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Show UNION OP CHURCH AND STATE. 131 protection from oppression, by those passing through their midst, were not made in vain; and I know of at least one instance in which the marshal of the State was despatched, with an adequate force, nearly two hundred miles into the western desert, in pursuit of some miscreants who had stolen off with nearly the whole outfit of a party of emigrants. He pursued and brought them back to the city, and the plundered property was restored to its rightful owner. While, however, there are all the exterior evidences of a government strictly temporal, it cannot be concealed that it is so intimately blended with the spiritual administration of the church, that it would be impossible to separate the one from the other. The first civil governor under the constitution of the new State, elected by the people, was the president of the church, Brigham Young; the lieutenant- governor was his first ecclesiastical counsellor, and the secretary of state his second counsellor: these three individuals forming together the « presidency" of the church. The bishops of the several wards, who, by virtue of their office in the church, had exercised not only a spiritual but a temporal authority over the several districts assigned to their charge, were appointed, under the civil organization, to be justices of the peace, and were supported in the discharge of their duties, not only by the civil power, but by the whole spiritual authority of the church also. This intimate connection of church and state seems to pervade every thing that is done. The supreme power in both being lodged in the hands of the same individuals, it is difficult to separate their two official characters, and to determine whether in any one instance they act as spiritual or merely temporal officers. The establishment of a civil government at all, seems to me to have been altogether the result of a foreseen necessity, which it was impossible to avoid. As the community grew in numbers and importance, it was not to be expected, as has been before remarked, that the whole population would always consist solely of members of the church, looking up to the presidency, not only as its spiritual head, but as the divinely commissioned and inspired source of law in temporal matters and policy also. It became necessary, therefore, to provide for the government of the whole, by establishing some authority which could not be disputed by any, and would exercise a control over them as citizens, whether they were members of the church or not; and which, being acknowledged and recognised by the Government of the United States, would be sup- |