488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



counsel to sell and counsel to buy, to go abroad or remain at home, 

 to build a house, open a farm, buy a cow, or take another wife. The 

 remnants of individualism which the people had brought with them 

 from their native lands seem to have completely died out as early as 

 1855. Natural selection of course operated powerfully in aid of this 

 tendency, coupled with the isolated condition of the country. From 

 one to three thousand fresh converts arrived every year; those who 

 could not submit at once and completely, slipped out of the Territory 

 as soon as possible, and the residuary mass settled into a condition 

 of unchanging homogeneity. That class of thinkers who maintain 

 that government should take care of the people's business, finances, 

 and morals, by prohibitory enactments as to foreign goods and native 

 whiskey, would have been amazed to see how thoroughly Utah had 

 carried out this policy. All the business of the people was regulated 

 by the rulers ; paper-money was issued by the city under the direc- 

 tion of the Church; nobody could sell liquor without the consent of 

 Brigham, and the distance from markets created a protective tariff 

 200 per cent, heavier than a Congress of Greeleys and Careys would 

 have dared to impose. Stranger still, the system was, as to the ob- 

 jects aimed at, a perfect success : a whole community voluntarily 

 abdicated each man his personal sovereignty, and were taken care of 

 by their priestly advisers with a cruel kindness which the ordinary 

 American need not hope to comprehend. Even the desire for inde- 

 pendence died out. An original thought came to be regarded as a 

 sin to be repented of, confessed, and put away. Each successive and 

 abortive attempt at something better resulted in making the popula- 

 tion still more submissive. Where vigorous preaching had been nec- 

 essary in 1850, a move of the hand was sufficient in 1860 ; where argu- 

 ment was still employed in 1860, a hint was enough in 1868. Toward 

 the close of this period, and before the disturbing Gentile invasion, 

 business took me on a lengthy tour through the remote settlements, 

 where the results of over-government showed themselves most com- 

 pletely in the perversion or stupefaction of the mental faculties. I 

 heard men maintain with vehemence that Jesus Christ was a practical 

 polygamist ; that the Gentile world was to be utterly desolated before 

 1890, and the remnant submit to the Mormon priesthood; that a re- 

 publican government was a rebellion against God, in that men sought 

 to govern themselves without counsel of an inspired priesthood and a 

 prophet divinely appointed; and that a man could not obtain honor- 

 able rank in heaven unless he had children on earth. I heard women 

 protest that they would not live as the one wife of a man if possible 

 to go into polygamy; that there was no exaltation in heaven to an 

 unmarried woman ; that it was a deadly sin to refuse to enter polyg- 

 amy ; and that a woman or man who voluntarily remained unmarried 

 would be a servant to the Saints to all eternity. Both sexes accepted 

 as a religious verity that slavery and polygamy were established by 



