| 385 truth, and that he is in league with those who counsel violence as the proper means of settling the "Mormon" question. He would have force applied where argument fails; and although possessed of positive information, proving beyond the possibility of a doubt that his lamented father introduced and practiced the system of plural marriage now held by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he still, in the spirit of a lawyer and against the spirit of a gospel teacher, technically disputes and virtually denies his father's connection with that principle and attempts to attribute its origin to Brigham Young.
The most atrocious thing in the speech is the vile and filthy falsehood about the contamination of women by "Mormon" bishops. It is a lie the blackness of which can not be painted. No one but a depraved and corrupt being, whose conscience is seared as with an iron heated in the infernal pit, could utter such calumny. It is hard to believe that one who knows something of the sanctity which attaches to the relations of the sexes in this church, could descend so low in the scale of mendacity as to utter such a gross and uncalled for libel upon "Mormon" men and women.
Thus this man not only seeks to deceive the public upon an important point, and, as will be seen from his address, attempts to misinterpret the teachings of the Book of Mormon on this subject, but he descends to the level of the liar and defamer, and joins in an endeavor to bring trouble if not destruction upon the people who live but to carry out the revelations of God received through his father as the mouthpiece of heaven.
He was introduced as "Bishop Smith" by Honorable John Wentworth-a nice specimen of Chicago morality-as "a man who has suffered more in the cause to be discussed than any other man on the face of the earth." It would have greatly puzzled Wentworth or any other man to show wherein "Bishop Smith" had suffered anything whatever in that cause.
To this President Smith replied in Herald for June 1, 1882, as follows:
Some of the statements made by the Editor in the speech, complained of by the News, are not given in the Tribune's report as they were uttered. This is the case with the one referring to the "contamination of women by Mormon bishops." The statement as made by the Editor was this; that while in Salt Lake City, in 1876, he became acquainted with an unmarried man, then thirty-nine years old, whose youth and early manhood had been spent in Utah. The Editor asked him the question why he had not married, and he gave in reply substantially, that he did not know where to go in the Territory, to get a wife; that it was not easy to find young marriageable women who were not already married into polygamous families, or were bespoken for some bishop. This man further stated that he was not alone in being unmarried for the same cause, the contamination of polygamy. We believe the statement made
(page 385) |
