Courts while enforcing the Territorial laws.  The grand juries refuse to find indictments.  The traverse juries refuse to convict Mormons.  The witnesses perjure themselves without scruple and without exception.  The unruly crowd of camp-followers, which is the inseparable attendant of an army, has concentrated in Salt Lake City, and is in constant contact and conflict with the Mormon population.  An apprehension prevails, day after day, that the presence of the army may be demanded there to prevent mob-law and bloodshed.  The Governor is alien in his disposition to most of the other Federal officers; and the Judges are probably already on their way to the States, prepared to resign their commissions.  The whole condition of affairs justifies a prediction made by Brigham Young, June 17th, 1855, in a sermon, in which he declared:—­

“Though I may not be Governor here, my power will not be diminished.  No man they can send here will have much influence with this community, unless he be the man of their choice.  Let them send whom they will, it does not diminish my influence one particle.”

The consequences of the Expedition, therefore, have not corresponded to the original expectation of its projectors.  So far as the political condition of the Territory is concerned, the result, filtered down, amounts simply to a demonstration of the impolicy of applying the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty as a rule for its government.  The administration of President Polk was an epoch in the history of the continent.  By the annexation of Texas a system of territorial aggrandizement was inaugurated; and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which California, Utah, and New Mexico were acquired, was a legitimate result.  Every child knows that the tendency is toward the acquisition of all North America.  But the statesmen who originated a policy so grand did not stop to establish a system of Territorial government correspondent to its necessities.  The character of such a Territorial policy is now the principal subject upon which the great parties of the nation are divided; and its development will constitute the chief political achievement of the generation.  On one side, it is proposed to leave each community to work out its own destiny, trusting to Providence for the result.  On the other, it is contended, that the only safe doctrine is, that supreme authority over the Territories resides in Congress, which it is its duty to assign to such hands and in such degrees as it may deem expedient, with a view to create homogeneous States; that the same influences which moulded Minnesota into a State homogeneous to Massachusetts might operate on Cuba, or Sonora and Chihuahua, without avail; and that to various districts the various methods should be applied which a father would employ to secure the obedience and welfare of his children.