Although Judge Shaver, one of the best of jurists, tacitly acknowledged the jurisdiction of Probate Courts, Judge Kinney is the first who has dared assert his decision judicially.
In describing the operations of the two conflicting judiciaries, I shall borrow the words of both parties.CONFLICTING JUDICIARIES.
According to the Mormons, the increased chicanery of the federal government has arrived at full development in their Territory.[175] The phrase has been, “Any thing is good enough for Utah.” The salary is too inconsiderable to satisfy any but the worst kind of jack-in-office, and the object of those appointed is to secure notoriety in the Eastern States by obstructing justice, and by fomenting disturbances in the West. The three judges first appointed from Washington in June, 1851, became so unpopular, that in the autumn of the same year they were obliged to leave Utah Territory—one of them with a “flea in his ear” duly inserted by Mr. Brigham Young. I shall not quote names, nor will the reader require them. Another attempted to break the amnesty in 1858, and when asked for suggestions by the Legislative Assembly, proposed an act for the prevention and punishment of polygamy, and urged the Senate to divide the land between the proposed Territories; finally, this excellent Christian hung a Gentile brother on the Lord’s day. Another killed himself with opium; another was a notorious drunkard; and another was addicted to gambling in his cellar. A judge disgraced himself with an Indian squaw, who entered his court, and, coram publico, demanded her honorarium, and another seated on the bench his mistress—la maîgre Ada, as she is termed by M. Remy, the Gentile traveler—and the Mormons have not yet learned to endure Alice Peirce, or to worship the Goddess of Reason in that shape. Another attempted to convict Mr. Brigham Young of forgery. The marshal was, in one case, a ci-devant teamster, who could hardly write his own name. Besides the vileness of their characters, their cliqueism and violent hostility have led to prostitution of justice; a Mormon accusé was invariably found guilty by them, a Gentile was invariably acquitted. Thus the Probate Courts, properly jurisdictors of the dead, were made judges of the living in all civil and criminal cases, because justice was not obtainable from the Supreme District and the Circuit judges appointed by the federal government. To the envenomed reports of these officials the Saints attribute all the disturbances in 1857-58, and sundry high-handed violations of the constitutional liberties and the dearest rights of American citizenship. For instance, the Indian war of 1852 cost them $200,000; they repeatedly memorialized Congress to defray, strictly according to precedent, these expenditures, and yet, from 1850 to 1855, they have received, in payment of expenses and treaties, grants and presents, only the sum of $95,940. Though Utah Territory has practiced far more economy than Oregon or California, the drafts forwarded by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs to the Treasury at Washington are totally neglected, or are subjected to delays and frivolous annoyances. The usual treaties with the Indians have not been held by the federal government. The Mormons’ requisition for becoming a state is systematically ignored, and this ignoble minorhood is prolonged, although they can show five head of souls for three possessed by California at the time of her admittance—another instance of a “rancorous persecuting spirit, excited by false and malicious representations.” He who lifteth up an ensign on the mountains is now “about to destroy a certain nation under the name of the sour grape (Catawba?);” and the Mormons see in the present civil war at once retribution for their injuries, and the fulfillment of the denunciations of Joseph the Seer against the “Gentile land of strife and wickedness.” Assuredly Fate has played marvelously into their hands.
[175] The Utah correspondent of the “New York Herald,” writing from Salt Lake under date of April 26th, states that the fall of Fort Sumter and the secession of Virginia had created intense interest among the “Saints.” The news was read in the Tabernacle by Brigham Young, and the disciples were asked to believe that this was merely the prediction of Mr. Joseph Smith about the breaking up of the American Union.
The federal officials retort with a counter charge against the Saints of systematically obstructing the course of justice. A Mormon must be tried by his peers; however guilty, he will be surely acquitted, as a murdering fugitive slave in the North, or a thievish filibuster in the South; that it is vain to attempt jurisdiction over a people who have an ecclesiastical Star-Chamber and Vigilance Committee working out in darkness a sectarian law; that no civilized government could or would admit into a community of Christian states a power founded on prophethood and polygamy, a theodemocracy, with a Grand Lama presiding over universal suffragators; that all accusations of private immorality proceed from a systematic attack upon the federal Union through its officers; and, finally, that, so thin-skinned is Mormon sensibility, a torrent of vituperation follows the least delay made with respect to their “ridiculous pretensions.”
The author speaks. Of course there are faults on both sides, and each party has nothing better to do than to spy out the other’s sins of omission and commission. The Americans (i. e., anti-Mormons), never very genial or unprejudiced, are not conciliatory; they rage violently when called Gentiles, and their “respectability,” a master-passion in Columbian lands, is outraged, maiden-modesty-like, by the bare mention of polygamy. On the other hand, the Latter-Day Saints, who now flourish in the Mountain Territory, and who expect eventually to flourish over the whole earth, “are naturally prepared to hate and denigrate all beyond the pale of their own faith.” If the newly-arrived judge fails, within the first week, to wait upon Mr. President, he or his may expect to be the subject of an offensive newspaper article. If another live among his co-religionists at Camp Floyd, he is convicted of cliqueism, and is forthwith condemned as a foe. Whatever proceeds from the federal government is and must be distasteful to them; to every address they reply, “To your tents, O Israel!” “Their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them,” is the shaft which they level against the other party, and which recoils upon themselves. The result is that if the territorial judiciary sentences a criminal, he appeals to the federals, and at once obtains cassation—and vice versâ. The usual procedure in criminal cases is to make oath before a magistrate, who thereupon commands the marshal to take the accused into custody, and “them safely keep,” so that he may produce their bodies before the first sessions of the United States District Courts; if the magistrate be a Mormon, he naturally refuses to prosecute and persecute a brother Saint—and vice versâ. Thus many notorious offenders, whom the Mormons would, for their own sakes, willingly see cut off from the congregation—in simple words, hung—escape with impunity after the first excitement has settled down: the most terrible crimes are soon forgotten in the party fight, and in the race to “go ahead;” after five years they become pabulum for the local antiquary.
I have thus attempted, with feeble hand, to divide the blame between both the great contending parties, and may fairly, I hope, expect to be unanimously rejected by both.
CORPORATION OF GREAT SALT LAKE CITY.The ordinance to incorporate Great Salt Lake City was approved by the General Assembly of the State of Deserét on the 19th of January, 1851, and the body municipal was constituted, like Fillmore, Ogden, and other cities in the Territory. The City Council consists of a mayor, four aldermen, and one common councilor per ward—formerly there were but nine; they are elected by votes, with the usual qualifications; are sworn or affianced to support the federal and territorial Constitution, and retain office for two years. They collect the taxes, which, however, must not exceed 1·50 per cent. per annum upon the assessed value of all taxable property, real and personal.[176] They appoint their recorder, treasurer, assessor, collector, marshal, and supervisor of streets, and have sole charge of the police. They establish and support schools and hospitals, regulate “hacking,” “tippling houses,” and gambling and billiard-tables; inspect lumber, hay, bread and provisions, and provide against fires—which here, contrary to the rule throughout England and the Eastern States, are rare and little to be feared; direct night-lighting and the storage of combustibles, and regulate streets, bridges, and fences. They have power to enforce their ordinances by fines and penalties. Appeals from the decisions of the mayor and aldermen are made to the Municipal Court, composed of the mayor as chief justice, and the aldermen as associate justices, and from the Municipal Court to the Probate Court of Great Salt Lake City.
[176] The property-tax, like tithes, forming the Church funds and the revenue of the civil government, are general; the octroi ($20 for 100 lbs. of every thing entering the Territory from the east, and $25 from the west) and water-tax are local, and confined to towns. I can not find any other recognized imposts. The anti-Mormons declare that the Saints are overburdened with taxation. The Saints assert that their burden is light, especially when compared with the Mormons’ taxation of the Atlantic cities, which averages from double to treble that of London and Paris—a little drawback to Liberty when she must be bought for her weight in gold.
In the Auditor’s report accompanying the Governor’s Message of 1860, there are some items of general interest to people outside, as well as to those in the Territory. The report states that “the total valuation of property assessed in the Territory for the year 1860 (Green River and Carson counties excepted) amounts to $4,673,900.” Assessors in Utah are, I presume, like assessors every where, not likely to obtain an exaggerated estimate of the value of property, as on that estimate assessments are made. Property, therefore, may be set down at a much larger figure than that given in the above extract. The Territorial tax at one half of one per cent. is .3,369 50. As an evidence of the increase of population and of improvement in property, the excess of Territorial tax is over that of last year $13,278 33—five sixths of which is collected in Great Salt Lake County, and that chiefly in this city. Of the other counties, the report states, “The counties of Weber, Box-Elder, and Juab each show a decrease in the valuation of property, compared with the assessment for 1859, of 16 per cent., and Iron County a decrease of 33 per cent., while the counties of Beaver, San Pete, and Cache show a more than corresponding increase in the following ratio, viz.: Beaver, 36; San Pete, 50; and Cache, 900 per cent. The increase in the three last-named counties, especially Cache, may account in some measure for the decrease in the other counties named, from the fact that, during the fall of 1859 and the spring of 1860, very many wealthy families moved with their stock and effects to form new settlements in Cache and San Pete counties, and probably the same may be said of Beaver.”