The Life of John Taylor / Third President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

by B. H. Roberts

LABORS AFTER THE UTAH WAR—A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE—SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE—PROBATE JUDGE—GREAT DISCUSSION WITH VICE-PRESIDENT SCHUYLER COLFAX.

After the close of the "Mormon War," Elder Taylor's public labors were mostly confined to Utah. For a number of years he traveled extensively through all the settlements of the Saints, preaching the gospel, usually accompanying President Brigham Young in his annual preaching tours. He also attended all conferences and councils, and assisted in a general way all public enterprises.

He was a member of the Utah Territorial Legislature from 1857 to 1876; and was elected speaker of the House for five successive sessions, beginning in 1857. As the Speaker of the House he won the esteem of the members by his uniform courtesy and fairness. As a member he sought to promote the interests of his constituents and at the same time to legislate for the welfare of the entire Territory.

In 1868 he was elected Probate Judge of Utah County, and continued in office until the December term of that court in 1870. As the laws of Utah then provided that the probate courts should "have power to exercise original jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, and as well in chancery as in common law," the position was one of considerable importance. Especially in those days when the perverseness of Federal judges led them frequently to close the district courts indefinitely, because, forsooth, the grand juries insisted on indicting men only when the facts before them warranted such action, and petit juries insisted on the right to judge the guilt or innocence of men accused of crime according to the facts proven in open court, instead of finding them guilty or innocent according as the wishes or prejudices of the judge would have them condemned or liberated.

During these years, too, he continued to stand up in defense of the rights and liberties of the Saints, missing no opportunity to speak out in his bold, manly style against those who would wrong them.

In October, 1869, Utah for the second time was visited by the Hon. Schuyler Colfax, then vice-President of the United States. On the 5th of the month he delivered a speech from the portico of the Townsend House, now the Continental Hotel. In that speech, which was extensively published in the east, the vice-president made an attack on the Mormon religion, and justified Congress in the enactment of laws against the practice of plural marriage. To this speech Elder Taylor, then temporarily absent from the Territory, in Boston, replied through the columns of the New York Tribune.

In his speech the vice-president took the position that the marriage institution of the Saints did not involve the question of religion; his exact words were: "I do not concede that the institution you have established here, and which is condemned by the law, is a question of religion;" and from that basis argued the question. His main point of argument I quote, observing only in passing that it has been the argument of tyrants and persecutors, acting under the cloak of law, ever since liberty had to struggle against oppression:

"I have no strictures to utter as to your creed on any really religious question. Our land is a land of civil and religious liberty, and the faith of every man is a matter between himself and God alone. You have as much right to worship the Creator through a President and twelve apostles of your church organization, as I have through the ministers and elders and creed of mine. And this right I would defend for you with as much zeal as the right of every other denomination throughout the land.

"But our country is governed by law, and no assumed revelation justifies any one in trampling on the law. If it did, every wrong-doer would use that argument to protect himself in his disobedience to it."

Replying to this part of the Vice-President's argument, Elder Taylor commended the magnanimity and even-handed justice of the first paragraph saying that the sentiments did honor to the author of them and that they ought to be engraven on every American heart. To the second paragraph he replied: