History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 6Smith, Joseph, Jr.
History
History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 6
Smith, Joseph, Jr.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Smith, Joseph, Jr., 1805-1844
One Congress passes a law, another repeals it; and one statesman
says that the Constitution means this, and another that; and who
does {157} not know that all may be wrong? the opinion and pledge,
therefore, in the first paragraph of your reply to my question,
like the forced steam from the engine of a steam-boat, makes the
show of a bright cloud at first; but when it comes in contact with
a purer atmosphere, dissolves to common air again.
Your second paragraph leaves you naked before yourself, like a
likeness in a mirror, when you say, that according to your _view,_
the Federal Government is "one of limited and specific powers," and
has no jurisdiction in the case of the "Mormons." So then a State
can at any time expel any portion of her citizens with impunity:
and, in the language of Mr. Van Buren, frosted over with your
gracious _"views of the case,"_ though the cause is ever so just,
Government can do nothing for them, because it has no power.
Go on, then, Missouri, after another set of inhabitants (as the
Latter-day Saints did,) have entered some two or three hundred
thousand dollars' worth of land, and made extensive improvements
thereon; go on, then, I say; banish the occupants or owners, or
kill them, as the mobbers did many of the Latter-day Saints, and
take their land and property as spoil; and let the Legislature,
as in the case of the "Mormons," appropriate a couple of hundred
thousand dollars to pay the mob for doing that job; for the
renowned Senator from South Carolina, Mr. J. C. Calhoun, says the
powers of the Federal Government are so _specific and limited that
it has no jurisdiction of the case!_ O ye people who groan under
the oppression of tyrants!--ye exiled Poles, who have felt the iron
hand of Russian grasp!--ye poor and unfortunate among all nations!
come to the asylum of the oppressed; buy ye lands of the General
Government; pay in your money to the treasury to strengthen the
army and the navy; worship God according to the dictates of your
own consciences; pay in your taxes to support the great heads of a
glorious nation: but remember a _"sovereign State"_ is so much more
powerful than the United States, the parent Government, that it
can exile you at pleasure, mob you with impunity, confiscate your
lands and property, have the Legislature sanction it,--yea, even
murder you as an edict of an emperor, _and it does no wrong;_ for
the noble Senator of South Carolina says the power of the federal
Government is _so limited and specific, that it has no jurisdiction
of the case!_ What think ye of _imperium in imperio_?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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