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Show THE MORMON MURDERERS. 493 able portions of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona. The prop-osition carried by a unanimous vote ( all propositions do in the Mor-mon Church), and the heads of the theocracy were in like manner elected chiefs in the " State of Deseret : " Brigham Young, Governor ; Daniel H. Wells, Chief Justice and Lieutenant- General; the Twelve Apostles divided the Judgeships and State officers among them; the State Senate was made up of Presiding Bishops, the House of inferior Bishops and Elders, and the local officers in counties were appointed according to priestly rank. This queer institution ran a year. The Legislature immediately assembled and divided the whole adjacent territory into grants; the timber, streams, pasture lands, and valleys were given to the heads of the Church ; they in turn parceled them out, each to his laity, and thus color of title was established to all the land in Utah of any value. As Brigham pithily said, " If there's nothing for the d d Gentiles to settle on, they can't settle." And they didn't. Congress, in the long and memorable session of 1850, cut up our new possessions into various governments, and, among others, estab-lished the Territory of Utah about two and a half times as large as it is now ; of which Territory President Fillmore, with his customary sense of propriety, appointed Brigham Young Governor ! Immedi-ately the whole State machinery of Deseret was floated on to the new government. As far as the Organic Act of Utah gave power, all the old officials were chosen in the new system; the Legislature re- assern-bled, sat six months ( its expenses were now paid from Washington), confirmed in bulk most of the legislation of " Deseret," and divided up all the valleys which had since been discovered. Thus began that remarkable interlock of church and state, the most perfect despotism of modern times, which lasted unbroken for twenty years until Judge McKean and his colleagues made the first breach, in 1870. The average citizen can have no conception of the empire obtained by this theocracy over the minds and fortunes of its subjects. Three concurrent governments took charge of every detail of common life : the territorial or civil of all aifairs concerning Gentiles, or cases be-tween Gentile and Mormon; the ecclesiastical of all religious ques-tions; and the Church civil system of all the industries and commerce of the people. Brigham was Prophet and Seer in the ecclesiastical ; First President in the industrial and civil ; for seven years Governor in the territorial government, and long afterwards virtual dictator of the policy of his successors. The same man in an outer settlement was Judge under the Territory, Bishop under the Church, and " President |