The Government of the United States are going to try
to prevent the immigration of the Mormons, by diffusing through friendly European Governments the information that polygamy is a violation of the law of the United States, and that all who emigrate thither with the intention of living under polygamy, are preparing to enter the United States with a criminal inten- tion. The Government of the Union ask their Ministers in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to make this state of the case widely known amongst the people, and that any person in Utah against whom evidence of bigamy or polygamy is obtainable is to be prosecuted. Ships containing Mormon colonists are to be stopped, it is said, in the ports of the United States, as the Government is empowered to prevent the immigration of "lawless people." These measures, we think, are likely to succeed. It would be impossible to put down a merely licentious movement by such means ; but Mormonism has not fascinated the people of Teutonic. stocks by its licen- tiousness, but on the contrary, by its claim to declare a coarse kind of law, ostensibly in keeping with much that these people find in the Old Testament, and one embedded in a stratum of coarse but exciting prophecy. So soon as these kind of emigrants realise that they are going to a place where they will be regarded as common criminals, they will lose their fancy for the enterprise.
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