UTAH.
The recent difficulties between Governor Harding and the people of Utah found a very decided expression in a public meeting held in the Tabernacle in Great Salt Lake City on the 3d of March. The meeting was crowded, with the Saints, and the speeches and resolutions, which we find reported at length in The Deseret News, were of a sufficiently violent character. The business of the meeting was simply to give shape and tone to the charges against the Governor and against the Associate Justices of the Territory, Charles B. Wait and Thomas J. Drake, and to take steps to secure their removal.
Gov. Harding's message and official conduct were savagely assailed in a speech by a Mr. John Taylor—otherwise the Hon. John—by Brigham Young, sometimes called Governor Young, and by a series of intemperate resolu-tions. The Governor is charged with falsely imputing disloyalty to the people of the Terri-tory, with attempting to possess himself of the military power by the appointment of the mi-litia officers, with interference with the selec-tion of jurors under the Territorial laws and ordinary forms of trial, with controlling the Legislative power by his veto, and with hostil-ity to the peculiar institution of Utah, polygamy.
The message of Gov. Harding which is, complained of was published at the East not "long after its delivery, and was chiefly re-marked on here for its very delicate handling of the subject of polygamy. There have been some statements unfavorable to the loyalty of the Mormons, so doubt, but so far as we re-member they came from other sources. It is I safe to say that the devotion of Utah to the Union has not been supposed to be beyond suspicion, though it is true that of late it has been more ostentatiously professed than formerly. If the military power of the Terri-tory were not to be used against the Govern-ment, it is difficult to see what objection there is to its control by Government officers. The Mormons appear to forget that the authority of Congress over them is supreme, and that Gov. Harding's recommendation was entirely within the line of his official duty.
So of the Jury question. It is notorious that in many cases convictions under the United States laws are impossible, because the accused and the jurors who are to try them are of one mind about the crime, and very likely equally guilty. A Gentile never had a chance in any s suit against a Saint before a Jury of the same faith. It was proposed to remedy this obvious injustice by giving the Marshal authority to summon as jurors any persons within the dis-trict in which the Court is held. The approval of these measures by Judges Waite and Drake seems to constitute their only offense.
Polygamy is, of course, at the bottom of the trouble. No policy by which that institution is not respected and protected will be popular with the Mormons, any more than in the Rebel States would an Anti-Slavery measure be acquiesced in by the Pro-Slavery majority. Gov. Harding very moderately disapproves polygamy, and has recommended certain mesa-ures not likely to promote or extend its in-terests. Herein consists his offense, and hence arise the tumults is the Territory over which he is placed. The meeting went so far as to appoint a Committee to wait en the Governor and Justices and request them to resign their offices and leave the Territory, and, apparently anticipating that their impudent request might not be complied with, petitioned the President to take the matter in his own hands. It is not stated what reception Gov. Harding gave this Committee, or even whether they presented themselves before him.
The sum of the whole business is that the Mormons are willing to be governed by such authorities as will respect their institutions, foster their State with polygamy as its corner-stone, and aid them in the exclusion of all Gentile influences. Gov. Harding does not con-sider his duty to lie in that direction. The question for the Government at Washington to decide is, whether it will sustain its own dep-uty in lawful acts, or whether it chooses to give over the unchecked control of their own affairs, polygamy included, to the Mormon State. It is hardly possible to doubt what that decision will be.
