of the conspirators? To protect themselves and their
fellow Mormons in the criminal practice of polygamy, and prevent
their prosecution as bigamists by the Utah courts.

The inquiry has already uncovered Mormonism in many of its evil
details, and retold most, if not all, of those stories of pious
charlatanism and religious crime which, during seventy-five years
of its existence, make up the annals of the Mormon Church. As a
first proposal it was explained in evidence before the committee
that in no sort had the Mormon Church abated or abandoned
polygamy as either a tenet or a practice. Indeed, the present
conspiracy aims to produce conditions in Utah under which
polygamy may flourish safe from the ax of law. In the old days,
when Brigham Young ruled, the Mormons were safe with sundry
thousands of desert miles between the law and them. Then they
feared nothing save strife within the Church, and that would be
no mighty peril. Brigham Young would put it down with the
Danites. He had his Destroying Angels, himself at their head, and
when a man rebelled he was murdered.

Mormonism is not, when a first fanaticism has subsided, a
religion that would address the popular taste. It is a religion
of gloom, of bitterness, of fear, of iron hand to punish the
recalcitrant. It demands slavish submission on the part of every
man. It insists upon abjection, self-effacement, a surrender of
individuality on the part of every woman. The man is to work and
obey; the woman is to submit and bear children; all are to be for
the Church, of the Church, by the Church, hoping nothing, fearing
nothing, knowing nothing beyond the will of the Church. The money
price of Mormonism is a tithe of the member's income - the Church
takes a tenth. The member may pay in money or in kind; he may
sell and pay his tenth in dollars, or he may bring to the tithing
yard his butter, or eggs, or hay, or wheat, or whatever he shall
raise as the harvest of his labors.

In the old time the President of the Church was the temporal as
well as spiritual head. No one might doubt his "revelations" or
dispute his commands without being visited with punishment which
ran from a fine to the death penalty. When outsiders invaded
their regions the Mormons, by command of Brigham Young, struck
them down, as in the Mountain Meadows murders. This was in the
day when the arm of national power was too short to reach them.
Now, when it can reach them, the Church conspires where bef