But this limitation, while shielding the elector, does not necessarily include the juror, the nature of whose functions imperatively requires of him judicial impartiality. Hence the law of 1882 wisely and conservatively provides that any one offered as a juror in a prosecution for bigamy, polygamy, or unlawful cohabitation under a statute of the United States, who believes the acts constituting these offenses right, shall, for such cause, upon challenge, be rejected. With this record of historic names and wisdom and of the organic and municipal law of the land outstretched before us, what addition to it, if any, does experience now admonish? Answering this question, I would respectfully recommend an amendment to the Federal Constitution perpetually prohibiting polygamy under whatsoever its guise, not only in the States, but also in the Territories and other places over which the United States have or may have exclusive jurisdiction. The importance of such an amendment can not be overestimated. I would draw under a common and uniform civil cognizance the conditions of marriage and divorce, with the evidence and the authentication of the evidence of their verity, and thus subserve convenience and certainty in respect of the paramount feature of social life. Moreover, it would draw under the same cognizance the question of monogamy and polygamy, upon the dual terms of which in the one case turns the capacities of individual, social, and national development, and, in the other, turns the deadening and corrupting influence of the patriarchal principle and stationary despotism. It would substitute a lasting organic law for a fugitive legislative enactment, which must cease to operate with the cessation of the anomalous Territorial condition. It would raise an inferred and parasitic power, obscurely deduced from another power, administrative in its terms, and pointing directly to the disposal of property, to the dignity and distinctness of an expressed power. It would inure as a solemn, deliberate, and final repudiation in this country of the Asiatic and African pestilence, polygamy. It would be an authoritative and conclusive notification to immigrants from every land that the United States are dedicated to the virtues and blessings of monogamy, and, not least, the amendment, passing as a lesson into the common and higher schools of the land, would form and train the minds of generations in accord with its spirit and reason. The material prosperity of a community generally depends upon the tillage of the soil. It was the commandment of the Creator to man that he should go forth and till the soil and live by the sweat of his face. Hence, whatever concerns the fulfillment and fruition of that commandment is of the first importance. This promised, the question arises, what disposition of the public lands in Utah would best subserve the purposes and interests of that law? To answer this question intelligently and usefully, it is requisite to advert to the extent of the Territory, to its natural features, to its climate and mineral resources. Its length, north and south, is 325 miles. Its breadth, east and west, is 300 miles. It lies between the 37th and 42d parallels, north, and the 109th and 114th meridian west, Greenwich. The climate is rarely rigorous, and generally exhilarating and salubrious. This is witnessed by the noticeable physical development of the whites. The out-put of certain mines for the calendar year 1887 was : Of gold Of silver... Total.... $220,000 7,000,000 7,220,000 Of the copper and coal products, I am only prepared to say gener ally that they were considerable and are increasing. Commonly the presage of rain is delusive and the rain-fall deficient. On the whole, the region is naturally dry and arid. The snow-fall is the chief reliance for water, fertilization, and sustenance of vegetation. Artificial irrigation has been availed of, but, for lack of capital with the farmers, only in a desultory and imperfect manner. This fact, opening a field for speculation in lands and water rents, is engaging the attention of moneyed corporations and syndicates, but with a dubious prospect of ultimate advantage to settlers. The urgent need is a comprehensive and scientific plan of irrigation. There should be no waste of water. As far as may be found advantageously practicable, waters of the rivers, lakes, cañons, and other mountain torrents should be made tributary to capacious and durable reservoirs for regulated distribution for all needful purposes. Such a scheme appeals to the favor of Congress for economic and other reasons. As an efficient and suitable means of accomplishing it, I would respectfully suggest the cession of the unappropriated and unreserved lands of the United States in Utah for that purpose, under a compact concurrent with the eventual admission of the Territory as a State, and guarantying the application of the proceeds of the sales of the lands, or a reasonable annual tax thereon, to insure its faithful execution. I would further suggest the extension of such a scheme to the other arid Territories and the new States of the West, placing all the communities of the arid region upon the same level of advantage. Under the operation of such a scheme the area of profitable production would be greatly increased. Comparably it would be greater than the arable area of the six New England States, and capable of sustaining a more numerous population. The effect in relation to the Mormon imbroglio would not be uncertain. Taking form in an influx of immigrants of predominating numbers and influence from the old States, the end of polygamy where it exists in the incipient States and the Territories would be irresistibly hastened and assured. In fact, the shortest way to the end of that evil lies in such a scheme. The advantage of irrigation has been conclusively demonstrated. Rainless Egypt affords a striking and apposite example. With a narrow strip of land actually cultivated, containing less than 5,000,000 acres bisected by the Nile and irrigated by its annual overflow, she even now, in her decay and despair, finds a resource capable of sustaining its 4,000,000 occupants and of supplying an annual tribute in taxes amounting to millions to her foreign creditors, showing that the propor tion of land in acres to the population is as one acre and a fraction of an acre to each occupant. The fact seems incredible, yet it is well attested. That resource affords the key to the conspicuous part played by Egypt in the ages of her power and prestige; to her armed conquests; to her lavish expenditures, evidenced by her colossal pyramids; to her convergence of the ancient lines of commerce upon Thebes and Cairo, upon Bagdad and Alexandria; to her antique yet mystic lore, which, borrowed and purged by the versatile Greeks of its sinister expression, became successively the beacon-light of the letters and literature of the pagan and Christian world. The law creating the Commission, providing, as we have seen, for the representation of different political parties in its composition, plainly intended that it should be administered with judicial fairness and impartiality-in a non-partisan spirit. Dealing with the elective franchise and eligibility to office, elemental to republican government, it could hardly have been otherwise. Guided by the law and its intent, I have abstained from wresting either, while I have faithfully endeavored to give due effect to both. I have already said that the existing laws are working well, and have cited accumulated proofs of the fact. To "let well enough alone" is a wise and safe rule. I would therefore recommend general adherence to it. Further aggressive legislation trenching further upon civil and political privileges would be injurious rather than beneficial. It would be regarded by the people affected as revolutionary and despotic. Savoring, under the circumstances, of persecution for religious opinion, it would provoke resentful feelings, an obstinate and reactionary mood. Such has been the effect of such legislation in all like cases. No religion was ever finally destroyed by e.ther armed or unarmed proscription. "The blood of the martyr is the seed of the church." The Mormon religion purged of its impurities will probably survive, how long no one can foresee. Its votaries, impelled by the zeal characteristic of a new sect, are active propagandists. Its vices, however, like those distorting any other system, must be amenable to the corrective laws of progress and intelligence. Civilization is a sublime revelation, modifying, improving, and elevating the yearnings of the human heart and mind. The ages of that fanaticism and fatuity which contrived the inquisition and the rack; which invented the medieval writ de heretico comubrendo; which burned Latimer and Ridley at the stake; which inflicted the massacre of St. Bartholomew; which ruthlessly exterminated dissenters from orthodoxy in the Netherlands, and which drove the Puritans, the Huguenots, the Quakers, and their co-devotees to the cause of freedom in their native lands to find refuge in the New World, and to people it with teeming millions, and to bless it with republican principles and forms-those ages have passed away. To revive their dark and intolerant spirit now, in the nineteenth century, would add another proof and lament that the course of nations is not upon straight lines, but in wayward circles, ending where they began. and rebeginning where they ended. The commentary of the philosophical historian would not be doubted. Passing the dismal panorama of reaction before him, he would not spare just censure upon whomsoever or whatsoever it should fall. Hon. JOHN W. NOBLE, JOHN A. MCCLERNAND. Secretary of the Interior, Washington, D. C. APPENDIX. NOTE A. CLERK'S OFFICE, FIRST DISTRICT COURT, UTAH, DEAR SIR: Herewith please find the information, as requested in the letter from the secretary of the Utah Commission. Yours, etc., Hon. J. W. JUDD. B. BACHMAN, JR. For the period commencing September 1, 1888, ending June 1, 1889: FIRST DISTRICT Court, Ogden, Utah, September 7, 1889. DEAR SIR: Your letter to Judge Henderson has been handed to me to answer. I herewith make the following report, to wit: The number of convictions upon the charges of bigamy and polygamy since the 1st day of September, 1888, to the 1st of September, 1889, in this end of the district, has been 4, of which there were no suspensions of sentence. The number of convictions for unlawful cohabitation, adultery, incest, and fornication was 102. Your letter would have been answered before this, but I have been away; out of the Territory. Very respectfully, ELIJAH SELLS, Esq., H. H. HENDERSON. Salt Lake City, Utah. NOTE A. SECOND DISTRICT COURT, SIR: In compliance with your request of the 13th inst. to the judge of the second district court, to cause to be transmitted to you a statement of the number of convictions had in said court for bigamy and polygamy since September 1, 1888, etc., respectfully submit the following report: I (1) Convictions had for bigamy and polygamy, none. (2) Sentences suspended for such convictions, none. (3) Number of convictions for unlawful cohabitation, adultery, incest, and fornication-that is, to particularize: 19 for unlawful cohabitation, 1 for adultery, and 1 for fornication. GENTLEMEN: His honor Judge Zane requests me to reply to your request for in formation of the 13th instant, and submit the following: Since September 1, 1888, in third district court, Utah: Conviction for polygamy and bigamy. Sentences suspended.. Conviction for unlawful cohabitation Suspension of sentences.. Conviction for adultery Conviction for incest.. Conviction for fornification.. Respectfully, None. None. 42 2 None. None. HENRY G. MCMILLAN, Clerk District Court. To the honorable the MEMBERS OF THE UTAH COMMISSION. NOTE B. FROM HON. CHARLES S. ZANE. OFFICE OF THE UTAH COMMISSION, DEAR SIR: In view of your great experience and eminent service as a judge in this Territory, I beg leave to ask of you brief answers, as matter of useful information, to the following questions: 1. Whether, in your opinion, the existing laws, diligently enforced, may be reasonably relied on to work the cessation of polygamy as a practice? 2. Whether any case originating in the commission of the crime of polygamy since the date of the Edmunds-Tucker act has come under your judicial notice? 3. Whether, in your opinion, the alternative provisions of that act, extending the electoral franchise to those complying with their conditions and denying it to those not complying with them (or who are otherwise disqualified), have materially prompted the present movement for a constitutional inhibition of polygamy? Your obedient servant, Hon. CHARLES S. ZANE, United States Judge Third District, Utah Territory. To the first question propounded within I answer yes. To the third question I answer yes. JOHN A. MCCLERNAND. C. S. ZANE. |