"Loyola did not invent and put into use the faggot, the flame, the sword, the thumbscrews, the rack and gibbet to persecute anybody, it was to purify the Church of heretics, as others would purify Utah. His zeal was for the Holy Mother Church. The Nonconformists of England and Holland, the Huguenots of France and the Scottish non-Covenanters were not persecuted or put to death for their religion; it was for being schismatics, turbulent and unbelievers. All of the above claimed that they were persecuted for their religion. All of the persecutors, as Mr. Colfax said about us, did 'not concede that the institution they had established which was condemned by the law, was religion;' or, in other terms, it was an imposture or false religion."
Referring to the injustice and oppression which had been perpetrated on humanity in the name of law, he wrote the following fine vein of sarcasm:
"When Jesus was plotted against by Herod and the infants were put of death, who could complain? It was law: we must submit to law. The Lord Jehovah, or Jesus, the Savior of the world, has no right to interfere with law. Jesus was crucified according to law. Who can complain? Daniel was thrown into a den of lions strictly according to law. The king would have saved him, if he could; but he could not resist law. The massacre of St. Bartholomew was in accordance with law. The guillotine of Robespierre, of France, which cut heads off by the thousand, did it according to law. What right had the victims to complain? But these things were done in barbarous ages. Do not let us, then, who boast of our civilization, follow their example; let us be more just, more generous, more forbearing, more magnanimous. We are told that we are living in a more enlightened age. Our morals are more pure, (?) our ideas more refined and enlarged, our institutions more liberal. 'Ours,' says Mr. Colfax, 'is a land of civil and religious liberty, and the faith of every man is a matter between himself and God alone,' providing God don't shock our moral ideas by introducing something we don't believe in. If He does, let Him look out. We won't persecute, very far be that from us; but we will make our platforms, pass Congressional laws and make you submit to them. We may, it is true, have to send out an army, and shed the blood of many; but what of that? It is so much more pleasant to be proscribed and killed according to the laws of the Great Republic, in the 'asylum for the oppressed,' than to perish ignobly by the decrees of kings, through their miserable minions, in the barbaric ages."
The reply of Elder Taylor to the Vice-President's speech brought that gentleman out again in a long article on the Mormon question, published in the New York Independent. In addition to repeating the main argument of his speech, Mr. Colfax, undertook to trace out the history of the Mormons and answer the arguments of Elder Taylor. To this second production Elder Taylor made an elaborate and masterly reply that was quite as extensively published in the east as was the Vice-President's article. He followed his opponent through all his meanderings in dealing with the Mormon question; he corrected his errors, reproved his blunders, answered his arguments, laughed at his folly; now belaboring him with the knotty cudgel of unanswerable argument, and now roasting him before the slow fire of his sarcasm; now honoring him for his zeal, which, however mistaken, had the smack of honesty about it; and now pitying him for being led astray on some historical fact.
In the opening of his article the Vice-President made a rather ungenerous effort to belittle the achievements of the Mormon people, in redeeming the desert valleys of Utah. "For this," said he, "they claim great credit: and I would not detract one iota from all they are legitimately entitled to. It was a desert when they first emigrated thither. They have made large portions of it fruitful and productive, and their chief city is beautiful in location and attractive in its gardens and shrubbery. But the solution of it all is in one word—water. What seemed to the eye a desert became fruitful when irrigated; and the mountains whose crests are clothed in perpetual snow, furnished, in the unfailing supplies of their ravines, the necessary fertilizer."
This afforded Elder Taylor a fine opportunity for one of those poetic flights so frequently to be met with both in his writings and sermons. "Water!" he exclaimed. "Mirabile dictu! Here I must help Mr. C. out."
"This wonderful little water nymph, after playing with the clouds on our mountain tops, frolicking with the snow and rain in our rugged gorges for generations, coquetting with the sun and dancing to the sheen of the moon, about the time the Mormons came here, took upon herself to perform a great miracle, and descending to the valley with a wave of her magic wand and the mysterious words, 'hiccory, diccory, dock,' cities and streets were laid out, crystal waters flowed in ten thousand rippling streams, fruit trees and shrubbery sprang up, gardens and orchards abounded, cottages and mansions were organized, fruits, flowers and grain in all their elysian glory appeared and the desert blossomed as the rose; and this little frolicking elf, so long confined to the mountains and water courses proved herself far more powerful than Cinderella or Aladdin. Oh! Jealousy, thou green-eyed monster! Can no station in life be protected from the shimmer of thy glamour? must our talented and honorable Vice-President be subjected to thy jaundiced touch? But to be serious, did water tunnel through our mountains, construct dams, canals and ditches, lay out our cities and towns, import and plant choice fruit-trees, shrubs and flowers, cultivate the land and cover it with the cattle on a thousand hills, erect churches, school-houses and factories, and transform a howling wilderness into a fruitful field and a garden? * * * * * * * Unfortunately for Mr. Colfax, it was Mormon polygamists who did it. * * * * * What if a stranger on gazing upon the statuary in Washington and our magnificent Capitol, and after rubbing his eyes were to exclaim, 'Eureka! it is only rock and mortar and wood!' This discoverer would announce that instead of the development of art, intelligence, industry and enterprise, its component parts were simply stone, mortar and wood. Mr. Colfax has discovered that our improvements are attributable to water!"
Replying to the Vice-President's arguments and illustrations that the United States was justified in suppressing what it considered to be immoral, notwithstanding the Mormons claimed it to be part of their religious faith—in the course of which Mr. Colfax referred to the now familiar conduct of the English government in suppressing the suttee in India—Elder Taylor said:
"To present Mr. Colfax's argument fairly, it stands thus: The burning of Hindoo widows was considered a religious rite by the Hindoos. The British were horrified at the practice, and suppressed it. The Mormons believe polygamy to be a religious rite. The American nation consider it a scandal, and that they ought to put it down. Without entering into all the details, I think the above a fair statement of the question. He says 'The claim that religious faith commanded it was powerless, and it went down, as a relic of barbarism.' He says: 'History tells us what a civilized nation, akin to ours, actually did, where they had the power.' I wish to treat this argument with candor: * * * * * *
"The British suppressed the suttee in India, and therefore we must be equally moral and suppress polygamy in the United States. Hold! not so fast; let us state facts as they are and remove the dust. The British suppressed the suttee, but tolerated eighty-three millions of polygamists in India. The suppression of the suttee and that of polygamy are two very different things. If the British are indeed to be our exemplars, Congress had better wait until polygamy is suppressed in India. But it is absurd to compare the suttee to polygamy; one is murder and the destruction of life, the other is national economy and the increase and perpetuation of life. Suttee ranks truly with infanticide, both of which are destructive of human life. Polygamy is salvation compared with either, and tends even more than monogamy to increase and perpetuate the human race."