ns
were forbidden by law to practise polygamy, under penalty of
deportation from America, but they resisted energetically and refused
to obey. Defying the governor of Utah, General Scheffer, they rallied
fanatically round Brigham Young, who was arraigned and acquitted--and
the Mormon Church remained ruler of the colony.

After Young's death, government was carried on jointly by the twelve
apostles, until on October 17th, 1901, George Smith was elected
universal President of all branches.

A Frenchman, Jules Remy, who visited the Mormons some time back, has
given a striking description of them:--

"Order, peace and industry are revealed on every side. All these
people are engaged in useful work, like bees in a hive, thus justifying
the emblem on the roof of their President's palace. There are masons,
carpenters, and gardeners, all carrying out their respective duties;
blacksmiths busy at the forge, reapers gathering in the harvest,
furriers preparing rich skins, children picking maize, drovers tending
their flocks, wood-cutters returning heavily loaded from the mountains.
Others again are engaged in carding and combing wool, navvies are
digging irrigation canals, chemists are manufacturing saltpetre and
gunpowder, armourers are making or mending firearms. Tailors,
shoemakers, bricklayers, potters, millers, sawyers--every kind of
labourer or artisan is here to be found. There are no idlers, and no
unemployed. Everybody, from the humblest convert up to the bishop
himself, is occupied in some sort of manual labour. It is a curious
and interesting sight--a society so industrious and sober, so peaceful
and well-regulated, yet built up of such divers elements drawn from
such widely differing classes. . . .

All these people, born in varied and often contradictory faiths,
brought up for the most part in ignorance and prejudice, having lived,
some virtuously, some indifferently, some in complete abandonment to
their lowest animal instincts, differing among themselves as to
climate, language, customs, tastes and nationality, are here drawn
together to live in a state of harmony far more perfect than that of
ordinary brotherhood. In the centre of the American continent they
form a new and compact nation, with independent social and religious
laws, and are as little subject to the United States government that
harbours them as to that, for instance, of the Turks."

Such they were, and such they have remained, ever dev