In vain chivalrous Spain will call Liberty to give a new life to her people. She cannot set her feet there except to die, so long as the Pope is allowed to strike her in his 50,000 confessionals.
And free America, too, will see all her so dearly-bought liberties destroyed the day that the confessional-box is reared in her midst.
Auricular Confession and Liberty cannot stand together on the same ground; either one or the other must fall.
Liberty must sweep away the confessional, as she has swept away the demon of slavery, or she is doomed to perish.
Can a man be free in his own house, so long as there is another who has the legal right to spy all his actions, and direct not only every step, but every thought of his wife and children? Can that man boast of a home whose wife and children are under the control of another? Is not that unfortunate man really the slave of the ruler and master of his household? And when a whole nation is composed of such husbands and fathers, is it not a nation of abject, degraded slaves?
To a thinking man, one of the most strange phenomena is that our modern nations allow all their most sacred rights to be trampled under feet, and destroyed by the Papacy, the sworn enemy of Liberty, through a mistaken respect and love for that same Liberty!
No people have more respect for Liberty of Conscience than the Americans; but has the noble State of Illinois allowed Joe Smith and Brigham Young to degrade and enslave the American women under the pretext of Liberty of Conscience, appealed to by the so-called "Latter-day Saints?" No! The ground was soon made too hot for the tender conscience of the modern prophets. Joe Smith perished when attempting to keep his captive wives in his chains, and Brigham Young had to fly to the solitudes of the Far West, to enjoy what he called his liberty of conscience with the thirty women he had degraded and enchained under his yoke. But even in that remote solitude the false prophet has heard the distant peals of the roaring thunder. The threatening voice of the great Republic has troubled his rest, and he wisely speaks of going as much as possible out of the reach of Christian civilization, before the dark and threatening clouds which he sees on the horizon will hurl upon him their irresistible storms.
Will any one blame the American people for so going to the rescue of woman? No, surely not.
But what is this confessional-box? Nothing but a citadel and stronghold of Mormonism.
What is this Father Confessor, with few exceptions, but a lucky Brigham Young?