UTAH'S SOCIAL CONDITION.
WHY THE ANTI-POLYGAMY LAW SHOULD BE ENFORCED—CLAIMS OF THE TERRITORY TO STATEHOOD.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10.—In his annual report to the Secretary of the Interior, on affairs in Utah, Gov. Murray thus describes the social condition of the people of that Territory:
"The Territory of Utah stretches from the thirty-seventh degree to the forty-second degree latitude. With the exception of Utah there is now a solid line of States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Between the same latitudes and between the oceans lie 20 of the 38 States of the Union. With the great roadways of the continent running through and joining within her borders; with the climate of this parallel made lovely by altitude and softened by its location in the great basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada; in-cluding in its population a large number of thrifty, industrious, law-abiding, and law-loving people—with all this there remains a reason why Utah should be denied statehood, possessing as she does requisites which, otherwise, would entitle her to become a State. The United States should give to Utah a good government. As it is she possesses 'the shadow but not the substance of govern-ment.' There has not been that thrifty growth her valleys, mines, and situation entitle her to. As it is Utah can never be American, and in accord with a people whose highest allegiance is to the flag of the United States; and as long as Utah is allowed to remain with her present practices, organization, and laws, it cannot be said that this Government deals out equal and exact justice to all its citizens. It cannot be claimed that the United States sees to it that her laws are fairly and surely executed. If not the chief corner-stone, at least a continuing practice of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" is polygamy, defended by its members, practiced by them, and solemnized with secret rites, without civil or church record, and by regularly ap-pointed officers of the Church. The Church dic-tates, suggests, or its influences control all things, spiritual or secular, among its people. The officers of the Church and those in polygamy, to a great extent, fill the offices in the Territory, enact its laws, and execute them. Congress passed in 1862 a law forbidding polygamy, and prescribing penal-ties. This law, I am sure, is approved by the entire law-abiding and well-thinking people of the United States from Maine to Texas. It has been adjudged by the Supreme Court to be constitutional, and yet the Government for years has permitted the law to be ruthlessly thrust aside and others to be enacted that practically obstruct the statute so as to make it impossible to convict under it, and allow the Territory to be governed in such a way as to put a premium on crime, and further permit the guilty ones to be sent to the Legislature and to Congress, and to be paid for their record and services out of the Treasury of the United States. Why should the Government of the United States allow one of its citizens to be sentenced to the penitentiary, say in New-York, for violating a law of Congress, and allow another here to so unwhipped in willfully violating a law similarly passed, and be promoted to office as a premium for his crime? Congress should wipe out its statute against polygamy, remove every officer who is sworn to see its laws executed, furnish free transportation to a quarter section of free land to each of the thousands of non-Mormons who with their stout hearts and strong muscles have made homes in this part of their country, repeal all laws objectionable to the dominant Church here, so that the Territory may be run under ecclesiastical sug-gestion, pass a law constituting this an independent polygamous State, a thing apart from the "wicked people" of the United States; or it should at once make it possible to execute the laws already passed—one or the other. Sheer justice to the thousands of children yet to be born with illegitimacy as their birthmark under this illegal and indecent system; mercy to the first and only wife, when lustful or religiously fanatical husbands thrust them aside for new and fresher companions; respect for its own laws, equal and exact justice to all, these and more make plaintive demands of Congress for speedy and sure adjustment of the wrongs, the termination of contentions that curse this goodly land, and must continue to do so until proper legislation brings relief. Time will not prove the remedy. It is revelation (so called), against statute law. If the United States proposes that Utah and several other of its Territories soon to be overspread by emigration is to be governed by revelation, well and good. If, however, it pro-poses in the future, as in the past, to govern by laws of Congress, applicable for all the people, then it is all wrong. If Congress is right, if the Supreme Court is right, if the President is right, if the peo-ple of the United States are right on this question, then this idea here persisted in is wrong, as it tends to, it has been claimed, and does practically, unite Church and State, enslave this people, and constitute them law-breakers.
