The difficulty with the Mormons originated, before the accession of the present administration, in a hasty and improper extension of the Federal authority over a people whose customs and religious opinions were utterly incompatible with those of our own people.  The inhabitants of Utah were averse from the outset to the kind of government provided for them at Washington.  Having adopted a form of society more like that of Congo and Dahomey than of the United States, and having accepted too literally the prevalent dogma, that every community has the right to form its own institutions for itself,—­they preferred the polygamy of barbarism to the monogamy of civilization, and the rod of the priest-prophet Brigham or the seal of Elder Pratt to the sceptre of Governor Steptoe or the sword of Colonel Johnston.  Under these circumstances, the duty of the government of the United States was to relinquish its pretensions to supremacy over a nation opposed to its rule, or to maintain that supremacy, if it were necessary, with a strong and unflinching hand.  Mr. Buchanan, on his own principles of popular sovereignty, as far as we can understand them, ought, logically, to have adopted the former course, but (as the interests of Slavery were not involved) he elected to pursue the latter; and he has pursued it with an impotence which has cost the nation already many millions of dollars, and which has involved the “army of Utah” in inextricable embarrassments, allowing them to be shut up in the snows of the mountains before they could strike a blow or reach the first object of their expedition.  Not very well appointed in the beginning, this little force was despatched to the Plains when it was too late in the season; a part of it was needlessly delayed in assisting to choke down freedom in Kansas; and when it attained the hills which guard the passages to the valley of the Salt Lake, it found the canons obstructed by snow, and the roads impassable.  The supplies required for its subsistence were scattered in useless profusion from Leavenworth to Fort Laramie, and assistance and action were alike hopeless until the arrival of the spring.[A]

[Footnote:  A:  More recently the energy and wisdom of Col.  Johnston have repaired some of the mischief produced by the dilatoriness of his superiors.]

The same feebleness, which left the poor soldier to perish in the desert, has brought an overflowing treasury nearly to default.  Mr. Buchanan, in his Message, discussed the existing financial crisis with much sounding phrase and very decided emphasis.  He rebuked the action of the banks, which had presumed to issue notes to the amount of more than three times that of their specie, in a tone of lofty and indignant virtue.  He commended them to the strictest vigilance and to the exemplary discipline of the State legislatures, while descanting at large upon the safety, the economy, the beauty, and the glory of a sound hard-money currency.  When he entered upon his office, he found the Treasury