UTAH. 



813 



lectual standing of the Church. An amend- 

 ment to the Winchester Profession of Faith, 

 which had been proposed by the General Con- 

 vention of the previous year, came up for final 

 action. The amendment proposed to substi- 

 tute the word "bring" for "restore 1 ' in the 

 following article of the Winchester Profession : 

 " That there is one God, whose nature is love, 

 revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ by one Holy 

 Spirit of grace, who will finally restore the whole 

 family of mankind to holiness and happiness." 

 The advocates of the amendment urged it on 

 the ground that the use of the word ''restore" 

 implied the acceptance of the doctrine that the 

 primal state of man was one of holiness, which 

 was not the belief of the Church. The amend- 

 ment was lost, the vote being 25 for it and 31 

 against it. The Board of Trustees were au- 

 thorized to add $300 to their appropriation for 

 scholarships, and to readjust the distribution 

 of the whole sum so that more students could 

 be benefited by them ; and the Convention de- 

 clared it to be its settled policy to continue the 

 scholarship loan, " substantially on the scale 

 of the appropriation for the present year." 

 The Trustees had represented that the statis- 

 tical reports had been furnished from the State 

 Conventions in improved forms and with greater 

 fullness than in previous years, but that they 

 were not yet sufficiently full. The Convention 

 recommended that greater pains be taken to 

 get full statistics, and that efforts be made to 

 secure a larger patronage for the denomina- 

 tional schools. Measures were recommended 

 for stimulating a more hearty cooperation of 

 the State Conventions with the General Con- 

 vention in the matter of financial responsi- 

 bility. A resolution was adopted recommend- 

 ing to any State Convention that believes the 

 administration of discipline within its juris- 

 diction would be promoted thereby, to desig- 

 nate some person, when practicable a layman 

 and a lawyer, whose duty it shall be, when oc- 

 casion requires, to prefer charges and prosecute 

 them to trial. Subscriptions were taken up 

 during the meeting of the Convention, which 

 resulted in securing pledges of money which 

 were regarded as sufficient to secure the pro- 

 spective extinction of the entire debt of the 

 body. 



The annual meeting of the Woman's Cen- 

 tenary Association was held in connection with 

 the meeting of the General Convention. The 

 Treasurer reported that a balance remained in 

 the treasury on October 22d of $2,254.65. The 

 Tract and Publication Committee had received 

 $261, had expended $242, and had circulated 

 368,900 pages of tracts during the year, making 

 a total of 2,003,500 pages circulated since the 

 enterprise was started. 



UTAH. The Legislature met in biennial ses- 

 sion on January 14th. On February 14th the 

 Committee on Judiciary of the House of Rep- 

 resentatives, to which had been referred so 

 much of the Governor's message as related to 

 polygamous marriages, reported the follow- 



ing conclusions, which were approved by the 

 House : 



First. That, while the divine law most strictly 

 condemns fornications, adulteries, etc., it does in no 

 instance condemn the class of marriages above re- 

 ferred to ; but, on the contrary, such marriages were 

 sanctioned, approbated, blessed, and even, in some 

 instances, commanded by the great lawgiver him- 



8Gll* 



Second. That while illegitimate children, or bas- 

 tards, were under the curse of the divine law, and 

 debarred from entering the congregations of the Lord 

 for ten generations, the children of poly gamuts were 

 called of God, and, by his divine appointment, were 

 made prophets, rulers, and judges in Israel. 



Third. That there was no distinction, in the divine 

 law, in the inheritance of property, between poly- 

 gamic and monogamic children. 



Fourth. That the law of God emphatically declares 

 the marriage ordinance to be a divine ordinance as 

 is most clearly expressed in the following Quota- 

 tion : 



" What God hath joined together," etc. 



Millions of Christians, among civilized nations, are 

 unwilling to receive this holy sacrament, and enter 

 into its sacred bonds, only upon conditions that the 

 solemn rites connected with the ordinance should be 

 administered by their own regularly ordained eccle- 

 siastical authorities, being exercised with the same 

 conscientious and religious views which they have 

 in regard to other religious sacraments. An over- 

 whelming majority of the people of this Territory, 

 like other religious bodies, believe in the divinitv of 

 the marriage ordinance. They also conscientiously 

 and religiously believe in both forms or conditions 

 of Scriptural marriage, namely, the monogamic and 

 polygamic, and desire to practice the same, accord- 

 ing to the divine ordinances and laws of God. 



Fifth. That your Committee, having sworn to sup- 

 port the Constitution of the United States, do not 

 consider themselves authorized to legislate against 

 the religious belief and practices of any ecclesiastical 

 denomination who may wish to make'this Territory 

 their home. 



The most important measures enacted were 

 a criminal practice act, a revenue law, and an 

 election law. By the last-mentioned law all 

 voters must be over twenty-one years of age, 

 and must have resided in the Territory six 

 months and in the precinct one month. If 

 males they must be native-born or naturalized 

 citizens of the United States and tax-payers in 

 the Territory. A female need not be a tax- 

 payer, and, if the wife, widow, or daughter of 

 a native or naturalized citizen, need not her- 

 self be native-born or naturalized. This law 

 is obnoxious to the non-Mormons of Utah, as, 

 though nominally an improvement on the pre- 

 vious system, the ambiguity of its provisions 

 in many respects offers facilities for church 

 manipulation. The revenue law levies a tax 

 annually of three mills on the dollar for Terri- 

 torial purposes, three mills on the dollar for 

 the benefit of district schools, and such sum as 

 the county courts of the several counties may 

 designate for county purposes, not exceed- 

 ing six mills on the dollar. The Legislature 

 also adopted and entered on the minutes a 

 tribute of respect to the memory of Brigham 

 Young. 



The subject offish culture has attracted con- 

 siderable attention in the Territory during the 



