RESIGNATION OF BRIGHAM YOUNG.

Evening Star, Issue 3223, 19 June 1873, Page 3

RESIGNATION OF BRIGHAM YOUNG.

From that fertile land of surprises and “sensations,” the United States, comes the extremely surprising and sensational intelligence that Brigham Young, the prophet, priest, and king of the Mormons, has resigned. For twenty-seven years this extraordinary man—without the slightest advantages of education, and with nothing to aid him but natural shrewdness and perfect unscrupulousness—has ruled as au absolute despot over the minds, the souls, the bodies, and the wealth of a set of people who in a few years increased from a handful to a host, and who to-day number more than 100,000 souls. In 1846, at the head of a few hundred fanatics, driven from Illinois and Missouri, he set forth into the unknown wilderdess lying between the Missouri River and tne foot of the Rocky Mountains ; and at the beginning of the following year planted in the lovely valley of Salt Lake the city where he has since ruled as a king and priest, and which he now abandons, not because any rival is pushing him from power, but simply because he has grown weary of the game. The entire Mormon community since the first settlement in Utah has been the slave and servant of this man. For him they have toiled, and to him they gave tithes of all they possessed. The wonderful shrewdness of the man enabled him to turn every event, no matter how apparently adverse, to his advantage. When, ip 1§57, he refused to‘admit a Governor appointed by President Buchanan to exercise authority iu Utah, and a large army of United States

soldiers was sent against him. his overthrow and ruin seemed inevitable ; but he at first so skilfully threw obstacles in the way of the advance ef the army, that it arrived within striking distance only when its supplies of food were exhausted and starvation stared it in the face; and he then with equal skill suggested compromises so tempting that they were accepted, and the army which came to conquer remained to serve the foe—receiving its supplies from him, and paying for them at rates which yielded him profits at the contemplation of which the contractors on this side of the water would faint with envy. So, also, when the Pacific Railway line began to approach him, and it was exultingly proclaimed that “the whistle of the first locomotive would be the dirge of Mormondom,” he went forward to meet this new danger and to turn it to his own aggrandisement. He not only succeeded in persuading the company to choose for their line through his territory a route of his own selection, but he obtained the contract for the construction of the work, and then employed upon it his own people at rates of wages which, prescribed by himself, left him an ample margin of profit. Then, once more, when the oiaooverks of the vast mineral wealth of Utah began to attract attention, he was before everyone else in this new field of wealth. Many of the productive mines were worked for him ; many of the others, whose wealth was far more problematical, were sold for him by agents, who did not always disclose the name of their principal; and thousands of honest English sovereigns, exchanged for

shares in worthless mines in Utah, are now, in all probability, safely resting in the strong box of this audacious adventurer. The last estimate which we have seen of bis wealth placed it at eighteen millions sterling ; and, making all allowances for exaggeration, there can he no doubt that he possessed, and probably still possesses, in spite of bis reported liberality to bis sixteen wives and sixty children, a vast fortune. He is now seventy-two years old. The United States Government may well congratulate themselves on their good fortune. Brigham Young, by his abdication, has probably done that for them which they could not do for themselves. Deprived of him the Mormon community will speedily sink into the position of a weak and decaying sect ; and, through no exertions of its own, the American Government will be rid of a foul and dangerous exerescenee upon the body politic. Brigham Young has sent by telegraph to the New York Herald a long statement of his policy. He says :—“ For over forty years I have served my people, laboring incessantly. lam now nearly seventy-two years of age, and I need relaxation. My resignation as trustee of the Church, President of the Zion Co-operative Mercantile Institution, and President of the Deseret National Bank, is made solely from secular cares, and does not affect my position as President of the Church. We intend to establish a settlement in Arizona, in the country of the Apaches, persuaded that if we become acquainted with them we can influence them beneficially. We hope to assist in the construction of the railway which is to cross that country, and bring a large portion of our emigration that way.” Brigham Young abandons the old Mormon policy of exclusiveness. He invites good citizens to settle in Utah; urges capitalists to invest their money there, and promises that their property shall be protected and lightly taxed.