MORMON ELDERS IN LONDON.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1582, 25 March 1887, Page 4

MORMON ELDERS IN LONDON.

A number of Mormon elders and missionaries from the Territory of Utah held a meeting in St George's Hall, Langbam Place, London, for the purpose of explaining the tenets of the Mormon Church, and of protesting against the persecution of the Mormon community by the United States Government. The public were invited to attend and pay for admission, but only a few persons were present, no more, in fact, than sufficed to fill five or six of the front rows of seats. Mr. Phil Robinson took the chair, and said that the Mormons had come over here to defend themselves against the charges of irreligion, immorality, and disloyalty brought against them by the United States Government. He did not believe in Mormonism, and his domestic establishment was regulated on a strictly monopamic basis, but he could bear testimony to the many virtues of the Latter-Day Saints. Elder Kelson, a thin, wiry person of solemn demeanour, with high forehead and clean-shaven face, contended that Mormons did believe in a divinity, although it was not the divinity of any of the Christian sfcts. Tbey did not worship Joseph Smith, although they believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet to whom a revelation had been made by God. Christianity had, after a trial of over Isoo years, he declared, from a moral and social point of view, proved a failure. Elder Ship p was met with loud cries of discontent when he began to apologise for not poing fully into detail with regard to polygamy. Elder Sloan thereupon volunteered to let the gathering " have it," as he expressed it, " as straight as ever they had had it in their lives." Mr Sloan argued that in countries where monogamy is the law a number of men never get married, and thus, as a consequence, a number of women must go unmarried. He admitted, however, that in Utah the number of males far exceeded that of the female.-, snd he was unable to state what wss to become of the surplus males. He would not allow polyandry, and permit a woman to have more than one husband, but there is practically no limit to the number of wives a man might have, although in Utah no man was allowed to take a wife he could not support. After a long series of questions which elicited answers more or less to the point, one of the women on -r>e platform was ajked if polygamy did not cause unbappiness among the wives, and she promptly replied that if they were unhappy it was their own fault. No doubt some were. The lady was asked whether she had lived in a state of polygamy, but said she was precluded from answering on the ground "that she might be fond of some one in Utah, whom her answer might compromise and perhaps consign to prison."