History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

POLYGAMY XOT CRIMINAL. 387
criminal category. In its worst aspect, it can only be
called a vice. Drunkenness is not a crime : it is a vice.
Statutory law cannot justly make criminal that which
by the law of human rights is only a vice. Governments
may repress crime, but they never can uproot
vice; and the sooner legislators realize and act upon
this truth, the fewer failures they will have to record.
Public sentiment and moral force are the only agen-
cies which can be brought against this class of evils
with any hope of success.
The right and wrong of the matter, as usually discussed,
are not the right and wrong of nature and
common sense, but of divine and human enactment,
variously interpreted and viewed from different standpoints.
The bible forbids prostitution, but permits
polygamy; the supporters of the bible and its civilization
forbid polygamy, but permit prostitution.
The Mormons are held to be a most unphilosophical
sect, and yet the sentiment against them is more unphilosophical
than their doctrines or practices. The
American congress is not a Sunday-school, neither is
it within the province of government to establish and
enforce a code of ethics. Congress has no more right
to legislate, against their consent, for the territories
than it has for the states. I do not know that
all Mormons hold to this opinion, but many of them
do. The idea of political nonage is only an idea;
it is not a fact. Murder, theft, breach of contract,
malefeasance in office, unjust monopoly, cheating, slaveholding,
adulteration, bigamy, etc., are crimes to be
punished by law. Drunkenness, gambling, prostitution,
and the like, are vices to be uprooted by precept
and example. A crime is an injury to one's neighbor;
a vice is an injury to one's self. I have no right to injure
my neighbor, but I have the right to do as I will
with my own and myself, howsoever foolish may be
the act. Congress, indeed, would have its hands full
were it to undertake to pass laws to keep men from
making fools of themselves. If polygamy must be