Brigham Young died at Salt Lake City last Wednesday. He
disappears, without people having quite made up their minds whether the Prophet was a rank impostor or a fanatic. His rule of the Mormon Church since the death of Joseph Smith in 1844 stamped. him as a man of administrative capacity—with talents of a kind even better suited for founding a large dry-goods establish- ment than acting as a leader of a sect. If the United States Government had let him alone, and if Salt Lake had re- mained, as it was, in the centre of a desert, and with fifteen hundred miles between him and civilisation, Mormonism might, thanks to the energetic Vermonter, have lasted much longer. But there is no one to replace Brigham Young. The Federal Government have refused to recognise the "peculiar institution" of Utah, and have lately executed "a. Bishop" for his share in the Mountain Meadow massacre. The "Saints" will soon be outnumbered in their own land. It is just Feasible, as has been suggested, that they will cast off polygamy, which is a comparatively late development of their creed.
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