Читать книгу Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Vol.1&2) - B. H. Roberts - Страница 51

In concluding his adopted speech the ex-senator suggests a remedy for all our Utah ills; and of course there is none of us who would question his ability to tell the senate just what ought to be done to a state that will no longer have Mr. Kearns for its senator.

The recommendation in substance is this:

Notice must be served upon the Church leaders that they must live within the law. That notice was received a long time ago; and the Mormon Church leaders not only received the notice, but acquiesced in it, too. Prest. Wilford Woodruff received an inspired word that relieved the Church of the burden of maintaining in practice a principle which before then had been regarded as a duty to maintain, in practice as well as in faith. Thus the way was opened for the Mormon leaders to make a concession to the sentiment of the people of the United States, and to the laws of Congress. It is realized by the Mormon leaders also that even if they could they cannot with profit nor to the advantage of the community treat with defiance those laws of the state which prohibit polygamous living. But while that is the case, those involved in that system of marriage which was taught as a divine institution for more than a generation in Utah, have the common rights that belong to those who enjoy the privileges of our free institutions, including home rule, and the administration of the law according to the sentiments of the people where they reside, just as they have the right to be tried by juries of the vicinage where it is alleged the laws are broken. If that local, popular sentiment shall decide that it would be against public policy and the welfare of a large class of the community to rigidly enforce those laws, then I say they are entitled to that clemency. It is for that very reason that home rule in government is so precious a boon, and so necessary to the preservation of the liberties of the people. It is not just that those involved in the Mormon marriage system shall be put in jeopardy of fines and imprisonment by a contemptible spotter and spy, merely an employee of the lowest sensational paper in the United States, the very worst of yellow journals. They have a right to be free from that kind of oppression, and to be subject to the law as administered in harmony with the American spirit of law administration.