Across America; Or, The Great West and the Pacific CoastRusling, James Fowler
History
Across America; Or, The Great West and the Pacific Coast
Rusling, James Fowler
Overland journeys to the Pacific; Pacific States -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
"No doubt. It is a good climate, and there has not been time enough
yet. But, then, have you considered the whole foul brood of downward
influences at work here, and what must be the logical result in due
season, by the very nature of things? Why, with our population of a
hundred thousand souls, we have not a _Free_ School yet in all Utah,
and outside of this city scarcely a _School_-House. Here, we have a
few Ward Schools; but the teachers are inferior, and the rates of
tuition, cost of books etc., so high, that only the children of the
better classes can attend. Brigham Young has a school of his own, in
his seraglio grounds, where his numerous progeny are taught music,
dancing, and some of the commoner branches; but the great bulk of our
rising generation here are growing up in a state of ignorance and
superstition so dense, as to be absolutely inconceivable elsewhere.
So, too, many of the Saints have two or more sisters for wives, at
the same time. Others, again, marry their own blood-cousins, and some
even their own step-daughters. And instances exist, where they have
had mother and daughter for wives, at the same time. Now, where
all this is to end, it seems to me, it is not difficult to predict,
unless Nature suspends her laws, and Evil becomes our Good."
"It is certainly very shocking, judge. But what do you propose to
_do_ about it?"
"Well, I would do something, or at least _try_ to. I have thought a
good deal about it, since I got my eyes open; and, first of all, I
would have Congress authorize and instruct the U. S. Marshal here
to summon the jurors for the U. S. Courts direct. By some strange
oversight, I suspect by Mormon intrigue (for they watch Congress
closely, and boast they control it on all Utah matters usually),
this was omitted in our Organic Act, and consequently our jury-lists
are now taken from the county-lists, which are of course made up by
Mormon sheriffs. Therefore, all open and avowed Gentiles, who have
any back-bone in them, are left off, and we get nobody in our U. S.
jury-boxes even, except Mormons and doughface Gentiles. Of course, such
juries won't indict or convict for polygamy, or any other offence worth
mentioning, if a Mormon is to be mulcted for it. But if our jurors were
summoned by our Marshal direct, out of the whole body of the Territory,
as they are everywhere else, I believe, he could take good care to
put only reliable citizens on the lists, and thus give us juries that
_would_ indict and convict in all necessary or flagrant cases."[10]
"But would the Saints meekly consent to be thus overslaughed, and
ignored?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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