, and characterized the charge that it did as a malicious calumny of its enemies. On one occasion Jo-seph Smith himself, John Taylor, Willard Richards, and other leading Mormons, made oath before a civil magis-trate, at Carthage, Ill., to this effect. Let me cite their history on this point:
In 1830 the Book of Mormon was published, which ex-plicitly condemns polygamy in divers places, declaring it to be abominable before the Lord and forbidding its practice. The next year the Book of Doctrines and Cov-enants was published, which also pointedly condemns it, repeatedly. In 1844 Joseph and Hyrum Smith publicly denounced and expelled from the Church one Hiram Brown, for "preaching polygamy and other false and corrupt doctrines," as appears of record in The Times and Seasons, Church paper at Nauvoo, vol. 5, p. 423. Shortly afterward Hyrum Smith repeated this denuncia-tion and repudiation of polygamy in the same paper, vol. 5, p. 474. In 1845 The Millennial Star, Mormon organ at Liverpool, vol. 6, p. 22, characterized "spiritual wifery" as "a doctrine of devils and seducing spirits, out another name for whoredom, wicked and unlawful connection, and every kind of confusion, corruption, and abomination." In the following year the European Con-ference repudiated both the doctrine and practice in the strongest terms.
In 1848, The Millennial Star, vol. 10, p. 137, called down the vengeance of Heaven on all the liars who charged "such odious practices as spiritual wifery and po-lygamy" upon the Church, saying: "In all ages of the Church the truth has been turned into a lie, and the grace of God converted into lasciviousness, by men who have sought to make 'a gain of godliness,' and feed their lusts on the credulity of the righteous and unsuspicious. Next to the long-hackneyed and bugaboo whisperings of polygism is another abomination that sometimes shows its serpentine crests, which we shall call sexual resur-rection. The doctrines of corrupt spirits are always in close affinity with each other, whether they consist in spiritual wifeism, sexual resurrection, gross lascivious-ness, the unavoidable separation of husbands and wives, or the communism of property." In 1850 Elder John Taylor held a discussion at Boulogne, France, with three English clergymen. They quoted from some anti-Mormon works, just then published, charging the Church with polygamy, to which Taylor replied: "We are accused here of polygamy, and actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit of belief; therefore I shall con-sent myself by reading from a work published by us, containing some of the articles of our faith." He then read from the section entitled "Marriage:" "Inasmuch is this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.” This is from the appendix to Doctrines and Covenants, which was adopted in full Conference the year after Smith's death—1845.
This is the kind of testimony the Mormons bore to the world touching polygamy from their very start down to Aug. 29, 1852, six months after the approval of this famous statute, when they first changed their tune and avowed it as part of their religious belief and practice. To this date we have seen they steadily condemned polygamy, and denied that they taught, believed in, or practiced it. There is no conflicting testimony; it is all one way, and sworn to at that. Suppose they should now make oath that, at the time of the enacting of said statute, or at any time, polygamy was a part of their re-ligion, and its practice commanded them of God as a means of grace, could it be regarded as evidence? If so, upon what principle?
What proof, then, can be adduced that those who made this statute intended to except adultery and lascivious cohabition when called "polygamy" from its operation. Its not the assumption that they did so intend more vio-lent than the assumption that they did not? They didn't except it in the statute itself; I venture the asser-tion that there is nothing in the Legislative journals to show that they had such a thought; and for twenty-two years, extending beyond the passage of the statute by six months, they themselves had never referred to polygamy but in language almost identical with that if tho statute, to wit: Doctrine of devils, fornication, whoredom, gross lasciviousness, wicked and unlawful connection, etc., etc.
The only question that remains is, Are we bound—was or is the Government bound—in the pending prosecution of polygamy, to take into account what has been avowed, averred, and done since by these slippery men in de-termining the intent of the Legislature which passed the statute referred to? Would it not be giving them more consideration than they are entitled to demand under the circumstances to do so? It might be more desirable, perhaps, to proceed under the Anti-Polygamy act of Congress, but it is impossible, because no legal proof can be procured of its violation; and that chiefly because the Mormon's endowment oath absolves him from all others whatsoever, so that he will go before a grand jury and perjure him-self by the mouth to serve his Church. Nor can Con gress mend the matter. It is as bad to disregard the forms of law and justice in one direction as another. Congress couldn't if it would make proof legal that isn't egal to meet a special case, even the confessedly bad ones of the Mormons. So that it would seem the prose-cution for polygamy must proceed under this statute or break down entirely.
And if so much is to be claimed for these men, who have been as cruel and unscrupulous as the worst robber-barons of feudal times In forcing a worse than feudal custom on an unwilling people, beginning by threaten-ing them with the displeasure of the Almighty, and end-ing, if they stood out, by cutting their throat—of course 'to save their souls"—if these men are to have so much consideration, surely their victims should have some. What of Mrs. Hawkins, for instance, whose husband's crutal treatment in casting her off after she had borne him seven children, and marrying other women, bring-ing them into the house and trying to put her out, drove her to prosecute him? Are she and her class never to have redress? No one can be prosecuted under the law except on complaint of husband or wife. Usually, it would require a great deal of bad treatment to drive husband or wife to prosecute the other under this or any law. It is safe to conclude that where man or woman is compelled to invoke it, its punishment is deserved.
As to the community at large, it is not to be supposed that it is to be prosecuted for polygamy under any stat-ute. It would be physically impossible. But polygamy can be stamped as illegal in the case of the more promi-nent leaders, and the Saints once for all satisfied that it is incompatible with our laws, and will be held so. That Is needed to start it on the decline. It has not begun to decline, yet, despite the almost universal impression, outside, of Utah, that it has; and if it wins the field now It will be long enough before its decline comes. Defeated now, perhaps it would listen to terms, and if it would, Congress might meet it part way by condoning what has been done on consideration that it should now stop, absolutely. Two years ago, when this was tendered, substantially, the Mormons scouted the Idea. It was "The Kingdom or nothing." When they find that the sovereignty of the Government, its laws, and institutions, must indeed prevail in Utah, it will be more, reasonable or it—will pack up its hodge-podge of politics, religion, and social institutions, and leave the continent. Brigham Young, presented by the Grand Jury for divers and sundry murders, and fleeing from justice with a lot of his concubines and a guard of the, Nauvoo Legion, doesn't seem to me to be a very fine subject to favor, at the expense of his dupes and victims. O. J. H.
Salt Lake City, Nov. 2. 1871.
