A letter purporting to be written by Garfield, on the eve of the Presidential Election in the United States in 1880, to a large employer of labour named Morey. It advocated free admission of Chinese labour, and it was hoped by the Democrats would seriously injure the Republican cause on the Pacific Slope. It was of course a forgery.
Mormons.
A sect founded by Joseph Smith, the son of a Vermont farmer, in 1830, at Fayette, New York State. The Mormons moved westward and, after several years’ wanderings, settled on the Great Salt Lake in 1847, under Brigham Young. Their advocacy of polygamy was for a long time a bar to the admission of Utah to the Union, but the enforcement of the Edmunds Act of 1882 led to the formal abandonment of polygamy as a tenet by the Mormons in 1890, and Utah was admitted a State in 1896.
Mortmain, Statute of.
A statute passed in 1279, to put a stop to the growing practice of giving landed property to the Church, and receiving it back as tenants, thus evading feudal obligations. To prevent land thus passing into a dead hand (mortuum manum), all such alienations were forbidden, except with the King’s consent.
Morton’s Fork.
The scheme devised by Morton, the Minister of Henry VII, to increase the revenues of the State. He exacted contributions from those who lived well on the plea that they were obviously rich, and from those who lived plainly on the ground that their economy had made them wealthy.
Mossbacks.
The name given to an old-fashioned section of the Democratic party in the United States, most numerous in Ohio. The word is derived from the popular name for the snapping turtle, which is so called from the growth of a species of aquatic moss on its shell.