The majority of the population are ignorant
of their rights,--and too pusillanimous to maintain them against the
hierarchy, if they were not. They therefore contribute to its coffers
not merely their tithing, but heavy exactions also for grazing their
cattle on pastures to which they themselves have just as much title as
the nominal proprietors, and for grinding their grain and purchasing
their lumber at mills on streams which are of right common to all the
settlers on their banks.
From the Utah Expedition, then, it has become patent to the world, if
it is not to ourselves, that the Mormons are unwilling to administer a
republican form of government, if not incapable of doing so. The author
of the letter recently addressed by "A Man of the Latin Race" to the
Emperor Napoleon, on the subject of French influence in America,
comments especially upon this fact as symptomatic of the disintegration
of this republic; and allusion is made to it in every other foreign
review of our political condition. It is obviously inconsistent with our
national dignity that a remedy should not be immediately applied; but
when we seek for such, only two courses of action are discernible, in
the maze of political quibbles and constitutional scruples that at once
suggest themselves.
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