law every accused person is considered innocent until convicted; by this act every innocent person may be adjudged guilty until he proves his innocence. If this is not unconstitutional, arbitrary and subversive of every principle of law, justice or equity, and opposed to the spirit of Republicanism, I fail to find anything in history that is.

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Plotting politicians have whipped a subservient Congress into enacting this bill under a gag law and the uplifted party lash, but the end is not yet. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." Already those who were most anxious for it are either quarreling over its meaning or cursing its immediate effect. Even in the hands of its friends it will be a scorpion that will sting deepest the hand that holds it. And for those against whom it is formulated we can only say, not always

shall

Truth be ever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne; For that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch upon His own. Ellen B. Ferguson.

THE people of Utah are sailing amid troubled waters. What was once the calm, wide stretching ocean of prosperity, has of late been lashed to fury; while overhead and far beyond are low circling clouds of storm. Many bright years we have dwelt here in sweet content, undistressed by local feud, unscathed by war or serious disaster, and always paying loyal homage to that grand government beneath whose guardianship Utah has gained her mature growth. It has been no common event which has now disturbed the serenity of a peaceful people. We have taken but little part in the sordid struggles of the world, and the noise of conflict and bloodshed has come to us only as a woeful echo from far off lands. Now, however, we are called to

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witness the cruel invasion of our own rights, and by that very legislative body to which we are entitled to look for defence.

The recent enactment of the Congress of the United States, known as the Edmunds Bill, contains the plan of the campaign against the people of Utah. As sufficient time has elapsed since its approval to allow a fair consideration of its provisions-its present effects and prospective results; it is quite reasonable that people who will be touched by this proscriptive measure should now turn upon it the full light of that higher law by which Congressional enactments must be viewed. Living in the glory of this Republic, being partakers of its bounteous freedom, and always looking upward to the beneficent charter, bequeathed by the inspired fathers of the nation, it is but natural that we should refer reveren

tially to the Constitution in time of trial. The fundamental law of our free govern. ment is the crucible in which every statute must be tested. Failing to withstand the heat of reason, the enactment is dross. Such it is maintained is the Edmunds Bill-unconstitutional because it is directed against three great bulwarks which are thrown around the person and property of every American citizen.

These three provisions in the Constitution are:

First.--That a man cannot be punished until judicially tried.

Second. That he cannot be punished for an act innocent when committed. Third.-That when tried he cannot be made to bear witness against himself.

The founders of our Government, realizing the terror of popular clamor and the unreasonableness of an excited commonwealth, wisely restricted legislative exercise to certain well defined limits, and declared all encroaching enactments to be unconstitutional and void. To make the safeguard real and effectual, they placed above all petty strife and all partizan law-making, a high tribunal with power to pass a final approval or condemnation of any statute. Therefore unto this court of last appeal every citizen must look for the interpretation of

the law; and by its decision even Congress itself must abide.

It is provided in Section 9, Article I, of the Constitution, that, "No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed." The Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Cummings vs. the State of Missouri (4th Wallace, page 323), defines a bill of attainder as follows:

"A bill of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without a judicial trial.

"If the punishment be less than death, the act is termed a bill of pains and penalties. Within the meaning of the Constitution, bills of attainder include bills of pains and penalties. In these cases, the legislative body, in addition to its legitimate functions, exercises the powers and office of judge; it assumes, in the language of the text books, judicial magistracy; it pronounces upon the guilt of the party, without any of the forms or safeguards of trial; it determines the sufficiency of the proofs produced, whether conformable to the rules of evidence or otherwise, and it fixes the degree of punishment in accordance with its own notions of the enormity of the offense."

A legislative act which usurps judicial powers is declared by the foregoing decision to be most obnoxious to American ideas; for such usurpation is always indicative of unjust enactments. So much did the framers of the fundamental law of this country fear, in future times, the subversion of the principles of liberty, that they hedged the way around by many safeguards, and made any effort at proscription or persecution the unmistakable characteristic of unconstitutional legislation. This power so strongly declared against is attempted to be exercised by Congress through the medium of the Edmunds Bill. Section 8 of that measure reads as follows:

"That no polygamist, bigamist or any person cohabiting with more than one woman, and no woman cohabiting with any of the persons described as aforesaid in this section, in any Territory or other place over which the United

States have exclusive jurisdiction, shall be entitled to vote at any election held in any such Territory or other place, or be eligible for election or appointment to, or be entitled to hold any office or place of public trust, honor or emolument in, under, or for any such Territory or place or under the United States."

Thus in the enactment now under consideration, it is expressly provided that certain classes of persons shall be disfranchised and disqualified from holding office, without first having been tried and convicted of some public offense. As no provision is made in this statute for their arraignment and conviction by a court of competent jurisdiction, and as such disfranchisement and disqualification are most clearly "punishment," the Bill is one of attainder. Further: the direct intention of the movers of the Act was that no such trial should be had. When it was suggested by honest opponents of the unconstitutional provisions of the Bill that only upon conviction should men be disfranchised or deposed, all amendments which were offered to that effect were promptly rejected by the majority.

But that no doubt may remain regarding this matter of punishment, let us refer once more to the case above cited (pages 321 and 322), in which the Supreme Court enunciates the following doctrine:

"The theory upon which our political institutions rest is that all men have inalienable rights—that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and that in the pursuit of happiness all avocations, all honors, all positions are alike open to every one, and that in the protection of these rights all are equal before the law. Any deprivation or suspension of any of these rights for past conduct is punishment, and can be in no otherwise defined."

What could be plainer on the point at issue than the language above quoted? By this Bill it is attempted without trial or conviction to disfranchise and disqualify from holding office all persons who were at the time the Bill became a law polygamists or bigamists. In this respect

it is not only a bill of attainder but an ex post facto law, because it imposes the additional punishment of disfranchisement and disqualification from holding office to that prescribed when the offense was committed. The statute may not be retroactive so far as it relates to a person cohabiting with more than one woman; because cohabitation is what is known to the law as a continuous offense, and by ceasing the illegal practice, this class of persons may to a great extent avoid the proscriptions. But the polygamist or bigamist has no such opportunity to escape. Marriage is a status, a relationship, not to be changed at will by either one of the parties thereto. The fact that the law declares against polygamy and bigamy is of no assistance to an offender in seeking to get clear from the consequences of his act. So far as he is concerned, the law will, for the purpose of determining his guilt and the extent of his punishment, recognize each matrimonial contract as a marriage, the responsibility of which he cannot evade. Therefore, a man who committed the offense of polygamy immediately preceding the approval of the Edmunds Bill, if his wives are yet living, is still a polygamist. No renunciation by himself can now release him from the proscriptions; and no cohabitation with his wives need now be taken as a renewal of the misdeed of polygamy. The same may be said of a man who married plural wives at any time before there existed any Territorial or National statute against such a union. Thus a man who became a polygamist previous to the passage of the anti-polygamy Act in 1862-when he was not violating any law, is yet a polygamist; and, in common with every subsequent offender, is proscribed and by this unjust measure is sought to be punished. The assertion that such law is ex post facto is substantiated by the eminent authority heretofore quoted (4th Wallace, pages 325 and 326), where the following definition is given:

"By an ex post facto law is meant one which imposes a punishment for an act which was not punishable at the time it was committed; or imposes additional

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punishment to that then prescribed; or changes the rules of evidence by which less or different testimony is sufficient to convict than was then required.

"In Fletcher vs. Peck, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall defined an ex post facto law to be one 'which renders an act punishable in a manner in which it was not punishable when it was committed.''

In two respects, therefore, the Bill is retroactive. First. "It imposes a punishment for an act which was not punishable at the time it was committed"—as it disfranchises and disqualifies from holding office men who wedded plural wives previous to the passage of the first statute in this country against such unions, and who have not since transgressed the law. Second.-"It imposes additional punishment to that then prescribed”—in cases of violations of the law of 1862, as until the enactment of the Edmunds Bill, the only penalties declared were fine and imprisonment, while by the new law the additional punishment of disfranchisement and disqualification from holding office is sought to be imposed upon past offenders.

Inasmuch as there is no provision in the bill for determining judicially that a person belongs to either of the classes proscribed, it is likely that the Commissioners, who are to be appointed to practically govern Utah, will either arbitrarily disfranchise persons suspected, or prescribe a test oath to be taken by the voter, which will be in effect requiring him to bear witness against himself, as his refusal to take the oath would afford the desired evidence of his disability.

Such a Bill-permitting invasion of private privileges, placing extraordnary powers in the hands of a few to the oppression of the many, and depriving individuals and even whole classes of their civil rights has been already proclaimed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, that tribunal which holds the power of annulling any wrongful act of the National Legislature.

The men who framed and passed this Bill went too far. With unholy zeal they strove to take away the

liberties of a people, and in doing so they exceeded their powers and overreached themselves. In attempting to make an ex post facto law, they instilled into the wicked act the antidotal poison of unconstitutionality, and the measure is thus committed to death by its own noxiousness. The Act bears the impress of being one of those ill-considered and unjust enactments, which have more than once been given by law-making powers in answer to the demands of popular prejudice. Millions of people clamored for it-people who have within their bestowal the gifts of office, of fame, of money. Only forty-two men in the House of Representatives dared to vote against it. The class which it is designed to injure consists of a handful of men, women and children-a humble few, without a voice in National affairs, without earthly influence and without wealth. Many times and in many forms they have met persecution; and this unrighteous enactment is the last device of their jealous and unreasoning enemies. Years ago this people were driven and Scourged, despoiled and ostracised; but as neither want, nor tribulation, nor fire, nor sword could wrest from them their sacred belief, the attempt is now made to rob them of political and religious rights by statutory enactments. It is a dangerous precedent. Let but one barrier of the Constitution be broken down, and through the steadily enlarging gap will rush flood upon flood of iniquitous laws. The devastation which may thus be wrought, let history indicate: other republics have risen to the zenith of glory; they have allowed the brazen voice of intolerance and bigotry to hush the cry of unpopular innocence: other republics have seen their fundamental laws disregarded in answer to blind hatred; and from the first perversion of its constitution, each one of these past democracies has dated its decline and fall.

The great statesman and law-giver, Alexander Hamilton, has described this kind of legislation and its effects in such a clear and forcible manner, that his utterance might well be regarded as a statement of the case now under consid

eration-written in the light of present experience, instead of being the production of a century ago.

The General says:

"Nothing is more common than for a free people in times of heat and violence to gratify momentary passions by letting into the Government principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disfranchisement, disqualification and punishments by acts of the Legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. If the Legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure, of general descriptions, it may soon confine all the voters to a small number of partizans, and establish an aristocracy or oligarchy. If it may ban ish at discretion all those whom particu lar circumstances may render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a Government would be a mockery of comThe people

mon sense.

*

are sure to be losers in the event, whenever they suffer a departure from the rules of general and equal justice, or from the true principles of universal liberty."

The words of the Constitution, the language of the great statesman, and the declaration of the Supreme Tribunal of the Republic may well be deemed prophetic. They sound now the warning note against oppression, as if the immortal patriots of other generations had been inspired to see in vivid light the future of their children. Unanimously they proclaim such tyrannical, proscriptive enactments as the Edmunds Bill unrighteous and void. If their united voice be not heeded, if the eter nal truths of free government, which they promulgated be to-day declared obsolete, then is there no human justice. But, beyond and above all such unworthy doubt is the faith which animates every loyal citizen in the destiny of his Country. While the glory of the Nation is yet filling the future with triumphal light, we need not fear proscription. It is engraved upon every stone of Liberty's