safety,
government, comfort, and control, and for the punishment of all offences
relating to fellowship, according to its covenants. By this act the
Church is invested with absolute and perpetual sovereignty. Under it
the whole system of polygamy is conducted, for plural marriages are
sanctioned by the covenants; the Danite organization is authorized, for
it is instituted for the comfort and control of the Church, and the
punishment of offences relative to fellowship; the burden of the taxes
is thrown in a yearly increasing ratio upon Gentiles, for the Church
property exempted from taxation amounts already to several millions
of dollars, and increases every day; and the treasonable rites of the
Endowment are celebrated, and the inferior members of the Church tithed
and pillaged, for the benefit of the First Presidency and the Twelve
Apostles. Acts also exist legalizing negro and Indian slavery. There are
within the Territory at the present time not more than fifty or sixty
negroes, but there are several hundred Indians, held in servitude.
These are mostly Pyides, into whose country some of the Utah bands make
periodical forays, capturing their young women and children, whom they
sell to the Navajoes in New Mexico, as well as to the Mormons. There are
other acts, which rob the United States judges of their jurisdiction,
civil, criminal, and in equity, and confer it on the Probate Courts;
which forbid the citation of any reports, even those of the Supreme
Court of the United States, during any trial; which regulate the descent
of property so as to include the issue of polygamic marriages among the
legal heirs; which withdraw from exemption from attachment the entire
property of persons suspected of an intention to leave the Territory;
which authorize the invasion of domiciles for purposes of search, upon
the simple order of any judicial officer; which legalize the rendition
of verdicts in civil cases upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the
jurors; which command attorneys to present in court, under penalty
of fine and imprisonment, in all cases, every fact of which they are
cognizant, "whether calculated to make against their clients or not";
which restrict the institution of proceedings against adulterers to the
husband or the wife of one of the guilty parties; which levy duties
on all goods imported into the Territory for sale; which abolish
the freedom of the ballot-box, by providing that each vote shall be
numbered,