General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United StatesSmith, Joseph, Jr.
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General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States
Smith, Joseph, Jr.
Church and state -- Mormon Church; Latter Day Saints
No honest man can doubt for a moment, but the glory of American
liberty, is on the wane, and that calamity and confusion will sooner or
later destroy the peace of the people. Speculators will urge a national
bank as a savior of credit and comfort. A hireling pseudo priesthood
will plausibly push abolition doctrines and doings, and "human rights,"
into Congress and into every other place, where conquest smells of
fame, or opposition swells to popularity.--Democracy, Whiggery, and
Cliquery, will attract their elements and foment divisions among the
people, to accomplish fancied schemes and accumulate power, while
poverty driven to despair, like hunger forcing its way through a wall,
will break through the statutes of men, to save life, and mend the
breach of prison glooms.
A still higher grade, of what the "nobility of nations" call "great
men," will dally with all rights, in order to smuggle a fortune at
"one fell swoop;" mortgage Texas, possess Oregon, and claim all the
unsettled regions of the world for hunting and trapping; and should an
humble, honest man, red, black, or white, exhibit a better title, these
gentry have only to clothe the judge with richer ermine, and spangle
the lawyer's finger with finer rings, to have the judgment of his
peers, and the honor of his lords as a pattern of honesty, virtue and
humanity, while the motto hangs on his nation's escutcheon: "_Every man
has his price!_"
Now, oh! people! turn unto the Lord and live; and reform this nation.
Frustrate the designs of wicked men. Reduce Congress at least one half.
Two Senators from a state and two members to a million of population,
will do more business than the army that now occupy the halls of the
National Legislature. Pay them two dollars and their board per diem;
(except Sundays,) that is more than the farmer gets, and he lives
honestly. Curtail the offices of government in pay, number and power;
for the Philistine lords have shorn our nation of its goodly locks in
the lap of Delilah.
Petition your state legislatures to pardon every convict in their
several penitentiaries, blessing them as they go, and saying to them,
in the name of the Lord, _go thy way and sin no more_. Advise your
legislators when they make laws for larceny, burglary or any felony, to
make the penalty applicable to work upon roads, public works, or any
place where the culprit can be taught more wisdom and more virtue; and
become more enlightened. Rigor and seclusion will never do as much to
reform the propensities of man, as reason and friendship. Murder only
can claim confinement or death. Let the penitentiaries be turned into
seminaries of learning, where intelligence, like the angels of heaven,
would banish such fragments of barbarism: Imprisonment for debt is a
meaner practice than the savage tolerates with all his ferocity; "Amor
vincit amnia." Love conquers all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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