from the Wahsatch Mountains which are most valuable for irrigating and manufacturing purposes.  The virtual control of the settlement of the eastern portion of Utah is thus vested in the Church; for these grants include almost all the lands which are immediately valuable for occupation.  After a glance at a list of them, it is not hard to understand the causes of the great disparity in the distribution of wealth among the Mormons.  They have been so allotted as to benefit a very few at the expense of the whole people; and they are protected by a terrorism which no one dares to confront in order to challenge their validity.  The majority of the population are ignorant of their rights,—­and too pusillanimous to maintain them against the hierarchy, if they were not.  They therefore contribute to its coffers not merely their tithing, but heavy exactions also for grazing their cattle on pastures to which they themselves have just as much title as the nominal proprietors, and for grinding their grain and purchasing their lumber at mills on streams which are of right common to all the settlers on their banks.

From the Utah Expedition, then, it has become patent to the world, if it is not to ourselves, that the Mormons are unwilling to administer a republican form of government, if not incapable of doing so.  The author of the letter recently addressed by “A Man of the Latin Race” to the Emperor Napoleon, on the subject of French influence in America, comments especially upon this fact as symptomatic of the disintegration of this republic; and allusion is made to it in every other foreign review of our political condition.  It is obviously inconsistent with our national dignity that a remedy should not be immediately applied; but when we seek for such, only two courses of action are discernible, in the maze of political quibbles and constitutional scruples that at once suggest themselves.  One is, to repeal the Organic Act and place the Territory under military control; the other is, to buy the Mormons out of Utah, offering them a reasonable compensation for the improvements they have made there, as also transportation to whatever foreign region they may select for a future abode.

The embarrassments which might result from the adoption of the former course are obvious.  It would be attended with immense expense, and would embitter the Mormons still more against the National Government; and it would also deter Gentiles from emigrating to a region where three thousand Federal bayonets would constitute the sole guaranty of the security of their persons and property.