EIGHT HUNDRED MORE MORMONS.
On Thursday last a Liverpool steamer landed a strange load of steerage passengers at Castle Garden. There were 800 of them, all Mormon converts, and all on their way to the "Promised Land" of the "Latter Day Saints" in Utah. These deluded creatures had been gathered up by Mormon mission-aries in Europe, chiefly in the three Scandi-navian countries. They are ignorant and poor, and the promise of a pleasant lot in the New World and of money enough to pay their passage over was to their minds, no doubt, a more potent argument in favor of emigration than the prospect of uniting themselves to the Mormon Church. This is not the first ship-load of victims of Joe Smith's fraudulent religion which has ar-rived from Europe. A large party came over in the Spring. The business of prose-lyting in the Old World does not appear to have fallen off in the least since the death of Brigham Young. In spite of the loss of its able and unscrupulous leader and of the occasional efforts of the Govern-ment to put a stop to the practice of its doc-trine of polygamy, Mormonism continues to flourish. It keeps a large sum of money in the Bank of England for missionary work, employs numerous preachers to delude ignor-ant peasants, and two or three times a year receives a heavy reinforcement of converts. Already the "Saints" have occupied nearly all the valleys in Utah that can be made fer-tile by irrigation, and they are now colonizing the adjoining Territories of Arizona, Idaho and Montana. They live in open and defiant violation of the United States statute against polygamy, relying upon the right of trial by jury to save them from punishment. It is impossible to fairly draw a jury in Utah with-out having Mormons upon it, and it is equally impossible with a jury made up in part of Mormons to get a verdict against a Mormon for doing what his Church specially enjoins.
Apart from the question of how to deal with this gross and criminal fanaticism in the seat of its power, it would seem as if some means might be adopted to prevent it importing recruits from Europe by the ship-load. The converts its agents bring over are deceived about the character of the region they are going to, and in most cases about the practice of polygamy. The women, es-pecially, are kept in the dark on the latter point, and few of the men, whatever knowl-edge may have been imparted to them as to the privileges of plural wedlock, have any conception of the tyranny of the Mormon Church organization, or the difficulty in gaining a livelihood from the arid soil of "Deseret." Many of these poor victims of an abominable superstition might be kept out of the clutches of Mormonism if, before em-barking in Europe or on their landing here, they were told, by some authority which they would respect, the actual facts about Utah, its church and its polygamous practices in violation of the laws of the country.
Perhaps the Government would be war-ranted in taking the matter in hand and cir-culating among the immigrants a document disabusing their minds of the errors they have imbibed from the Mormon missionaries. Of course, it could not undertake to crush out the religious theories of the Morman Church, but it could at least let the immi-grants know that polygamy is a crime in Utah just the same as in Europe, and that the Valley of Salt Lake is very far from be-ing the "Promised Land" of plenty and ease which they imagine it to be. Sooner or later the Government will have to grapple ener-getically with the Morman law-breakers? Why should it sit still, year after year, and allow them to constantly recruit their forces? We are of course aware that the Government has been endeavoring for some time past, through the Ministers and Consuls in Europe, to enlighten this class of immigrants as to the fate in store for them ; but every ship-load of them that lands in New York only shows the necessity for more effective measures.—Tribune.
