Reaction and the Administration [pp. 414-416]

REACTION AND THE ADMINISTRATION.
ton-fields cut off from Parry's island by Archer's creek.
These two last points it is proposed to divide into lots, which
shall be leased, on a ground-rent sufficient to pay a small
interest on the value of the land, and to supply schools and
churches to all the property-holders, which the tax on the
water-lots will serve to secure a fund for the building of
wharves, to be the property of the land owners.
ART. IV. —REACTION AND THIE ADMINISTRATION.
No epoch in the annals of history will stand out more
pronminently and distinctly than that in which we live. It is
the age of reformation run mad-of liberty degenerated into
licentiousness. The world was "too much governed" at the
time of the reformation. It never occurred to mankind that
it might be "too little governed." In their haste to remedy
existing and generally acknowledged evils, they first asserted
"the right of private judgment," forgetting that man, as a
social animal, was a mere member of the being, society, and
must, like bees and ants, have a very limited right of private
judgment, else society would cease to exist; and man cannot
live outside of society. The good, great, and wise men (Luther and Calvin) saw the mischievous absurdity of this doctrine, and hence Calvin burnt (very properly) a zealot for
asserting it, and Luther, for the same reason, excommunicated more than the Pope.
The Puritans of New England showed much conservative
good sense when they hung dissenters. "You may have what
religion you please, but we have ours, and our peaceful and
prosperous society shall not be disturbed by your attempts at
propaganding, as Uncle Toby said to the fly, or Abraham to
Lot,'the world is wide enough for us both,' you take the
right hand and we will take the left,' settle somewhere else,
and enjoy what religion you please."'
Mormonism is teaching us the absurdity and impracticability of the extreme doctrines of religious freedom. They
only propose bigamy as a religious ordinance. Human sacriflece, so far as our researches extend, has been in the earlier
ages of all societies a universal religious institution. Would
we. under the plea of religious freedom, permit its revival?
We propose no new legislation on this subject, because a
long experience as a practicing lawyer satisfies us that grand
juries will enforce religious concurrence and orthodoxy by
punishing all heresy as an offense "contra bonos nmores." We
are, in theory, a vety radical people; in practice, the most
,~onservative in the world.
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