It can be plainly seen from that meeting that the leading Mormon women are in earnest in their plea for polygamy, and that it is practised because _they believe God commanded it_; and consequently it can never be overcome by human law. SENATOR HOAR, who, with Senator Edmunds, has divided the honor of originating radical laws against Mormon polygamy, seems himself to have acknowledged their worthlessness as an effective remedy. The following letter from him to Joseph Cook was read by the latter in connection with his lecture delivered in Boston, February 2d, 1885: "WASHINGTON, January 31, 1885. "MY DEAR SIR: I am glad that the topics of Mormonism and the reorganization of the South are to be discussed in your lectures in Boston. Massachusetts is an old State. Her people dwell under institutions which have been ripening for two hundred and fifty years; but in the West, in the heart of the Continent, and in the South we are laying foundations still. If Mormonism live and grow, the Christian family will not be an element in the civilization of the great Central States of the future. If the 30,000,000 of the colored race who within fifty years will inhabit the States of the South are to be a race of peasants, denied their practical and equal share in the Government by such processes as have prevailed in recent years, the republic itself cannot continue. The Russian 'despotism tempered by assassination' is quite as desirable as Republicanism tempered by both assassination and fraud. _In the warfare with these things, the school and the Christian Church are to be our most potent instruments. They can accomplish more than any political party._ I have contemplated with the greatest satisfaction the noble work in this cause of our New England churches and of the associations they have organized. "I am yours, very truly, "GEORGE F. HOAR." It is, indeed, true that the school and the Christian Church are more "potent instruments" for the overthrow of polygamy than any laws of our political legislators. Law does not reach the evil, for it rests upon a strong religious conviction. _Law cannot reach it._ To make a law that a man shall not be fanatical is to waste paper on which something sensible might be written; for Congress to undertake to keep people from becoming fanatics is unspeakably ludicrous. Legislation in that direction is intrusive. Law provides for the punishment of an overt act, and is absolutely powerless as to a man's eccentricity.