We regard it the duty of the nation to set on foot this peaceful, yet most effective, plan. Let the nation at once establish free schools all over the Territory, to let the rising generation breathe constantly the air of liberty and have the light of knowledge, that the ignorance and superstition which form the cement which keeps the Mormon social system from falling into ruins may not get possession of their minds and souls; and let the nation offer large inducements for colonists to emigrate to Utah, and give them every facility. Money spent in this way is for the general welfare, and is as justifiable as to spend money for a national exposition, or for checking the spread of cholera or yellow-fever. If the nation would do these two things, that accursed system of bondage would disappear within the next decade, and the citizens of Utah would “be like the rest of us.”
But if the nation fails to do this, then individual citizens throughout the land, all lovers of humanity, and especially all Christian denominations, should take the matter in hand; and they should not only plant free schools in all parts of the Territory, a few of which have been established already by five different Christian denominations; but they should also form Utah Colonization Societies, whose object should be to secure the planting of pure, freedom-loving, Christian families in every Mormon city, town, and village; and they should not desist until the Mormons are in a minority in Utah, the people freed from their bondage, and the laws respected. Honor demands it; humanity cries out for it; Christianity implores it.
“Up now for Freedom! Not in strife
Like that your sterner fathers saw—
The awful waste of human life,
The glory and the guilt of war;
But break the chain, the yoke remove,
And smite to earth Oppression’s rod,
With those mild arms of Truth and Love,
Made mighty through the Living God!”
PART IV.
THE RELIGIOUS PUZZLE.
“The true grandeur of nations is in those qualities which constitute the true greatness of the individual.”—Charles Sumner.
“A Christian is the highest style of man.”—Young’s Night Thoughts.
“There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.”—Lord Bacon.