Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
"That man," said William the Third of England,
speaking of an inveterate conspirator against him "is determined to be
made a victim, and I am determined not to make him one." I hope the
United States will deal with the Mormons in a similar spirit. At the
same time, I would ask my brothers of the pen whether those of them who
have visited Salt Lake City have not made the place seem a good deal
more wonderful, more alluringly mysterious, more grandly paradoxical in
its nature, than it really is? I feel convinced that if people in
Lancashire and Wales and Sweden had all been made distinctly aware that
Salt Lake City is only a dusty or muddy little commonplace country
hamlet, where labor is not less hard and is not any better paid than in
dozens or scores of small hamlets this side the Missouri, one vast
temptation to emigrate thither, the temptation supplied by morbid
curiosity and ignorant wonder, would never have had any conquering
power, and Mormonism would have been deprived of many thousand votaries.
For, regarded in an artistic point of view, the City of the Saints is a
vulgar sham; a trumpery humbug; and I verily believe that it has swelled
into importance not more through the fanatical energy of its governing
elders and the ignorance of their followers, than through the
extravagant exaggeration and silly wonder of most of its hostile
visitors and critics.
THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND.
A year ago I happened to be talking with some French friends at a
dinner-table in Paris, about the Reform agitation then going on in
England. "We admire your great orators and leaders," said an
enthusiastic French gentleman; "your Bright, your Beales"--and he was
warming to the subject when he saw that I was smiling, and he at once
pulled up, and asked me earnestly whether he had said anything
ridiculous. I endeavored to explain to him gently that in England we did
not usually place our Bright and our Beales on exactly the same
level--that the former was our greatest orator, our most powerful
leader, and the latter a respectable, earnest gentleman of warm emotions
and ordinary abilities whom chance had made the figure-head of a passing
and vehement agitation, and who would probably be forgotten the day
after to-morrow or thereabouts.
My French friend did not seem convinced. He had seen Mr. Beales's name
in the London papers quite as often and as prominently for some months
as Mr. Bright's; and, moreover, he had met Mr. Beales at dinner, and did
not like to be told that he had not thereby made the acquaintance of a
great tribune of the British people. So I dropped the subject and
allowed our Bright and and our Beales to rank together without farther
protest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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