| 328 it establishes polygamy and sectarian political power. The sanctity of marriage and the family relation are the corner-stone of our American society and civilization. Religious liberty and the separation of the church and state are among the elementary ideas of free institutions. To reëstablish the interests and principles which polygamy and Mormonism have imperiled, and to fully reopen to intelligent and virtuous immigrants of all creeds that part of our domain which has been, in a great degree, closed to general immigration by intolerant and immoral institutions, it is recommended that the government of the territory of Utah be reorganized.
"I recommend that Congress provide for the government of Utah by a governor and judges, or commissioners, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate,-a government analogous to the provisional government established for the territory northwest of the Ohio by the ordinance of 1787. If, however, it is deemed best to continue the existing form of local government, I recommend that the right to vote, hold office, and sit on juries in the territory of Utah be confined to those who neither practice nor uphold polygamy. If thorough measures are adopted, it is believed that within a few years the evils which now afflict Utah will be eradicated, and that this territory will in good time become one of the most prosperous and attractive of the new States of the Union."
It should be remembered that when, in 1866, we were summoned before the territorial committee, as a witness upon Utah affairs, we did not advise new and oppressive legislative enactments; but did recommend that crime in Utah should be treated as crime in any other section of the country was and ought to be treated; holding that it was not the severity, but the surety of prosecution and punishment that deterred men from the commission of crimes against the law. It was our opinion then, it is our opinion now, that so long as those transgressors escaped punishment from the venality, or weakness of executors of the law, just so long would polygamy survive. We are not now, we never have been in favor of official and legal oppression, or mob violence; but, under the genius of the inspiration that declared, "he that keepeth the law of God hath no need to break the laws of the land," we are in favor of the arrest and just legal punishment of those who willfully and persistently continue to violate law.
Our Utah religionists told their people in 1866, that we went to Washington to incite the Government to hostility to them. We now give them another opportunity to make the same statement because our offense now is precisely what it was then; and we can see that President Hayes seems to be of the same opinion that we then gave, that certain punishment only, will be effectual to the suppression of that crime in Utah. . . .
Whatever Congress may do in the premises under this recommend of President Hayes, we trust that the language of the Book of Covenants
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