and has further committed all the wickedness flesh is heir to, or of which Satan could conceive?
It is not right to place the polygamist on a par with the bigamist. The one, without deception, and in con- formity with the proclaimed tenets of his faith, takes to wife the second, or third, or twentieth — the more the better for all, it is said — promising to her the same life-long care and protection as to the first; the other breaks his contract with his first wife, and deserts her for another woman. Neither can the polygamist be justly placed on a level with the adulterer. Mor- mons abhor everything of the kind. The sacred cere- mony of marriage signifies far more with them than with those who mark the difference between morality and immorality by a few insignificant rites.
The Mormons lay no small stress on the fact that there is always a large number of women who have no husbands, and can get none, on account of women being always so greatly in the preponderance. They deny that there are more men than women.
Whatever may be true with regard to the numer- ical equality or inequality of the sexes at birth, it is certain, dating back almost from the beginning, that there have always been more women than men in the world. Particularly in primitive times, owing to war or exposure, the death rate was much greater among the males than among the females. To obviate the evil — for it was early recognized that the sexes should be mated — in some instances the female children were killed, but more frequently the excess of women was divided among the men. Where wars were frequent and continuous, everything else being equal, the mo- nogamous nation could not long stand before a polyg- amous neighbor.
Coming down to later times, it is safe to say that there are a million more women than men in Christen- dom to-day; there are here five millions of women who would like to marry but cannot, being denied one of the fundamental rights of humanity by statutory law.
