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 direction 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 objects 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 independence 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 population still more submissive. Where vigorous preaching had been necessary in 1850, a move of the hand was sufficient in 1860; where argument 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 completely 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 republican 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 honorable 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 polygamy; 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
