The last of the remarks made by Brigham Young on this subject showed his habitual shrewdness. His small, gray eyes twinkled, and a smile came to his heavy puckered mouth, as he said—

If the miners should prove troublesome to us in these valleys, we know how to get rid of them. We can show them something that will lead them all off to a safe distance, like a pack of sheep, and leave us to our quiet again.'

I remained with Mr. Young until about noon, when the whole party set off on their next stage south. The waggons started in succession as they were ready. First that of George A. Smith; then that of Brigham, junior, a man of about thirty, short, enormously wide, with a jovial face, clean-shaven. None of the President's sons are popular. They have the reputation of being extravagant, proud, domineering, and little concerned for the welfare of the people. Mere envy is probably the cause of many of the rumours current to the prejudice of these young men. Some of these are absurd enough. For instance, it is commonly believed among the people that his second son was imprisoned in England, and mulcted of an enormous fine, paid out of the Church funds, for presumptuously driving round Buckingham Palace with six white horses, like the Queen.'

with age, shapeless and wide, in great encompassing overcoats, mounting with difficulty the open buggy, was a sight not exactly imposing. A group of men and boys, hands in pockets, watched the operation with grave interest. Mr. Young drew up over his knees, and over the lady by his side, a magnificent otter-skin robe, and placed in her lap a large apple. Then he took the reins. The chief hierarch in the new church dispensed with any sort of patriarchal or apostolic blessing. I am much obliged to you, friends, for your hospitality,' was all he said, addressing no one in particular; I wish you all good-day.' And off he went.

There is little doubt that the homeliness and absence of pretence of the President recommend him to the people. He is content to exercise despotic power without obtruding the signs of it. There can be no question that Brigham Young is both revered and beloved by the mass of the people. His word possesses an absolute authority, by virtue of his long-known character, and from the sanction given it by his position as the Head Prophet. His open policy, also, has always been to take the part of the mass of the poor as against the trading and propertied classes. The co-operative movement is the recent expression of this policy.

Before leaving Payson I visited a number of the houses of the people. I called a second time on Bishop Fairbanks, in whose pretty cottage George A. Smith had lodged. The bishop is a self-educated, astutetalking man, with small eyes always half-closed and deeply sunken in the face. He is a well-to-do farmer and builder, if I remember aright. He had but one wife, a matronly, capable-looking woman. I imagined that at last I had found a dignitary of the church opposed to plural marriage,' as the Mormons prefer to call their institution.

'Not at all,' he assured me heartily. On principle I am most decidedly in favour of our system. And I calculate to get more wives, too. Polygamy is an essential element in our religion.'

I was invited by a mild-mannered, thoughtful-looking, elderly man to a new house he had just built for a second wife, the first being dead. He expressed very naively his assurance of the truth of Mormonism. He had the inner witness of the Spirit, and a peace that passed all understanding. On a shelf in his little sitting-room I found the Imitation of Christ; Baxter's Call to the Unconverted; The Memoirs of Payson, a Baptist Missionary; Josephus, and a book on Spiritism by some American authoress. Brother David' spoke with mild fervour of the delight these books gave him.

A young Mormon, whose acquaintance I made, took me to a neat little cottage, and introduced me to a plump, bright-looking girl whom he had lately married.

'I had to promise her,' he told me beforehand, that I would never bring home any second wife; and I mean to be as good as my word.'

This acquaintance told me that half the young men and all the girls would willingly give up polygamy. But this opinion is little supported by the general expression of Mormon feeling.

On my way back towards Salt Lake I attempted, despite several warnings, to make my way afoot from Payson to Provo across the Utah plain, for the sake of exercise, and to reach the margin of the lake. In the first object I succeeded as perfectly as I failed in the latter. I made my way for several hours through pathless tracts of sage-bush, rabbit-brush, and geese-wood, and over spongy and arid wastes, blotched with a saline efflorescence, until from a slight hillock I discovered that I

was still a great distance from the shores of the lake. I waded a river to the waist, and got encompassed in a mesh of sloughs, and marshes, and and shallow streams bordered by scrub willow. Eventually I was compelled to make my way back to the stage road under the slope of the mountains. Nearing this, I overtook a broadshouldered, coarsely-dressed, hairy. faced old man, who was returning from the lake with a quantity of fish.

In the course of our conversation we came to the question of polygamy. All Mormons, women as well as men, talk on this subject with the readiest freedom.

This singularly repulsive-looking old saint told me that the only reason why he did not 'take two or three more women at once' was that he could not afford to put up houses for them. He was a devout believer in the necessity of polygamy for the redemption of human society. When I suggested the possibility of United States' intervention, his slow language became stately and poetical, in striking contrast with his personal appear

WHAT

HAT modern period is the most important in the history of the British Empire?

4. The period between 1870 and 1880. Q. Why?

A. Because it was during that period that the Confederation of the British Empire was effected.

Q. Of what was the Empire previously composed?

4. Of Great Britain; of Ireland, in a chronic state of discontentment; and of a number of colonies and dependencies, holding ill-defined and ill-regulated relations to the mother country and to each other.

Q. Did danger threaten the relations, such as they were, of those various members of the Empire? A. The greatest danger. The joke of the period was, that the British Government could not define the British Possessions, such was the liberty of dismemberment they enjoyed, or with which they were afflicted.

Q. Describe more particularly the joke to which you have referred?

A. A cartoon was widely circulated, in which the Secretaries of State were represented as little boys being examined by Prince Bismarck, as their schoolmaster. Of

what do the British Possessions consist?' asks the examiner. Please, sir,' replies the boy, no one knows. So many notices to quit are being sent out, or are coming in, that there's no telling what the words "the British Empire" mean.' 2. Was there any foundation for this joke?

A. Yes, a very substantial one. For several previous years the relations of the different parts of the Empire had been unsatisfactory.

nations.

swer?

carried so far as to compel Great Britain to make a humble apology for an injury the commission of which she denied.

Q. Did the policy really find a response in the country?

A. No; the most remarkable feature of the new era was, that it owed all its reality to its supposed non-existence. The school which made wealth its idol did not profess to do so. Its actions were mostly asserted to be in the interest of the greatness of the country, and so much trust was placed in the governing power, that the great mass of the people failed to see the direction towards which affairs were tending.

Q. Did the school' admit that the colonies were sources of weakness ?

A. A small section had declared so; a much larger section apparently repudiated the notion, and delighted in oratorical platitudes concerning the glories of the Empire.

Q. Did the professions and the actions of this section accord?

A. Far from it. Every preparation was made for enabling the colonies to secede from the Empire, and they were told they might leave when they desired to do so.

Q. Do you mean, that the Empire became so ill-defined and broken up that parts of it were told they might go or stay?

A. Yes, it was so.

A. By the knowledge which the colonies possessed that the feeling of the country was completely in their favour. Whenever a tangible question was raised, the love of the people for the colonies blazed forth as brightly as ever. To everyone it was patent that the exaltation of wealth over national greatness was not shared by the people.

Q. You consider the Government were guilty of systematic duplicity?

A. I do not; and yet such a conclusion seems naturally to follow the answers I have given. To understand how it could be other. wise, it is necessary to remember how common it is for Government to avoid the settlement, and even the discussion, of disagreeable questions.

Q. Granted. But how did such avoidance exonerate the Governwent from a charge of systematic deceit ?

A. I will endeavour to explain. I have already said that a small section of the school' declared the colonies to be sources of weakness. The larger and governing section found it convenient neither to agree nor disagree with the doctrine; but gradually its actions assumed a shape quite consistent with its holding the opinions of the anti-colonists. This satisfied the latter, and the remonstrances of those in favour of the colonies were met with the assurance that the Government did not desire the colonies to leave the Empire, but that the colonies might do so whenever they liked. It was probably quite true that the members of the Government had not agreed upon a desire that the Empire should be broken up-probably only a few of them wished it. But, be that as it may, discussion of the question was avoided by a compromise which pleased the anti-colonists, whilst it appeared to leave to those who favoured the

colonies, no tangible grounds of complaint.

Q. What followed?

A. At length, the country awoke as from a hideous nightmare. Simultaneously certain thoughtful and influential men took up the question, and showed to the people of Great Britain the precipice on the brink of which the Empire tottered. Q. What did they show ?

4. (1) That the permission to the colonies to secede must, sooner or later, lead to their doing so. (2) That a permissive bond of union, severable at the pleasure of any colony, robbed the Colonial Office of its proper strength in guarding the interests of the Empire. (3) That with a permission to secede, it was not fair to ask the colonies to shape their legislation and their policy upon a basis of continued union: in other words, that it was not fair to demand of them that they should regard the interests of the Empire as well as their own. (4) That the uncertainty of Great Britain's tenure of Canada created constant inducements to discontent, intrigue, and aggression, both within the Dominion and in the United States. (5) That, seeing that Great Britain, if she went to war, would have to defend the colonies, she was, in prudence, bound to include them within her scheme of armament and defence-in fairness had the right to demand their co-operation and assistance and that in both respects it was necessary that it should be known whether they were to continue in

the Empire. Q. Why?

A. Because nothing could be more senseless than for the colonies and the mother country to be exposed to the chances of defending a connection which they were willing or liable to break.

Q. Have you exhausted all the arguments employed?

VOL. IV. NO. XIX. NEW SERIES.

A. By no means. A very strong one was, that the colonies had been educated to such an amount of self-government, that some voice in the control of the national affairs affecting them became a logical necessity, as an alternative to secession.

Q. Have you more to say?

A. It is difficult after so great a lapse of time, to state a tithe of the arguments used. One, which found much favour, was, the feeling that Great Britain, divested of her colonies, would become very paltry in the scale of nations; and again, that seeing how her population and her wealth increased, it was much more than formerly, when her colonising policy was undoubtedfor her interest and for her dignity and greatness to find outlets in her own dominions for her own population, enterprise, and wealth.

Q. Why do you lay so much stress on Great Britain's interest in the matter: there does not seem room to doubt it?

A. True; to us, at this distance of time, it is hard to understand the infatuation that could have led anyone to desire a break-up of the Empire. We see that Great Britain was made great by her colonies and her colonising operations; we see that science removed, by ready means of communication, the difficulties which distance previously interposed: and yet, concurrently, we observe the disposition to undo the previous career of the country. To understand how this could come about, we must recollect, first, what I have already said about the people not fully apprehending the direction of events; and, next, we must remember the strength of the party which made constant change, as opposed to conservation, its motto. But, even admitting all I am able to urge, I own it still seems surprising how any public man even dared to hint at the dismemberment of the Empire.

I