placed in one category or the other, it must be denominated a vice, and not a crime. If one man and three women contract to live in a connubial relationship, neither God nor nature pronounces it a crime. In bigamy the marriage contract is broken; in polygamy it is kept. Admit that monogamy is best, that one man for one woman tends to the highest culture, it still does not prove that coercion in morals is better than precept and example. Is woman less chaste than in the days of feudalism, now that she is less watched? If the law has the right to limit a man to one wife, it may if it chooses deny him any wife, as many orders among the Greeks and Armenians, the heathens and christians, have declared. If one man is restricted by law to one woman, the least the law can do in common justice is to compel every man to marry one woman. Why does not the United States war upon the catholic priest or the unprincipled debauchee, who by refusing to take a wife repudiates the laws of nature, and sets an example which if universally followed would prove the strangulation of the race? Better punish those who denaturalize themselves rather than those who are too natural.
This is what Utah polygamy says to civilization.[1]
- ↑ My references to articles, both printed and in manuscript, relating to polygamy, are no less voluminous than those touching upon other church matters. I note as follows: early polygamists, Ferris' Utah and Morm., 117; Smucker's Hist. Morm., 161-2; Young's Wife No. 19, 150-5; Stenhouse's Ex- pos4, 85-93; Atlantic Monthly, 1859, 576-7; denial of exist., Stenhouse's Tell ft All, 103-4, 499-500; Pratt, in Millennial Star, vi. 22; Lee's Morm., 167; Young's Wife No. 19, 329-31; favored by women, Des. News, 1870, Jan. 12, 19; 1871, Nov. 8, Dec. 20; S. F. Ool. Era, June 13, 1868; Woodruff's Auto- biog., MS., 4-6; The Morm. at Home, 145-7, 159; S. L. Herald, Feb. 1, 1879; Burton's City of Saints, 525-34; Ward's Husband in Utah, 130-4, 216-22; Tanner's Letter, MS., passim; Smoot's Experience, etc., MS., 4, 8-9; Tracy's Narr., MS., 30-2; Richards' Remin., MS., 18-19, 36-7, 48-9; Pratt (Belinda M.), in Utah Pamph. Rdig., no. 3, 27-33; Marshall's Through Amer., 185-8; Millennial Star, xvii. 36-7; Brown's Letter, MS., passim; arg. in favor of, Smith's Rise, Progress, etc., 48-56; Millennial Star, xix. 636-40, xxxvii. 340- 1; Beadle's Life in Utah, 252-4; Paddock's La Tour, 324-5; Ferris' Utah and Morm., 115-17; Johnson, in Utah Tracts, no. 10; Richardson, with Taylor's Govt of God, no. 19; Spencer, with Id., no. 18; Taylor vs Hollister, Sup. Ct Decis., no. 2, in Morm. Pamph.; Cannon's Rev. of Decis., no. 11, in Id.; Rob- inson's Sinners and Saints, 82-109; Dilke's Greater Brit., i. 130; Stenhouse's Expos4, 218-21; Tell It All, 256-8; Richards' Narr., MS., 79-81; Worthing- ton's Women, etc., 692-3; Busch, Gesch. Morm., 340-52, 407-44; Times and
