While I would prescribe as the cardinal law of that territory, until it had become a State, that its system of social life should be in conformity to that which prevails throughout this country, to the social order of the Sates; while I would indict and punish offenders against the law, I would not seek as this bill does to make war upon the opinion, upon a sect, upon a religion; for Senators may discriminate as they please, but the fact is broadly prominent that when our Constitution was adopted providing that there should be no law respecting any establishment of religion nor any act of Congress prohibiting the free exercise thereof, the Mohammadan religion prevailed over a great part of the world. It had been [] known throughout all Europe for hundreds of years; and the Mohammadan religion was a polygamous religion. It was known to the founders of our Constitution that [ ] the Christian and the other religions of the earth the doctrine of monogamy and polygamy were contradistinguishing features, that while the one, monagamy, characterized our order of social life, the other has had as its essential characteristic the contray, or polygamy. Theredore it can not be supposed that the founders of this Government and the makers of this Constitution in using the term "religion" did not contemplate it in the braod sense as the opinion or belief which men had in regard to divine or supernatural powers and the "exercise of religion" as the mode of life, the observances which they believed were necessary or proper in the observance of that religion.
July 5, 1884, The Deseret News, The Utah Bill In The Senate, Speech Of Senator Call,
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