History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

388 MORMONISM AND POLYGAMY.
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. 20
20 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 Expose,
85-93; Atlantic Monthly, 1859, 576-7; denial of exist., Stenhouse's Tell
It 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. Gol. Era, June 13, 1868; Woodruff's Autobiog.,
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., 1S-19, 36-7, 4S-9; Pratt (Belinda
M.), in Utah Pamph. Relig., no. 3, 27-33; Marshall's Through Amer., 185-S;
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.; Robinson's
Sinners and Saints, 82-109; Dilke's Greater Brit., i. 130; Stenhouse's
Expose, 218-21; Tell It All, 256-8; Richards' Narr., MS., 79-81; Worthington's
Women, etc., 592-3; Busch, Gesch. Morm., 340-52, 407-44; Times and