The Wichita Daily Eagle

THE MORMON CHURCH.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3.-The members of the Utah commission have filed with Secretary Noble majority and minority reports of the proceedings of the commission for the year ended Sept. 30, 1891. The majority report is signed by G. L. Godfrey (chairman), R. S. Robertson, Alvin Saunders and A. B. Williams, and says in regard to the Mormon church:
"In view of the fact that the Mormon church has invariably in the past dictated the political movements of its adherents, and has presented a united front against any and every party which came in conflict with it, those who now doubt its sincerity may well be excused for doubting. That church has, through the People's party, strenuously opposed every effort made, whether by the laws of congress, the action of the courts, or of the Utah commission, to put down polygamy. It denounced the commission through all the years that it had been administering the laws directed against polygamy and had kept a united force constantly standing and ready to oppose every effort to compel submission to the laws of the land.
"When disfranchisement stared the county of Salt Lake, the city of Ogden and the church in the face; when the city had been wrested from its control, and the county of Weber and Park city had anti-Mormon, then, and not till then, did this change come. The commission hopes that it is the beginning of a better era. The commission cannot yet recommend the withdrawal of a portion of the safeguards thrown around this people by the law-making power of the government and it is most emphatic in expressing its opinion that it would not, at this time, be safe to entrust them with the responsibilities and duties of statehood, as they so much desire.
The minority report, which is signed by John A. McClernand, says that polygamous marriages in Utah have decreased to a point of virtual cessation, and that it would not be either just or politic to extend by law the range of the existing civil disabilities indiscriminately to all Mormons.