The Mormon Problem, the Nation's Dilemma; A New Data, New Method, Involving Leading Questions of the Day (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1885 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. MORMON CREDENTIALS. 'The importance of the question of the intellectual and moral status of the Mormon people, must be conceded on all hands. "By their fruits ye shall know them." But the question must have a double significance, if the judgment passed on the Mormons is invalidated, instead of being supported, by facts. A reversal of the picture to which our minds have been so long accustomed, must arraign our whole course of action, for it cannot be denied that this prejudice has served as a leverage for legislation from the beginning up to this moment, disposing the public to give a ready and facile assent to anti-Mormon measures of whatever kind.' And who can compute the injury done a people, by wholesale misrepresentations, so persistent, so unrelenting? Now there is scarcely a virtue we have been willing to allow the Mormon, and scarcely a crime with which he has not been charged. This is a phase of the question to which little or no attention has been given. 1 THE CHARGES. When the first anti-polygamy bill was under discussion, the member of the House who reported the bill, said: "I do not know that we could have looked for a different state of things in that Territory, considering the character of the people who have taken possession of it. We certainly had no right to expect from them any very high degree of morality. The disciples of Mormonism might not be expected to display a very exemplary conduct. Not only was it not to be expected, but perhaps it was not to be desired that the result should have been different. It was fit and it was fortunate that so low and degrading an imposture should reveal itself in its devilish fruits." Another member speaks thus: "What person of pure sensibilities and pious aspirations but is shocked by the ...